ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG5 N2030

                  Convener's report from SC22 meeting, 
                      Madrid, 8-9 September 2014

                      John Reid, 16 September 2014
                    

1. Introduction

This meeting promised to be very controversial because of the way WG23 
had been treated, see item 2. The Chair was worried about getting 
everything done and arranged for early starts and late finishes, but
the agenda progresses swiftly and the meeting finished early.

A record number of countries (11) were represented (Austria, Canada, 
China, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK, USA), 
Italy attending by webex. Conveners of four WGs were present (Ada, 
Cobol, Fortran, Vulnerabilities).

2. WG23 Vulnerabilities

With neither John Benito nor Jim Moore able to continue, there was a 
move from the US to terminate the work of WG23. The US is responsible 
in the first instance for finding a new convener and Tom Plumb had been 
acting in the role without calling any meetings. Rather than waiting 
for the plenary meeting to discuss termination, an SC22 ballot had been 
called but withdrawn following protests. The reasons for termination 
given at the meeting struck me as totally unconvincing and the US lost 
the vote by 1-9 (Spain was not represented at the time). WG23 will 
continue with Steve Michell as acting convener. There are formalities 
to be pursued and it is expected that he will be confirmed as convener 
at the 2015 plenary. 

3. Votes on TSs

It is expected that the enquiry stage will be removed from the end of 
this year. This means that if only edits are needed after the committee
stage, a draft can go straight to the approval stage. I don't think that 
this would be likely (or even desirable) in our case. It will mean that 
after the first committee stage ballot, we stay in the committee stage
and have another committee stage ballot, instead of progressing to the 
enquiry stage. This means that both votes can take 2, 3, or 4 months
and are at the SC22 level. This will be helpful. There should be no
significant delay in starting a ballot (the SC22 secretary is efficient)
and we will have a say in choosing the length of the ballot. 

4 Changes to procedures 

There was discussion of the changes to WG procedures that wwe discussed
at the WG5 meeting in Las Vegas. I have now copied the paper specifying 
these to WG5 document N2032. They come from JTC1 and apparently are not 
open to any form of negotiation.  
   
I explained how WG5 works and was strongly advised to call all our 
votes and ballots "straw" explicitly. For some years, I have understood 
that this was really the case. They are all means to the end of 
forwarding a document to SC22 that has reached consensus within WG5. 
Voting then takes place within SC22 or JTC1.

5. My reappointment as Convener

I have been given another 3-year term (my sixth!). 

6. SC22 Chair

Rex Jaeschke's term of office was about to expire and he left the room
for a discussion of his endorsement. Steve Michell announced that Canada
was not willing to endorse him. The reason was not given, but one has to
assume that it was because of the way he handled the WG23 problem. Italy
took the same position. All other countries supported Rex continuing as
Chair. 

7. SC22 management

Considerable time was spent on a suggestion from Canada for there to
be extra meetings of SC22 or a subset of SC22 to give the chair guidance
about its views between plenaries. My feeling was that this is a bad 
idea (meeting annually is quite enough) and that the chair should be
making more use of the email list. It was decided that there should be
an informal meeting every 4 months, cancelled if no issues arose.