deeper look at agenda items

Hello all,

I've been spending a lot of time on process lately. This is some of the inevitable change that comes with a group that is nearly 70 members now. We're moving from retail to wholesale. The larger group size also means I've been less responsive to some individual WG members than I would like. Do feel free to send me reminders if I drop something for you: I'm doing my best, but drowning in email. 

Much of the agenda for next week should look familiar. We're using quite a bit of the same approach as we did in Belgium. For those who are curious, let me expand a bit on how some of the big discussions are likely to go for the Compliance document. Perhaps this will help people prepare.

From Tuesday's agenda:

> 14:00 - 15:00
> Overview of four proposals for parties and business uses (15 minutes each) including issues:
> 	• Issue-10, What is a first party?
> 	• Issue-17, Data use by 1st Party
> 	• Issue-19, Data collection / Data use (3rd party)
> 	• Issue-22, Still have "operational use" of data (auditing of where ads are shown, impression tracking, etc.)
> 	• Issue-24, Possible exemption for fraud detection and defense
> 	• Issue-25, Possible exemption for research purposes
> 	• Issue-31, Minimization -- to what extent will
minimization be required for use of a particular exemption? (conditional exemptions)
> 	• Issue-49, Third party as first party - is a third party that collects data on behalf of the first party treated the same way as the first party?
> 	• Issue-73, In order for analytics or other contracting to count as first-party: by contract, by technical silo, both silo and contract

This is now five proposals, from:
	Shane, Jonathan, Justin, David Singer, and John Simpson 

During this hour of time on the agenda, we will ask the primary authors of the proposals to please give a quick overview. This is a great time to ask any points of clarification ("In the section on ABC, I didn't understand what you meant about...") so we are all starting with informed discussions. Goal for this time: making sure we understand the proposals.

These proposals were due to the mailing list yesterday, and I am still reading through them. In many cases we will have seen the text before (including as options in the Second Public Working Draft) and discussed much over the past months. I very much look forward to reading what people drafted. Thank you to everyone who is contributing to these proposals, now and in prior discussions that are being incorporated. 

> 15:00 - 15:30
> Afternoon break

A great time for further informal discussions, and to fortify with caffeine. 

> 15:30 - 17:00
> Discussion of marginal differences between proposals for parties and business uses

Here we return to our five proposals, and look to understand where they are different. To pick an absurd example on purpose, if all five came in with

	Privacy policies must be written with white text on a green background

we will not spend time during this 90 minutes discussing points where proposals (though not necessarily the group) agree. That's the next session.

We will start to talk through differences and tradeoffs. The grid approach we've used a few times before can help to organize the conversation. I can imagine something like numbering proposals 1-5 across the top, and then a few points of interesting differences down the side, like marginal cost to implement. 

Let me explain what I mean by "marginal" for a minute, as well as cost. Say we had five proposals, each of which called for a different color background: green, red, blue, black, or pink. We could debate for a very long time how much of a burden that implementation would be for businesses. We don't have to. Each of the proposals has the same implementation cost on this point, regardless of color choice: it's all one line of HTML. There is no marginal difference in cost to implement. By "cost" here, I do not expect us to estimate dollar figures. Costs can be attributes like "it's hard for experts," or "it's hard to explain clearly to users."

This is not an attempt at a benefit cost analysis where we look at the projected best expected value. There's some insanity to try with 50 people, and does not sound like a great approach in any case. Rather, the idea is to structure our thinking as we compare and contrast five proposals, because it gets hard to hold all of the details in our heads at once, let alone discuss them well. So that's the goal of this 90 minutes, to compare and contrast the proposals.

As with prior discussions in f2f meetings, if time allows I will work with the proposal authors to start to fill in a grid to get the obvious parts in place (e.g. How big is a party?) That will save us some time for non-controversial summaries. I will not unilaterally put something up as a starting point if proposal authors feel it mischaracterizes their work: that's a sign we are dealing with something that is not simple and non-controvercial, so it should go to the full group. The point of having templates for the proposals to follow was to help facilitate this side-by-side comparison process. After filling in the obvious parts in advance if possible, we still have work to do for full comparisons. I have long since learned the group is smarter than I am, and we'll all come up with a manageably-sized category list together in person, and fill it in together. Recall that the end goal is not a pretty table, but rather our collective and individual understanding of how these proposals interrelate. 

This should all sound familiar -- we have worked in similar ways in prior f2f meetings. 

> 17:00 - 17:45
> Points of consensus around parties and business uses, and discussion of next steps

Ideally, as we think through the proposals we will find quite a lot of overlap between them. In some cases that will exist from the beginning. In others we will find areas where proposals start to converge based on our discussions. In this final session on Tuesday, that is our goal: to find points of agreement across proposals.

By the end of the day on Tuesday, I hope we can condense down to fewer than five proposals. We will start walking through the associated group of issues to understand tradeoffs. For (absurd) example, "I can live with a green background, but only if the text is in bold." Where can we find points of common ground? What can we live with?

We are taking several big issues together at once specifically because several WG members have said they could change their position on one issue if and only if they had a specific outcome on a different issue. Ok. Let's work through that. The reason these issues are grouped together is so we can do so. 

As a group, we will talk about where we stand and what comes next in order to get these issues closed. That includes how best to use time for small group discussions of unresolved compliance issues on Wednesday afternoon. Ultimately, of course, we do need to choose one direction. If we can walk out of DC with one proposal we can all live with, I am confident we will get to Last Call by June. In my view, that is the best possible outcome: to have a well-considered group decision before we leave DC. But I also know if this were easy, we would be done already. 

My goal is to facilitate the group in reaching consensus on issues, whatever that may be. I have found that too much planning gets tossed out, based on how things unfold during discussions. And you may see me change things in response to where discussions go. But I also find some planning helps keep discussions more productive, so I'm taking the time to share my thoughts here. If you have ideas ahead of time or in person on how we can make the most productive use of our time, please suggest them. 

	Aleecia

Received on Saturday, 7 April 2012 17:51:02 UTC