IEEE 802 LMSC Sponsor Balloting - Electronic Balloting
Below is copy of what I sent to CS SAB and Mike Binder (manager IEEE-SA
Balloting Service). Thanks to Bob Love, Geoff Thompson, Bob Grow, Vic Hayes
for suggestions:
To: SAB99, Mike Binder:
In order to streamline the ballot process, the 802 SEC (by vote at its
November Plenary meeting) recommends that the entire LMSC Sponsor ballot
process conducted by the IEEE-SA Balloting Staff should be conducted
electronically (via e-mail and web). The entire process includes ballot pool
formation, ballot group solicitation and request, ballot group approval,
ballot submission, vote collection and comment resolution.
In order to implement Electronic Balloting, the attached procedures were
developed by Bob Love, chair of IEEE 802.5 Working Group (rdlove@ibm.com),
for electronic ballot group formation and approval in order to verify and
approve the individuals and their email addresses in the balloting group.
These proposals could be used as a starting point for developing a procedure
by the IEEE-SA Balloting Staff.
In addition to these views on electronic balloting, the 802 SEC also had
some concerns on how to handle non-responders to a ballot, since it was felt
that non-responders create unnecessary workload on the volunteers.
Jim Carlo(jcarlo@ti.com) Cellular:1-214-693-1776 Voice&Fax:1-214-853-5274
Chair, IEEE802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee
ATTACHED PROCEDURES - Bob Love
1. Noting that the most critical addresses of the people in the ballot pool
are their email addresses, the entire process should be based on
communication via those email addresses. As such a critical first step is
to obtain the correct email addresses of the people that have volunteered to
participate in LMSC ballots in the balloting pool. We should also require
that the response to the "Invitation to Ballot" be electronic to eliminate
the burden on those conducting the ballot to perform the tedious step of
verifying e-mail addresses during formation of the balloting group.
To implement this, we should send out a mailing to the entire group of
volunteers notifying them that we are moving toward electronic balloting,
and that supplying their correct e-mail contact information will be critical
to maintaining their eligibility to participate in future sponsor ballots.
The move to electronic balloting will require both email capability, and
access to the web to download drafts, to submit comments, and to vote.
Require the ballot pool volunteers send their full contact information
including email address in response to this note. (You can set this up by
having them send the information electronically, which will facilitate your
building a data base).
2. At the time of ballot pool formation for any LMSC vote, conduct the
ballot pool formation electronically only. This way, all returns have
guaranteed valid e-mail addresses at the time the pool is formed, and
eliminates the requirement for the working group chairs to go through the
additional address validation process.
3. In the invitation e-mail make it clear that no hard copy materials will
be made available to anyone.
4. In support of all electronic processes, it will be very important to be
able to update and review contact or interest information electronically.
Web update is important because one thing the post office has is a long
memory on forwarding mail, something alien to most email addresses. While
one can join via the web, it is not clear if joining with new information is
the same as sending in a change of address.