The Istio Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) is responsible for cross-cutting product and design decisions.
The TOC's responsibilities include:
Technical Project Oversight, Direction & Delivery
- Setting the overall technical direction and roadmap of the project.
- Resolving technical issues, technical disagreements and escalations within the project.
- Setting the priorities of individual releases to ensure coherency and proper sequencing.
- Declaring maturity levels for Istio features.
- Approving the creation and dissolution of working groups and approving leadership changes of working groups.
- Creating proposals based on TOC discussions and bringing them to the relevant working groups for discussion.
- Approving the creation/deletion of GitHub repositories, along with other high-level administrative issues around GitHub and our other tools.
Maintaining a Happy, Healthy Community
- Establishing and maintaining the overall technical governance guidelines for the project.
- Deciding which sub-projects are part of the Istio project, including accepting new sub-projects and pruning existing sub-projects to maintain community focus.
- Ensuring the team adheres to our code of conduct and respects our values.
- Fostering an environment for a healthy and happy community of developers and contributors.
- The work of the TOC shall encompass:
- Conducting regular committee meetings to address pertinent topics and producing published meeting notes.
- Creating, reviewing, approving, and publishing technical project governance documents.
- Formulating proposals for consideration by individual working groups to guide their efforts toward achieving a unified project-wide objective.
- Reviewing, addressing, and commenting on project issues.
- Serving as a high-level advisory body for technical inquiries or designs submitted by working groups.
- The TOC is expected to operate by consensus. Consequently, there shall be an even maximum number of seats at all times.
- TOC members shall act independently, in their individual capacities, and shall prioritize the best interests of the project and the community. TOC membership is associated with the individual, irrespective of their employment status.
- A standing joint session of the TOC and Steering Committee shall be convened at least once per calendar quarter. During these sessions, both the TOC and Steering Committee shall present on topics pertinent to their respective charters and responsibilities.
- A special joint session of the TOC and Steering Committee must be held no later than 1 month following the ratification of the Steering Committee for its annual term. In this session, the Steering Committee shall consult with the TOC to evaluate contribution dynamics, workload, and effectiveness of both the Steering Committee and TOC. This review aims to determine whether any changes are necessary to further advance the project.
- The TOC shall consist of six seats. Should there be an insufficient number of qualified candidates, the TOC may temporarily function with fewer than six members.
- Each seat shall be held for a term of 2 years. The election cycles shall be staggered such that half of the seats shall be up for re-election each year. The election process shall commence 2 months subsequent to the ratification of the Steering Committee for that year.
- Prior to each election, individuals who have served as Istio maintainers for a minimum of 3 months shall be given the opportunity to stand as candidates.
- Candidates shall be recognized within the Istio community as collaborative technical leaders with a demonstrated history of leading project design work or engaging in other consensus-building activities.
- The Steering Committee and TOC shall jointly ensure a viable pipeline of candidates, including identifying opportunities for mentoring emerging leaders in the project to the point where they are likely to meet the qualification criteria in a future election.
- Candidates removed from the TOC by a vote of no confidence within the past 12 months shall be deemed ineligible to stand for election.
- The Steering Committee, with assistance from the current TOC, shall evaluate candidates against the following criteria, assessed over the preceding 12 months. A candidate must satisfy the criteria for "Chop Wood, Carry Water" and at least one additional criterion.
- Chop Wood, Carry Water:
- Demonstrates visibility in technical and collaborative aspects of the project, including but not limited to weekly working group meetings, monthly TOC meetings, and Slack discussions.
- Senior Maintainer:
- Has authored and merged at least 20 substantial pull requests (PRs).
- User Champion:
- Has resolved at least 5 user-reported issues with pull requests (PRs). Demonstrates active engagement in Slack channels or GitHub issues/discussions in support of users.
- Project Manager:
- Demonstrates active involvement in organizing the project’s daily operations, including bug triage, roadmap qualification and definition, leading meetings, driving consensus, and organizing community events.
- Architect:
- Has produced at least 3 design documents for features incorporated into the project roadmap. Has reviewed at least 10 design documents authored by other community members.
- Candidates must submit a written application, including a self-assessment against the qualification criteria. The application shall be forwarded to the TOC for confidential feedback and subsequently returned to the Steering Committee.
- The Steering Committee shall individually vote on each candidate to determine their suitability for serving on the TOC. An affirmative vote of at least 60% of the seats is required for a candidate to be approved. a. If the number of candidates is fewer than or equal to the number of open seats, this vote shall serve as the election. b. If the number of candidates exceeds the number of open seats, this vote shall qualify candidates to proceed to a second round of voting.
- Should there be more qualified candidates than open TOC seats, the Steering Committee shall select the winning candidates via a Condorcet election.
- In the event that a TOC member vacates their seat during their term, a by-election shall be conducted to fill the position for the remainder of the term in accordance with the regular qualification and election procedures.
- The Steering Committee may initiate a vote of no confidence in a TOC member. The member shall be removed if the motion is approved by at least 60% of the Steering Committee seats. The position shall be filled for the remainder of the term through the regular vacancy process.
The TOC meets regularly. The meetings are open to anyone interested, so please join us. The meeting schedule is tracked on the working group calendar; please follow the link for more details.
Community members are encouraged to suggest topics for discussion ahead of the TOC meetings, and are invited to observe these meetings and engage with the TOC. To suggest a topic, add it to the agenda.
| Artifact | Link |
|---|---|
| Docs | Folder |
| Meeting Notes | Notes |
| Meeting Link | Google Meet |
| Meeting Recordings | YouTube |
The current members of the Istio TOC are:
| Name | Company | Term ends | |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
Mitch Connors | Microsoft | 2026 |
 |
John Howard | Solo.io | 2026 |
 |
Louis Ryan | Solo.io | 2025 |
 |
Lin Sun | Solo.io | 2025 |
| vacant | 2026 | ||
| vacant | 2025 |
We would like to acknowledge previous TOC members for their huge contribution to the success of the Istio project:
- Martin Taillefer
- Shriram Rajagopalan
- Daniel Berg
- Joshua Blatt
- Brian Avery
- Sven Mawson
- Eric Van Norman
- Neeraj Poddar
If you'd like to reach out to the committee, please join #toc-steering-questions on the Istio Slack.