Procedures for Handling Liaison Statements to and from the IETF
draft-iab-rfc4053bis-03
This document is an Internet-Draft (I-D) that has been submitted to the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) stream.
This I-D is not endorsed by the IETF and has no formal standing in the
IETF standards process.
| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (iab) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Mirja Kühlewind , Suresh Krishnan , Qin Wu | ||
| Last updated | 2026-03-16 | ||
| Replaces | draft-kuehlewind-iab-rfc4053bis | ||
| RFC stream | Internet Architecture Board (IAB) | ||
| Intended RFC status | Best Current Practice | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | IAB state | Active IAB Document | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Yes | ||
| IAB shepherd | (None) |
draft-iab-rfc4053bis-03
Network Working Group M. Kuehlewind, Ed.
Internet-Draft S. Krishnan
Obsoletes: 4053 (if approved) Q. Wu
Intended status: Informational IAB
Expires: 17 September 2026 16 March 2026
Procedures for Handling Liaison Statements to and from the IETF
draft-iab-rfc4053bis-03
Abstract
This document describes the procedures for generating and handling
liaison statements between the IETF and other Standards Development
Organizations (SDOs), so that the IETF can effectively collaborate
with other organizations in the international standards community.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Status information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-iab-rfc4053bis/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the Internet Architecture
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(mailto:iab@iab.org), which is archived at
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Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/intarchboard/draft-iab-rfc4053bis.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 17 September 2026.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Changes compared to RFC4053 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Content of Liaison Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1. Contact Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3. Body, Subject, and Attachments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Recording Liaison Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.1. Incoming Liaison Statements from Other SDOs . . . . . . . 9
3.2. Outgoing Liaison Statements from the IETF . . . . . . . . 10
4. Sending Liaison Statements from the IETF . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1. Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2. Level of Consensus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.2.1. Handling of Incoming Requests for Actions . . . . . . 13
4.3. Transmitting (References to) Documents . . . . . . . . . 13
5. Receiving Incoming Liaison Statements . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.1. Responding to Incoming Requests for Actions (by the
Deadline) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1. Introduction
This document describes the procedure for generating and handling
liaison statements within the IETF, covering both statements sent by
the IETF as well as statement received from other Standards
Development Organizations (SDOs). This process is managed by the IAB
and designed such that the IETF can effectively collaborate with
other organizations in the international standards community. The
IAB also serves as contact point for any matters regarding liaison
management beyond the scope of this document.
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Most organizations have a process to send liaison statements that
provides a more formal way of communication, beyond just sending an
informal email. However, every organization has slightly different
procedures to handle the sending and receiving of liaison statements.
In some cases sending formal liaison statements might be the only way
of communicating with a certain organization.
The IETF process, described in this document, is intended to be as
simple as possible while still accommodating the process or format
requirements of various other SDOs. One key property of the IETF
liaison statement handling process is the requirement to record all
sent and received liaison statements in a publicly accessible central
location, which makes it more formal than other direct
communications. However, liaison statements do not have any special
standing within the IETF process. This means that any input provided
through a liaison statement, even if that statement reflects
consensus in the other organisation, does not have a different
standing in the IETF process than other (individually-provided)
inputs.
Further, liaison statements sent by the IETF usually do not go though
the normal IETF consensus process (e.g. an IETF-wide last call) and
therefore do not automatically represent IETF consensus. Depending
on the nature of the liaison statement, it might refer to existing
IETF consensus as documented in IETF-stream RFCs or working group
chairs might ask for working group consensus on a technical matter
not (yet) documented in an RFC. While the existence of a formal
liaison statement does not automatically imply any form of consensus
within the IETF process, liaison statements still reflect an official
position supported by leadership approval and particularly underline
when the stated position is based on existing community consensus.
When sending a liaison statement from the IETF, it is highly
recommended to clearly indicate any level of consensus or non-
consensus as part of the liaison statement content. Further
consideration on consensus in IETF liaison statements are provided in
Section 4.2.
The exchange of liaison statements does not require a formal liaison
relationship (see [I-D.iab-rfc4052bis]). The procedures described in
this document encompass all liaisons statements received from or sent
to other SDOs, whether or not a formal liaison arrangement is in
place between the SDO and the IETF. The IAB is generally responsible
for ensuring liaison statements are handled appropriately and can
assist with any liaison matter. If a formal liaison relationship
with an IAB-appointed liaison manager is in place, the liaison
manager assists the IAB in this responsibility and is the first
contact point for liaison statements send to or received from the
respective SDO, as also further explained in [I-D.iab-rfc4052bis].
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Especially, the liaison manager should be consulted before sending a
liaison statement to ensure formal requirements or agreements of the
liaison relation are followed.
Receipt 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. A
liaison statement, just like any other input into the IETF process,
is considered for its relevance, importance, and urgency. 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 [I-D.iab-rfc4052bis]) even if no
response is sent.
If no response to an incoming liaison statement is provided, this
does not indicate agreement or consensus on the topic raised to the
IETF. IETF positions require community rough consensus via processes
managed by the working group chairs and the Internet Engineering
Steering Group (IESG).
Liaison communication is intended for coordinating information
relevant to the standards process, auch as information about standard
track documents or other process related information. Usually
liaison coordination does not cover other RFC publications such as
those by the IRTF, the Independent Stream, or the RFC editorial
series. If reference to such non-consensus documents are needed,
their status should be clearly indicated, as further discussed in
Section 4.3.
Sometimes liaison statements sent from other SDOs may cover topics
that are relevant for research done in the IRTF. In this case the
IAB consults with the IRTF chair who might choose to forward them to
any relevant IRTF research group(s). The IRTF chair as a member of
IAB can work with the IAB, as well as specific research group chairs,
to decide whether a response to the liaison statement is needed.
Research groups do not initiate sending of liaison statements.
1.1. Changes compared to RFC4053
The text in this section is intended to be removed and replaced with
a shorter, high-level summary before publication.
The major 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.
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Further, the following has been updated:
1. The abstract and introduction as been shortened, and a
clarification was added in the introduction about obligations to
send replies.
2. The definition section (2.1) has been removed as "assignee" is
not used anymore, and the "addressee" is now simply called the
receiver.
3. 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 specified 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 manager or the IAB coordination
contact.
4. The purpose "For Comment" was 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.
5. New section was added 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.
6. Section 4 from [RFC4052] on "Approval and Transmission of
Liaison Statements" has been merged to this document
7. New text was added in the intro regarding consensus and liaison
statements having no special standing, as well as the role of
the IRTF
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8. Section on "Sending Liaison Statements from the IETF" was re-
worked and shortened, which noew includes the subsections on
approval and consensus.
9. Section 3 (Responsibilities when Receiving a Liaison Statement),
Section 4 (Recording), and 6 (Responding) were merged and
shorteded in one new section.
10. The term "business letter" was removed throughout the document
11. Additional text in intro to clarify scope and foucs on standards
process was added
12. Both sections on consensus have been merged
13. Out-dated text in security consideration section was removed.
2. Content of Liaison Statements
A Liaison Statement is a formal letter sent by one SDO to another.
These organizations may be at any level (WG, Area, etc.). 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 to enable effective
communication. Further, in order to be able to process and record
these statements in the IETF, the information should include the
following:
2.1. Contact Information
The following contact information are expected to be part of a
liaison statement:
From: 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.
From-Contact: One or more email 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
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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 who should be
informed.
From-Liaison-Contact ("Send Reply to"): 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 with 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 in the receiving
organisation, following their internal process.
To: The statement needs to indicate to which body it is sent. A
statement may be sent to multiple bodies or groups within one
body.
To-Contact: One or more email addresses from the receiving body to
which this statement should be sent. Similar to the "From-
Contact" this includes all addresses associated with the "To"
information, additional contacts that are required for liaison
management, as well as any additional experts.
To-Liaison-Contact ("Send to"): 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 appropriate groups and persons internally.
2.2. Purpose
A liaison statement generally has one of three purposes and should
clearly state its purpose using one of the following labels:
For Information: 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.
For Action: The liaison statement requests that the receiving body
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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.
In Response: 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, a prelimary response could be sent
requesting a more doable deadline or offering an alternative course
of action.
2.3. Body, Subject, and Attachments
Most importantly, the liaison statement contains content explaining
the issues or questions at hand.
Usually, the statement also contains a short (single line) subject
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 organisations 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
statements from other organisations, 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
another format, such as plain text or markdown, when it is reasonable
to do so.
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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.
In cases where we have a liaison manager, it is the responsibility of
the liaison manager to check or convert the formatting requirements.
It is further recommended to convert received documents in
proprietary formats into PDF and upload both versions as attachments.
This ensures that our process can comply with all formatting
requirements from other organisations.
3. Recording Liaison Statements
For the IETF, a liaison statement is a message that was sent or
received (usually in an email directly or attached as some formal
letter) and is recorded in the IETF liaison management tool. The
value of sending a liaison statement for an organization compared to
an informal email, is that it will officially be recorded and the
public record will attest that certain information has been
communicated between the organizations.
3.1. Incoming Liaison Statements from Other SDOs
The IETF will record any received liaison statement and make it
publicly available.
For received liaison statements 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.
Liaison statements that are sent to the IETF without a liaison
manager are generally handled by the IAB. Ideally, statements are
sent to a contact point appointed by the IAB, who records them and
further distributes them within the IETF to the right groups and
experts. This enables a better control to ensure that liaison
statements are received by the relevant parties.
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However, it is difficult to ensure that liaison statements will
always be sent to the right group or person, as statements are
sometimes sent directly to WG mailing lists or individuals. For
example, 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 a
different, more relevant one. If a liaison statement arrives that
appears misdirected, it is recommended to manually forward it to the
right groups and inform the liaison manager or the IAB so that
informal feedback can be provided to the sender for the future.
3.2. Outgoing Liaison Statements from the IETF
IETF participants (usually WG chairs or ADs), of course adhering to
the requirements on approval and consensus as outlined 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 an IETF-provided tool to send liaison statements,
rather than send them directly by email and record them after the
fact. This approach is possible if, e.g. a certain form of
submission other than email is required by the other organization.
4. Sending Liaison Statements from the IETF
There are different reasons for an IETF group to send a liaison
statement to another organization, such as
* A working group might request additional information from 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 completely finalized 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 the IETF).
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* 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
discussed in more detail in the next section; however, of course, the
same requirements on consensus and approval as discussed in this
section must be 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 the
level of consensus that should be sought before sending a liaison
statement to another organization.
4.1. Approval
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. 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 the 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 a 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 sent by the IETF: both require 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
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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.
4.2. Level of Consensus
A liaison statement does not automatically imply any level of
consensus It is therefore the responsibility of the chairs or the
responsible AD to determine whether working groups consensus should
be strived for before sending a liaison statement. This is equally
true for both, liaison statements initiated by the IETF as well as
for liaison statements that are sent in response to a received
liasion statement from another organization.
Generally, it is recommended to base liaison statements on existing
consensus (in the 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
the most clarity and avoids potential confusion.
Even if the responsible chairs or ADs intend to send a liaison
statement without establishing additional consensus, the originator
should inform the group it represents prior to its transmission and
not only when the the statement is already sent and recorded.
The simplest case of sending a liaison statement from the IETF is
when the information being transmitted is based on established
consensus, e.g., by referencing an IETF document that has some level
of agreement within the IETF, as further discussed in the next
section, or general information about the process or working group
scope. In such cases, where the statement is send for pure
information sharing purposes, the chairs or ADs may choose to not
seek for additional consensus.
Similarly, when the IETF is working on documents that relate to peer
organizations and information from the other organization is needed
that is not publicly available, chairs may use Liaison Statements to
request the needed information or documents from the peer
organization without seeking for additional group consensus.
Other requests, that might often 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.
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4.2.1. Handling of Incoming Requests for Actions
If an incoming liaison statement requests information that goes
beyond what is documented in existing IETF documents, such as asking
for comments on a document from the other organization or a specific
technical question not addressed in existing RFCs, the chairs should
seek group input. Usually, such a request is received on the mailing
list of a group, and a discussion will occur on the mailing list
where participants can provide their comments. Based on that list
discussion there are two possible outcomes: * 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 liaison statement
reply to the originating organization. * If no clear consensus is
evident from the comments on the mailing list, or if there is no
further discussion, a response is still anticipated to the
originator. The reply may summarize the email comments, or indicate
a lack of interest in the issue. The reply should clearly indicated
that it represents "collected comments" rather than a consensus of
the IETF group. It is possible to send this kind of reply even if
some of the comments are contradictory.
For requests for actions received from another organization, for
example, a request for initiating or stopping a work item that
requires a charter change, the consensus of the receiving group
within the IETF or even IETF-wide consensus is clearly necessary to
fulfill the request. However, as already indicated, a liaison
statement has no special standing and should be considered equal to
all other inputs. Still, if there is a need for this work by the
other organization the request should be considered seriously, as
further discussed in Section 5.
4.3. Transmitting (References to) Documents
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 requirement or architecture
document.
Individually submitted Internet Drafts, Experimental or Historical
RFCs, and non-WG informational documents should not be transmitted
without either developing further consensus within the relevant group
or without explicitly including the context related to their state
and noting that they are not documents that represent IETF consensus.
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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 as 'Work in Progress'.
5. Receiving Incoming Liaison Statements
A liaison statement calls for appropriate consideration of its
contents. 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 as any input
document receives. This could be the case if a liaison statement
provides input to a working group document, requests modifications,
or new work, or comments on the scope of work. 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 their case.
5.1. Responding to Incoming Requests for Actions (by the Deadline)
If a reply is requested (usually marked as "For Action"), the
originating organziation expects a response by the deadline. The
urgency of a liaison statement is usually reflected in its deadline.
A liaison statement specifying a deadline 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.
Examples of the kinds of actions that may be requested are:
* Access to IETF documents or information about the IETF process and
timelines.
* Comments from the IETF on a document of the other organisation.
* Technical questions related to an RFC or working group document.
* A request for the IETF to align its work with that of the other
organization, in the case of overlapping or related work.
* A request for the IETF to undertake a new work item.
* A request for the IETF to stop a work item (presumably because it
overlaps or conflicts with other work in the originating
organization).
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The originating organization should always be informed of what, if
anything, the IETF has decided to do in response to the request,
either by sending a formal liaison statement back or utilizing
informal communication, like a simple email reply, if appropriate.
If a formal liaison relationship with a liaison manager exists, it is
the responsibility of the liaison manager to ensure appropriate
communication. Otherwise, the IAB can be consulted and should be
integrated into any additional informal communication.
There is, of course, no requirement that the IETF performs the
requested action. But the request should always be taken seriously,
and generally, a response is anticipated. 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. If the IETF decides not to
honor the request, or to honor it with modifications, ideally, the
response should include the reasons and, if applicable, an alternate
course of action.
It is the responsibility of the (co)chair(s) of the addressed group,
supported by the liaison manager if one exists, to ensure that a
response is generated by the deadline if a response is intended. In
some cases, a liaison statement may require consideration by multiple
groups within the IETF; in such cases, potentially multiple chairs
and area directors have to coordinate, but ideally one of them takes
the lead and responsibility for developing a response.
If the request itself cannot be fulfilled by the deadline, it is
appropriate for the chairs to still send a response (by the deadline)
and explain the process, or invite experts of the other organization
to participate directly. Potential follow-up liaison statements
might be sent to provide a status update, e.g. when a document gets
adopted or is ready for publication.
As discussed in Section 4.2, it is the responsibility of the chairs
and ADs to decide about the necessary level of consensus needed for a
certain response. As further discussed in Section 4.3, 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.
6. Security Considerations
The security of the Internet is enhanced by robust coordination
between SDOs.
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7. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
Acknowledgments
[RFC4053] was authored by Stephen Trowbridge, Scott Bradner, Fred
Baker. The text in RFC4053 further has been prompted by discussions
with numerous individuals within the 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.
Thanks to Eliot Lear, Robert Sparks, Dhruv Dody, Warren Kumari, Wes
Hadacker, Russ Housley, and Yingzhen Qu for their review input.
Informative References
[I-D.iab-rfc4052bis]
Krishnan, S., Kühlewind, M., and Q. Wu, "IAB Processes for
Management of IETF Liaison Relationships", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-iab-rfc4052bis-03, 3 March
2026, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-iab-
rfc4052bis-03>.
[RFC4052] Daigle, L., Ed. and IAB, "IAB Processes for Management of
IETF Liaison Relationships", BCP 102, RFC 4052,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4052, April 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4052>.
[RFC4053] Trowbridge, S., Bradner, S., and F. Baker, "Procedures for
Handling Liaison Statements to and from the IETF",
BCP 103, RFC 4053, DOI 10.17487/RFC4053, April 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4053>.
Authors' Addresses
Mirja Kuehlewind (editor)
IAB
Email: ietf@kuehlewind.net
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Suresh Krishnan
IAB
Email: suresh.krishnan@gmail.com
Qin Wu
IAB
Email: bill.wu@huawei.com
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