[802SEC] Rules changes
Colleagues:
During the last rules change teleconference, I accepted the task to supply my thoughts on required changes. I drafted some possible changes, but wanted to think about them some, I soon thought of things I had overlooked in the changes to the Procedure for PARs. On Friday as I was reviewing what a revision, I was lightly jolted by an earthquake (something Mr. Rosdahl is currently getting often). That jolt though made me realize I was too focused on only the cancellation of a plenary. I believe what is required is greater flexibility to adapt to many different interruptions to business, whether cancellation of all or part of a plenary session, or disruption to services we traditionally rely on.
That mild earthquake jolt also caused me to reflect on some events during my career. Many will remember the disruptions around our Singapore plenary session because of an earthquake in Japan. Others may remember a hurricane track changing and disrupting the completion of a New Orleans interim meeting. I vividly recall the telephone calls resulting in cancellation of a Copenhagen interim because of September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I’ve been evacuated from my hotel room during the night in Wichita because of tornados, and moved to safer parts of a conference center because of tornado activity in Austin. Sometimes the events are remote from the meeting. I remember a North Carolina meeting watching the Marina District of San Francisco burning, and colleagues knowing their homes and families were directly affected by that earthquake. Some of us can remember the cascading failure of the North American electrical grid, or super-storm Sandy impacting both activity and infrastructure — such reflection might alter what we would otherwise write into rules (e.g., we shouldn’t assume IEEE reflectors and servers will always be available on some schedule written into rules).
That leads me to recommend granting the LMSC Chair or Chair’s alternate the ability to define equivalent electronic processes to any LMSC Operations Manual assumptions specified to occur at a plenary session. As a check, LMSC members may oppose actions because they believe the defined actions do not sufficiently preserve the principles inherent in our normal process.
In the case of the Procedure for PARs, and specifically the cancelled March meeting, I believe an appropriate process when rules allow is to announce an electronic Procedure for PARs for the cancelled March 2020 meetings. Allow 15 days for WGs to generate comments (the replacement for the 6:30 pm Tues. plenary week deadline), an additional 10 days for responses to comments (the replacement for the 6:30 pm Wednesday deadline), an additional 15 days for WG approvals of modified documents, and then LMSC action.
Prompt comments will be appreciated and considered in specific possible rules change text I continue to work on.
—Bob
----------
This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.