Summary

  • The 2 November PROCON working-group draft moves emergency-chair selection from an advance designation by the IETF Chair to a choice announced by the IESG when the Chair is absent or the seat is vacant.
  • The Chair normally declares their own incapacity and recovery. If they cannot or will not, or the declaration is disputed, the IESG decides; the selected Area Director then holds the full Chair role.

The old proposal gave the IETF Chair a spare key to hand to a colleague. The new working-group draft takes that key away. If the Chair becomes indisposed, or the office falls vacant, the Internet Engineering Steering Group selects and announces a willing Area Director to act as Chair. The choice happens at the handover, not at the sitting Chair’s sole discretion months earlier.

That is a visible transfer of institutional power, and the draft's own change log says so. The individual predecessor proposed that the Chair designate a stand-in immediately upon taking office, who would automatically assume the role if the Chair became incapacitated. It did not say who could determine incapacity when the Chair could not speak. The 2 November text gives the first declaration to the Chair. If the Chair is unable or unwilling to make it, or there is disagreement, the IESG decides. The group both identifies the interruption and chooses the person who takes over.

The draft gives the Acting IETF Chair the entire role, including the ability to delegate. Existing delegations survive unless the Acting Chair changes them. That prevents a temporary handover from silently undoing assignments already in force. For a short expected absence, the Acting Chair should let ordinary business continue while delaying controversial decisions. The text leaves that judgment to the person newly holding the Chair's authority; it gives no fixed list of controversial acts.

The problem is real even without a crisis. The draft calls the current Chair role a single point of failure. Under RFC 8713, a mid-term vacancy process can take up to six weeks and supplies a permanent replacement rather than a quick acting one. The draft also notes that members serving in NomCom-selected roles cannot sign recall petitions, even though some IESG, IAB or LLC Board members could be direct witnesses to the reasons for one. It leaves the recall procedure untouched.

The IETF Datatracker lists this as a PROCON working-group draft, not an approved Best Current Practice. The missing record is a final adopted rule or a documented IESG handover; either would show how the proposed decision rule actually operates.