[Accountability-tf] Notes From Second Call & Draft Website Copy

Dear all,

Here are the notes from yesterday's call. Let me know any corrections or 
anything I've missed.

I have also attached some updated web copy which we will publish on 
Monday unless we hear anything from the group.

Cheers

Antony



*RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes*

17 January 2017

Attendees:

Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Hans Petter Holen, Malcolm Hutty, 
Alexander Isavnin, Peter Koch, Steve Nash, Nurani Nimpuno, Wim Rullens, 
William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz.

1) Finalise agenda – adopt minutes

2) Selection of Chair

3) Finalise scope

4) Finalise deliverables

5) Finalise information for website

-Please review the attached document before the call

6) Openness of calls to third parties

7) Finding a regular time for TF calls

*1) Finalise agenda – adopt minutes*

There were no changes to the agenda. The minutes from the last call were 
adopted.

*2) Selection of Chair*

Hans Petter said that as a matter of principle the RIPE Chair shouldn’t 
act as Chair of any Task Forces directly and someone from the community 
should take this position.

Alexander suggested that Athina could be Chair.

Filiz suggested they have someone form the community with Athina as 
co-Chair.

Nurani said she had complete trust in Athina’s abilities, but it might 
not be appropriate for a RIPE NCC staff member to chair the TF, though 
the RIPE NCC had already said they were willing to provide support to 
the Chair. It was good to have Hans Petter involved, but she agreed that 
he also shouldn’t be Chair. On the last call they had suggested Filiz be 
Chair and she was happy with that.

William said he would be happy to be Chair. There seemed to have been a 
lack of participation over the past weeks, so the question was who was 
willing to have regular interactions.

Athina agreed with Filiz and Nurani that while this would be supported 
100% by the RIPE NCC, the TF had to be a community-driven effort. She 
noted that William had stepped up and Nurani had nominated Filiz.

Filiz said she would be willing to be co-Chair with William, but she 
didn’t have time to be the sole Chair.

Peter and Nurani seconded William and Filiz as Chairs of the RIPE 
Accountability Task Force.

Filiz said she wanted to confirm Hans Petter as a member of the TF, as 
it was appropriate for him to be involved to help ensure they stayed 
within scope.

Hans Petter agreed and said he would participate as much as he was able.

*3) Finalise Scope*

Filiz noted that William had sent through some thoughts on the mailing 
list earlier.

William said they should identify the various groups involved and 
determine what kind of accountability they had to these groups. Then 
they could publish some kind of ongoing status or scorecard with how 
they were doing in terms of accountability. This wasn’t a one-time 
checkbox but rather an ongoing thing. In areas where accountability was 
missing, they could give a timeline when they expected a particular 
issue or area to be addressed.

Nurani said they needed to clarify what they meant by accountability. 
She mentioned a presentation at an ICANN meeting on accountability that 
she would share with the group as a starting point. She agreed that 
accountability was not something you achieved and then forgot about, but 
they needed to define what the task of the group was. What did they 
intend to actually look at for the various groups that this community 
should or should not be accountable to? Maybe they should ensure they 
had the same definition of accountability and then come up with the 
scope of the group. She thought they wanted the TF to do an initial 
assessment and come up with some recommendations that the community 
could move forward on.

Athina suggested they look at the draft scope that Antony had put 
together from the previous call that was in the draft website copy.

Antony ran through the draft scope [included here]:

“The RIPE Accountability Task Force agreed to:

  * Undertake a review of existing RIPE community structures,
    documentation and processes to ensure they provide adequate
    accountability that is in alignment with RIPE values
  * Identify potential gaps where RIPE accountability could be improved
    or strengthened
  * Document existing RIPE community structures or processes where needed
  * Develop recommendations for the RIPE community
  * Identify areas where communications efforts might be required and
    develop communications materials”

Steve said he thought the process began with identifying what structures 
they intended to look at. He said it was the accountability of each RIPE 
community structure. He had sent an email on 18 December along these 
lines. There were a number of places were accountability was moderately 
clear but other places where this wasn’t so clear.

Hans Petter said a useful scope restriction was to focus on RIPE. Plenty 
of work had already been done on the RIPE NCC. He wasn’t sure what they 
meant by “community structures”, but he thought they were talking about 
the RIPE community which consisted of Working Groups, Task Forces, 
Mailing Lists, etc. He thought this was what they needed to look at, as 
the lack of a well-defined community membership meant that it was 
difficult to determine accountability.

Filiz agreed with Hans Petter.

Alexander said he had an addition. First they should define who they 
were – as even on the TF there was confusion about the RIPE NCC and the 
RIPE community. He said they shouldn’t only talk about WG Chairs et al, 
but also about who the community was and how it could be defined. Once 
they had this they could start talking about accountability. He said 
RIPE didn’t exist in the legal world and so they needed to define its 
existence in a satisfactory way.

Nurani said she mostly agreed with Hans Petter and Filiz that the work 
should focus on the RIPE community and its mechanisms and they needed to 
be clear about not mixing up membership processes and community powers. 
So they needed to be crystal clear about these things before they 
proceeded. Long-term accountability work would not be complete without 
looking at the whole structure, including the RIPE NCC’s membership and 
its board. This was probably something that needed to be done in future 
work. If there were other issues that needed to be explored, this might 
have to be undertaken by the membership and the secretariat. So maybe 
they could proceed with a note that a full accountability review would 
include a review of/by the membership and secretariat.

William said everything on the list looked good, but they needed to 
define who the participants and stakeholders were, and what 
organisations were encompassed by the review. He didn’t think that they 
needed to define this today – this could come out in later discussions.

Peter said he agreed with most of what had been said. Policy setting was 
the most important part where accountability came in and there were 
challenges around this. They had learned in recent years that policy 
setting by RIPE and policy implementation by the RIPE NCC resulted in 
some interesting interactions, particularly where fees had been used. He 
said they should be clear on where they were talking about RIPE and 
where they were talking about the RIPE NCC. This needed to be especially 
clear for readers. The RIPE and RIPE NCC interaction came after they had 
reviewed the structures. He suggested bringing the third bullet-point up 
[“Document existing RIPE community structures or processes where 
needed”], which would include things like the process for selecting WG 
Chairs.

Filiz said they seemed to be leaning towards a scope that the TF would 
study the existing and future stakeholders within the RIPE community. 
The other option would be to create another “stakeholders” section below 
the scope where they could list who they thought this work would be 
relating to.

Hans Petter said he just wanted to add two bits of formalism. If they 
looked at existing TFs, they should create a charter — which would be 
the existing scope shaped into what they would achieve. They also needed 
a timeline. Once they had established this, they should bring this back 
to the community to get feedback or consensus. And starting with the 
community, they could also look later at the borders between the 
community and the membership organisation.

Filiz agreed that they would need to get community input/support for 
their charter. They therefore needed to focus on an initial scope among 
themselves that they could then present to the community at the next 
RIPE Meeting. She suggested the RIPE NCC come up with a timeline for this.

Hans Petter said they could also do this on the RIPE mailing list.

Filiz said they could do both.

Athina said she understood that having an accurate and complete scope 
approved by the community was important. In the meantime she asked if 
they should do some preparatory work, and some of the things they could 
already work on (such as the action item for the RIPE NCC to map out 
areas where accountability features were already in place) and have a 
tentative scope on the website to share with the community, with a note 
that it was draft and would be finalised in the coming months.

Filiz agreed with this and said this wasn’t just related to the scope – 
they also needed a timeline for the group’s work. The first deliverable 
was a scope on the mailing list by the RIPE Meeting, and this also 
needed to be on the meeting agenda. Working back from this, eight weeks 
before RIPE 74 a draft scope would need to be agreed on by the TF. Then 
they could start preparing what they needed to do to socialise this with 
the RIPE community.

**Action item: RIPE NCC to capture the wording of the TF’s comments on 
scope and produce an updated document to send to the mailing list.

**Action item: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF.

William said he was also happy to help with this.

*4) Finalise deliverables*

Filiz suggested that they defer this, as it depended on the scope and 
timeline.

*5) Finalise information for website*

Nurani said she wanted to be transparent as possible – she suggested 
they put up meeting minutes and any other documentation the group produced.

Filiz agreed but said they should discuss this further on the mailing list.

**Action item: Filiz to start a discussion about transparency/web 
documentation on the mailing list.

Athina said having a web page about the TF was something that they had 
to do soon, as they were already very late. The reason they hadn’t 
published yet was because they weren’t sure what to publish. She 
understood they hadn’t agreed on the final version of the scope but 
suggested they could publish what they already had as a draft. They 
already had members, and could add others. They now had Chairs. It was 
important that they agree on this soon.

There was strong support for this.

Filiz said they should therefore publish the website content along with 
the draft scope. She asked that the TF be informed as soon as this was 
published.

*6) Openness of calls to third parties*

Filiz said this needed some more discussion, as they would be dealing 
with possible interventions by other third parties or observers. She 
suggested they discuss this further on the list.

**Action: Filiz to start a discussion regarding openness of TF calls on 
the mailing list.

*7) Finding a regular time for TF calls. *

Filiz said they needed a poll for this, and asked the RIPE NCC to create 
one. She suggested they consider as a priority times that would suit the 
RIPE NCC, but to give the TF options. She suggested they start with one 
hour meetings.

Nurani said they should agree on frequency.

William said monthly would be appropriate if they would be participating 
on the mailing list, but this wouldn’t be enough if they didn’t have 
this mailing list interaction.

Nurani said monthly was most practical, but that didn’t stop them adding 
in extra calls if needed.

Filiz said they should agree on monthly calls, and the Chairs could call 
for extra meetings if the need arose. If there was enough engagement on 
the list, then she didn’t see any need for additional meetings.

The group agreed.

**Action: RIPE NCC to make poll covering Feb, March, April, and one 
meeting before RIPE 74. The deadline for TF members to enter their 
preferences should be one week.

Nurani said she wasn’t sure how much of the community was aware of the 
TF being formed. She suggested they invite members of the community to 
join. This would also avoid having people jumping in with comments and 
suggestions late in the process.

Athina said the RIPE NCC had sent an email to the RIPE mailing list and 
the Cooperation WG a month or so earlier – informing the community and 
inviting people to join. She asked if there was more they should be doing.

Filiz said once they had published the draft scope and website content 
they could drop a note to the RIPE mailing list and invite interested 
parties to send messages to the Accountability TF mailing list. Once 
they had produced the signed-off scope, they could send another email to 
RIPE-list.

Nurani said this was about being as inclusive as possible. There might 
also be community members who didn’t know what the RIPE Accountability 
TF was. If another mail was sent once the draft scope was published, 
people might get a better idea of what they were doing.

Peter said getting enough people on the call was already complicated. 
Having more people onto the TF would result in random walk-ins and 
walk-outs and he didn’t think this was what they were trying to achieve.

Filiz said it was good to have feedback from the community, but it was 
important to limit access to the TF at some point – otherwise they 
risked having people coming into the group at a late point and asking 
them to change the scope. Latecomers would likely have some catching-up 
to do, and this might impact the group’s deliverables. Being an active 
TF member required some definition and she would take this to the ML.

**Action: Filiz to start a discussion on the mailing list about how open 
the TF should be.

*Action items*

*20171801-1*: RIPE NCC to capture the wording of the TF’s comments on 
scope and produce an updated document to send to the mailing list.

*20171801-2*: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF.

*20171801-3*: Filiz to start a discussion about transparency/web 
documentation on the mailing list.

*20171801-4*: Filiz to start a discussion regarding openness of TF calls 
on the mailing list.

*20171801-5*: RIPE NCC to make poll covering Feb, March, April, and one 
meeting before RIPE 74. The deadline for TF members to enter their 
preferences should be one week.

*20171801-6*: Filiz to start a discussion on the mailing list about how 
open the TF should be.

*20163011-1*: Task force members to each come up with a few topics they 
want the Task Force to address and share this on the mailing list.


*20163011-2: *The RIPE NCC to map out areas where accountability 
features are already.


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