TSG-SA Working Group 1 (Services) meeting #3	TSGS1#3(99)280
Hampton Court, Surrey, UK 10th-12th May 1999			Agenda: 5.1.2

Source: 	S1 						Tommi Kokkola, Nokia

Title:	Email drafting and approval, Draft version 2,  (revised S1-169)
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It seems that S1 is going to work on a constantly faster and faster pace, and thus not all decisions can be made during  the plenaries. Email approval of Specs, CRs and WIDs by correspondence had been used when needed. These procedures should be used at both SMG1 and S1. This document describes a procedure that is being tested at  S1/SMG1. If these procedures are found to be working well, then they will be forwarded to WOME for 01.00.

Proposed procedure for email drafting / approval:

1) Email drafting process
An email drafting can be launched, either on a dedicated exploder list as a cybermeeting or as an informal discussion between interested delegates. Objectives can extend from debating an existing contribution, a Liaison Statement or a Change Request to progressing the service requirements of a specific Work Item and involving one or more Work Groups within an ad hoc.  
In case of "cybermeeting", the chairman of the discussions shall issue an un-ambiguous guideline including:
1. 	The objectives and agenda of the meeting,
2. 	Input document(s) to be clearly specified 
3. 	Start date and end date of the debates. 
4. 	Afterwards, summary of results of the "cybermeeting" 

The end-goal being to reach an “agreement” on the deliverable, either at the next meeting or via an e-mail approval procedure.
 
2) Email approval declaration
Authority for an Email approval to take place should be agreed usually at plenary meeting. If this is not possible, there shall be a clear mail (i.e. status report) indicating that there will be a email approval. This mail shall be sent on working groups main mailing lists. Target and timeframe need to be clearly indicated. Email approval shall take place using the main WG reflector.  A permanent Chairman (i.e. WG chairman or vice chairman) must be nominated who is responsible for managing email approval procedure, including initiation, monitoring and announcing when it is complete.

It is not the objective for email approval procedure to re-open the discussions of a “cyber meeting”. The only use of the main reflector, when approving the outcome of a “cyber meeting”, shall be to accept the outcome of the cyber meeting unchanged (apart from editorial remarks), or reject it.

3) Status reporting
During the e-mail approval period, there shall be clear message stating what the status of each open item is. The mail may be prepared by the Chairman or Secretary. It is proposed to have a weekly summary of the status of all items, from the previous plenary listing:
•	The name of the open item
•	The name of the responsible delegate,
•	Time left for comments before the deadline & expiration date
•	Current work versions of documents: Tdoc number, CR number, Revision number 
•	Status (Debate ongoing, Agreed, Postponed, Rejected...)

4) Agreement
When a decision is made (Agreed, rejected, postponed,..) a clear notification on what has been agreed shall be sent on the WGs’ main mailing list. Chairman is responsible for email agreement.

Timing
Email approval should start 3 weeks before plenary: 
•	Email approval period (Steps 2-4) is two weeks (one status report required).
•	Email approval shall be completed one week before the plenary due to practical arrangements.

(Editors note: three weeks sound quite long but time for commenting and time for practical preparations are needed.)

General
•	SMG1 / S1 plenary status report from chairman, is  emailed to mailing list one week before plenary for checking, 
•	On exceptional case's when this procedure cannot be followed a clear notice from chairman is given.
•	Emails on mailing list shall contain a header with meaningful keywords, e.g. S1 Tdoc xxx on Charging or/and CR 22xxA012r4.
•	If there are no comments during the allowed period, agreement is granted automatically.