| Internet-Draft | Handling of Liaison Statements | June 2025 |
| Kuehlewind, et al. | Expires 14 December 2025 | [Page] |
This document describes the procedures for generating and handling liaison statements between the IETF and other SDOs, so that the IETF can effectively collaborate with other organizations in the international standards community.¶
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.¶
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This document describes the procedure for generating and handling liaison statements between the IETF and other SDOs, so that the IETF can effectively collaborate with other organizations in the international standards community.¶
The exchange of liaison statements does not require a formal liaison relationship (see [RFC4052]). The procedures described in this document encompass all liaisons statements received from SDOs, whether or not a formal liaison arrangement is in place between the SDO and the IETF.¶
Receive of a liaison statement does not automatically impose an obligation of sending a response by the other party. The decision to send a response depends on the content and kind of request. However, if a formal liaison relationship exists, it is the responsibility of the liaison manager to ensure appropriate communication between the organisations (see Section 3 of [RFC4052]) even if no response is sent.¶
The mayor change in this revision of the document is that all tooling details have been removed. Particularly some text in the introduction, Section 3.1.1. (Liaison Statement Submission), Section 3.1.2. (Mechanism for Displaying Liaison Statements), Section 3.2.2.4. (Generating Liaison Statements) and the appendix have been removed.¶
Further the following guidance has been updated in the -00 version:¶
A shorter abstract and introduction as well as a clarification in the introduction about obligations to send replies.¶
Removal of the definition section (2.1) as "assignee" is not used anymore and the "addressee" is now simply called receiver.¶
The section on "Content of a Liaison Statement" has been revised to¶
be less detailed about tooling, e.g. not talking about concrete fields anymore,¶
introduce a new concept to handle contact information, replacing "Response Contact" and "Technical Contact" as well as additional fields ("CC", "From Contact", "To Contact") that exists in the tooling but are actually not specificed in [RFC4053] and therefore often caused confusion,¶
add new address information ("Send Reply To"/"Send To") that can be used to support processes where one central address is used to receive all liaison statements. This is also the process preferred now by the IETF where the central address is either the liaison mananager or the IAB coordination contact.¶
The purpose "For comment" has been removed as either "For information" or "For Action" can be used instead; depending if a deadline is needed or not. In the current record of statements "For comment" has been rarely used indicating that this purpose is not needed or at least its meaning was not clear.¶
New section on "Recording Liaison Statements" that replaces Section 2.4. on "Lifetime of a Liaison Statement" to underline how important the public record of a liaison statement is and clarify the responsibility of the receiver to ensure that all incoming statements get appropriately recorded.¶
Section 4 from [RFC4052] on "Approval and Transmission of Liaison Statements" has been moved to this document, without modification so far.¶
A Liaison Statement is a business letter sent by one standards organization to another. These organizations may be at any level (WG, Area, etc.). Generally, the sender and receiver are peer organizations. A liaison statement may have any purpose, but generally the purpose is to solicit information or request an action, like share a document, or ask for a review or a technical question.¶
Liaison statements may be very formal or informal, depending on the rules of the body generating them. Any liaison statement, however, will always contain certain information, much as an business letter does. In order to be able to process and record these statements in the IETF, the information should include the following:¶
The following contact information are expected to be part of a liaison statement:¶
The statement needs to indicate from what body it originates; for example, it may be from, an IETF Area or WG, an ITU-T Study Group, Working Party, or Question, etc. A statement may be sent from more than one group, e.g. multiple IETF working groups, but usually all groups are from the same organization.¶
One or more electronic mail addresses belonging to the "From" body. This includes the addresses associated with the "From" group(s), e.g. in the IETF these are the working group chairs, working group mailing lists, and Area Director(s), and contacts that are required for the management of the liaison, like the liaison manager (if one exists) and/or an IAB liaison contact in case of statements sent by the IETF or the staff person from the external organisation that has sent the incoming liaison by mail, as well as any additional technical experts that should be informed.¶
An explicit "Send Reply To" address may be provided that is used for processing the liaison statement reply. This address is usually not a personal address but rather a generic address associated to a role or process. For liaison statements sent by the IETF, this address should be the alias of the liaison manager, if applicable, or an address maintained by the IAB for liaison management such as liaison-coordination@iab.org. If a "Send Reply To" address is provided the expectation is that a statement sent in reply will only be sent to this address and will then be distributed accordingly internally in the receiving organisation follow their internal process.¶
The statement needs to indicate to which body it is sent. A statement may be sent to multiple bodies or groups within one body.¶
One or more electronic mail addresses from the receiving body to which this statement should be sent. Similar as the "From-Contact" this includes all addresses associated with the "To" information, addional contacts that are required for liaison management, as well as any additional experts.¶
If this address is present, the liaison statement is only sent to this address and not to the addresses in the "To-Contact". If a liaison statement is a reply, this "Send to" address is the "Send Reply To" address provided by the other organisation in the original statement. This supports processes where an organisation has a central contact address to receive statements and then distributes the statement using their own process to the approrpiate groups and persons internally.¶
A liaison statement generally has one of three purposes and should clearly state its purpose using one of the following labels:¶
The liaison statement is to inform the receiving body of something and expects no response. This includes calls for review comments if the expected response is optional.¶
The liaison statement requests that the receiving body does something on the sender's behalf, usually within a stated time frame. This is also used if a document is sent out for comment and the review feedback is expected in the stated time frame.¶
The liaison statement includes a response to a liaison statement from the peer organization on one or more of its documents and expects no further response.¶
Liaison statements that request action indicate a deadline when the action is required. If the receiving body cannot accomplish the request within the stated period, courtesy calls for a response offering a more doable deadline or an alternative course of action.¶
As with any business letter, the liaison statement contains appropriate content explaining the issues or questions at hand.¶
Usually the statement also contains a short (usually single line) title providing a statement of its context and content.¶
Attachments, if enclosed, may be in the form of documents sent with the liaison statement or may be URLs to similar documents including Internet Drafts.¶
IETF participants use a wide variety of systems, thus document formats that are not universally readable are problematic. As a result, documents enclosed with the body or attachments should be in PDF, W3C HTML (without proprietary extensions), or UTF-8 encoded plain/text format. If they were originally in a proprietary format such as Microsoft Word, the file may be sent, but should be accompanied by a generally readable file.¶
Different organisation have different requirements on the format of liaison statements. There are no requirements from the IETF on the format of the actual liaison statement, however, we require the metadata (address information and purpose) as indicated in the previous section to be recorded explicitly. As such when receiving statement from other organisation these metadata should be extracted. Further, the content of the statement must be recorded. This content may be recorded by archiving a received document in its original format, such as PDF or word, or may be transformed into an another format, such as plain text or markdown, when it is reasonable to do so.¶
For statements sent from the IETF, it is recommended to provide the content in plain text but also provide an attachment following the formatting requirements of the receiving organisation if possible. If cases where we have a liaison manager, it is the responsiblity of the liaison to check or convert the formatting requirements. It is further recommended to convert received documents in proprietary formats into PDF and upload both version as attachments.¶
This ensures that our process can comply with all formatting requirements from other organisations.¶
The responsibilities of the receiver of a liaison statement are the same as the responsibilities of any business letter. A liaison statement calls for appropriate consideration of its contents, and if a reply is requested and an appropriate relationship exists, a courteous authoritative reply within the expected time frame. The reply may be that the information was useful or not useful, that the requested action has been accomplished, it will be accomplished by a specified date, it will not be done for a specific reason, an answer to a question posed, or any other appropriate reply.¶
A liaison statement, just like any other input into the IETF process, must be considered for its relevance, importance, and urgency.¶
One hopes that a liaison statement will be sent to the right organization, but this cannot be assured. An SDO might send a liaison statement to a specific IETF Area whose Area Director (AD) deems it better handled by one of the WGs, or it might be sent to one WG when it should have gone to another. If a liaison statement arrives that appears misdirected, the receiver should promptly ask the liaison manager to redirect it appropriately. In some cases, a liaison statement may require consideration by multiple groups within the IETF; in such cases, potentially multiple chair and area directors have to coordinate but ideally one of them takes the lead and responsibility for developing a response.¶
Liaison Statements are always important to the body that sent them. Having arrived at the appropriate body, the liaison statement may be more or less important to the receiver depending on its contents and the expertise of the sender. If the liaison statement seeks to influence the direction of a WG's development, it should receive the same consideration that any input document receives. The WG chair may request the sender to make their case to the IETF WG in the same manner that an author of an internet draft makes his or her case.¶
The urgency of a liaison statement is usually reflected in its deadline. A liaison statement for informational purposes has no deadline; in such a case, a courteous "thank you" liaison statement may be sent to inform the sender that the liaison statement was received. A liaison statement specifying a deadline, however, gives the receiver a finite opportunity to influence the activity of another body; if it fails to react in a timely fashion, it may miss the opportunity.¶
For the IETF, a liaison statement is a message that was sent or received (usually an email or some kind of formal letter) that is recorded in our liaison management tool, i.e. the value of sending a liaison statement for an organization compared to a mail, is that it will officially be recorded and the public record will attest that certain information has been communicated between the organizations.¶
The IETF will record any received liaison statement and make it publicly available. For received liaison statement with a formal liaison relationship, it is the responsibility of the liaison manager to create that public record. However, even if a formal liaison relationship exists, it is possible that liaison statements arrive without knowledge of the liaison manager, therefore it is generally the responsibility of the receiver to ensure a public record is created.¶
IETF participants (usually WG chairs or ADs), of course ahereing the requirements on approval and consensus as outline in the next section, can send liaison statements to other SDOs, and all sent liaison statements must be publicly recorded. Therefore, it is recommended to use a IETF provided tool to send liaison statements, rather then send them directly by email and record them after the fact. This approach is possible e.g. if a certain form of submission other than email is required by the other organization.¶
There are different reason for an IETF group to send a liaison statement to another organization such as¶
A working group might request additional information for another organization, for example, to resolve an impasse (i.e., don't waste time arguing over what the real meaning or intent of another SDOs document is, just ask the other SDO and base further work on the "official" answer).¶
A working group might request comments for a document under development in the IETF that would benefit from the input of experts in another relevant SDO, consortium, or forum. Generally, this is done before the text is "fully cooked" so that input from experts in another organization can be included in the final result.¶
In the case of overlapping or related work in another organization, a request could be made that the other organization change something to align with the IETF work.¶
A request could be made for another organization to start a new work item (on behalf of IETF).¶
A request could be made for another organization to stop a work item (presumably because it overlaps or conflicts with other work in the IETF).¶
Further, a group might reply to an incoming liaison statement, as in more detail discussed in the next section, however, of course the same requirements on consensus and approval as discussed in this section are applied.¶
Liaison Statements can be generated at a WG, Area, or IETF level to another organization. The respective (co)chair(s) or Area Director (AD) are responsible for deciding the content and judging the level of consensus that is needed for sending the respective content. This section outlines approval requirements and gives guidance about how much consensus should be sought before sending a liaison statement to another organization.¶
Generally, it is recommended to base liaison statements on existing consensus (in form of references to RFCs or other IETF documents) or focus on information sharing related to e.g. process like expected timelines, rather than aiming to communicate technical matters beyond the active work of the respective group. Further, the level of consensus implied or not implied by the liaison statement should be spelled out clearly in the liaison statement itself as this provides most clarity and avoids potential confusion.¶
All liaison statements sent by any group in the IETF need AD approval to ensure that those writing such statements, who claim to be speaking on behalf of a group in the IETF, are truly representing IETF views. This does not include statements sent by the IAB which require IAB approval instead, based on the judgement of the IAB Chair. Statements sent from an area, respectively, need approval by at least one of the responsible ADs. Statements sent by the IETF or IESG require IETF Chair approval.¶
Sometimes it is beneficial or required to send a statement that indicates the IETF as originator rather than a specific working group or area. This might be the case e.g. for questions related to the scope of work of the IETF as the whole rather than a specific chartered group. In this case approval of the IETF Chair is required, however, it is usually expected that other matter experts, sometimes from the IESG or IAB, are involved in generating the content of the statement.¶
Statements sent by the IESG do not have different approval requirements than statements send by the IETF, which is IETF Chair approval. This is to avoid heavy processes when sending liaison statements, however, statements from the IESG might imply there is consensus among the IESG and, as recommended earlier in this document, it is best to clarify in the statement itself if that is intended or not.¶
In cases where prior approval was not obtained as outlined above, and the designated authority (AD, IETF Chair, or IAB Chair) in fact does not agree with the message, the designated authority will work with the liaison manager or IAB to follow up as appropriate, including emitting a revised liaison statement if necessary. Clearly, this is a situation best avoided by assuring appropriate agreement in advance of sending the liaison message.¶
A liaison statement does not automatically imply any level on consensus and as such it is the responsibility of the chairs or responsible AD to figure out if working groups consensus should be strived for before sending a liaison statements.¶
The simplest case of sending of a liaison statement from IETF is when the information being transmitted is based of already existing IETF consensus such as an IETF document that has some level of agreement within the IETF or general information about process or (WG) scope. When sending such statements for pure information sharing purposes, the chairs or AD might not reach out for consensus.¶
Further, requests for information from the other organization, including requests to access to certain documents of other organizations that are not publicly available, may be initiated by the chair if the additional input is considered helpful for the group's progress.¶
Other requests, that often might be initiated by a specific group discussion, such as soliciting comments for a standards track WG Internet Draft, usually benefit from some level of consensus to be reached in the WG or another appropriate, open mailing list.¶
Generally, it is recommended to inform the respective group or individuals before transmitting a statement to create early awareness as the recording and sending of the statement must be announced to the originating group.¶
Any Standards Track RFC (Draft Standard, Proposed Standard, Internet Standard, BCP), and any WG document expected to be placed on the standards track, may be transmitted without concern. Informational documents may also be exchanged readily when they represent a WG position or consensus, such as a requirements or architecture document.¶
Individually submitted Internet Drafts, Experimental or Historical RFCs, and non-WG informational documents should not be transmitted without developing further consensus within the relevant group, as these documents cannot be truthfully represented as any kind of IETF position.¶
In all cases, the document status must be appropriately noted. In the case of a WG Internet Draft, it must be clear that the existence of the draft only indicates that the WG has accepted the work item and, as the standard disclaimer says, the actual content can be treated as nothing more than Work in Progress.¶
Any incoming liaison statement that indicates that it is for "Action" expects a response by the deadline. It is the responsibility of the (co)chair(s) of the addressed group to ensure that a response is generated by the deadline if a respone is intended.¶
If no response to an incoming liaison statement is provided, this does not imply agreement or consensus on the topic raised to the IETF. IETF positions require community rough consensus via processes managed by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG).¶
If another organization requests information that can be found in an IETF document, this can be transmitted by the (co)chair(s) of the addressed group, indicating the level of agreement for the relevant document, as also discussed in Section 5.2.1.¶
If an incoming liaison statement requests comments on a document from another organization, a discussion will occur on the mailing list where participants can provide their comments.¶
If a clear consensus is evident from the pattern of comments made to the mailing list, the (co)chair(s) can summarize the conclusions in a reply liaison statement back to the originating organization.¶
If no clear consensus is evident from the pattern of comments on the mailing list, or if there is no further discussion, a response is still anticipated to the originator. A summary of the email comments, or lack of interest in the issue, can be created and sent to the originator, and represented as "collected comments" rather than a consensus of the IETF group to which the liaison statement was addressed. It is possible to send this kind of a reply even if some of the comments are contradictory.¶
A request for Action is a fairly serious thing. Examples of the kinds of actions that may be expected are:¶
In the case of overlapping or related work in another organization, another organization may request that the IETF align its work with that of the other organization.¶
A request could be made for IETF to undertake a new work item.¶
A request could be made for IETF to stop a work item (presumably because it overlaps or conflicts with other work in the originating organization).¶
Consensus of the receiving group within IETF is clearly necessary to fulfill the request. Fulfilling the request may require a great deal of time and multiple steps, for example, if initiating or stopping a work item requires a charter change.¶
There is, of course, no requirement that IETF perform the action that was requested. But the request should always be taken seriously, and generally a response is anticipated. The originating organization should always be informed of what, if anything, the IETF has decided to do in response to the request. If the IETF decides not to honor the request, or to honor it with modifications, the response should include the reasons and, if applicable, the alternate course of action.¶
For tasks that require a great deal of time, it may be necessary that several liaison statements be sent back to the originating organization to report the status of the work and the anticipated completion time. The first of these liaison statements should be generated by the deadline indicated in the incoming liaison statement.¶
One of the key considerations in developing this process has been the possibility of a denial of service attack on the IETF and its processes. Historically, the IETF has not always handled liaison statements effectively, resulting in people working in other organizations becoming frustrated with it. Various organizations have also used the liaison statement process to impose deadlines on IETF activities, which has been frustrating for all concerned - the IETF because it does not accept such deadlines, and other organizations because they feel ignored. While the IETF cannot rate-limit the submitters, it can manage its internal pipelines.¶
This issue is exacerbated by the lack of any authentication on the part of the submitter. However, the IAB considers it important to be able to accept liaison statements whether or not a liaison relationship exists, so authentication of submitters is not an effective control.¶
This document has no IANA actions.¶
[RFC4053] was authored by Stephen Trowbridge, Scott Bradner, Fred Baker. The text in RFC4053 further has been prompted by discussions with numerous individuals within IETF and other SDOs and fora, including Gary Fishman and Bert Wijnen. It has been developed in cooperation with [RFC4052], which is to say with the express cooperation of the chair of the IAB at that time, Leslie Daigle.¶
This document contain parts of text from [RFC4053], however, all tooling details were removed and the remaining text will be reworked step by step with the goal to end up with a shorter and clear document that outlines requirements and gives high-level guidance to people sending and receiving liaison statements.¶