Always require approval of any new liaison statement.

[rjsparks]

Remove checkbox “Obtained prior approval” and always request approval (including LSs entered by the secretariat)

• Reasoning: This checkbox was “misused” in the past. Effectively people would always check this box. If approval was discussed previously, approval should be fast (as the approver should be aware that this is coming). As back-up the IAB liaison coordinator or IAB chair should always be able to approve.
• Also: Explicit approval ensures awareness and helps the IAB in its liaison management responsibility (RFC2850 “The IAB acts as representative of the interests of the IETF […] in technical liaison relationships with other organizations”)
• Note: this was roughly discussed at the IAB call on Aug 11, 2021: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/minutes-interim-2021-iab-25-20210811/#3-liaison-management-tool

The IAB liaison coordinators and the IAB chair should be cc’ed on all approval request emails, even if the LS is entered by someone with those roles.

For liaison statements from IETF groups, the leadership of those groups (including the ADs) should also be copied on the approval requests.

[mirjak]

Actually one more point (but maybe that's a separate issue): for incoming liaison entered by the secretariat it would also be good to have a set to double-check the LS by the liaison coordinator before posting.

[russhousley]

Actually one more point (but maybe that's a separate issue): for incoming liaison entered by the secretariat it would also be good to have a set to double-check the LS by the liaison coordinator before posting.

I am not sure this is useful. Many groups send email to [email protected], so the sender thinks that people have their message as soon as they hit send.

[mirjak]

@russhousley I not sure I understand your point. In case where we have liaison managers we actually prefer that the liaison manager uploads (and thereby sends) the LS directly in the datatracker and don't have the secretariat involved by sending anything to [email protected].

For cases where we don't have liaison managers we now ask external people to send mails to [email protected] instead. This gives the IAB liaison coordinators the chance to double-check that the LS will indeed be sent to the right groups because this has been a problem. While [email protected] is not mentioned on our webpage(s) anymore, some external people might send their LS there anyway still. However, it would still be useful to double-check the right receiver group(s) on our side which is not something the secretariat can do on their own.

Also note, if you send something to [email protected] it will not be sent out until someone from the secretariat manually enters it into the system. So I don't really understand what the assumption is your are talking about.