[Accountability-tf] Notes from Sixth Call

Dear task force members, 

Here are the notes from Tuesday’s call. 

Please let me know if there are any changes required. 

Cheers

Antony


 
RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes

2 May 2017

Attendees:
Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Hans Petter Holen, Peter Koch, Nurani Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, Carsten Schiefner, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz.
 
1) Welcome, finalise agenda, adopt minutes
2) Review of action items
3) Draft scope
     i. Agreement on updated version
     ii. Approval process with community
4) Feedback on accountability mapping document
5) RIPE 74 preparation 
     i. Face-to-face meeting
     ii. Presentation to community 
6) AOB

1) Welcome, finalise agenda, adopt minutes

Filiz asked that they add a review of action items to the agenda. 

Filiz said they didn't have any formal method to adopting minutes; moving forward they could do this on the mailing list and if there were no objections they could consider them accepted.

2) Review action items

Antony ran through the action items.

20170403-1: Respond to community comments on ripe-list regarding draft scope.  
 
Antony said Filiz had done this in her response to Daniel and this was closed. 
 
20170403-2: TF to revise draft scope.  
 
The task force would be doing this on the call. 
 
20170403-3: RIPE NCC to send around poll for face-to-face meeting at RIPE 74.  
 
This had been done. They had 11 people respond to the poll, and nine people would be there at the meeting (including three RIPE NCC staff). Carsten had requested a remote participation option. 
 
20170306-1: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document with task force input.  
 
20170306-2: Task force members to review and comment on accountability mapping document.
 
Antony said that these two items would be kept open, as there would be ongoing work by both the task force and the RIPE NCC to update this document. 

Filiz asked that they include a review of action items as a regular agenda item at the beginning of future meetings. 

3) Draft scope 

i. Agreement on updated version

Filiz said she hoped everyone had seen her email to the mailing list about the scope and had seen Shane's response. 

Nurani said she was comfortable with the scope, and Filiz's response to Daniel was good. She suggested they move forward with this. She wasn’t sure they needed any more confirmation from the community.

Peter said he was generally happy with the scope. But when they said "document existing RIPE structures", he understood that they were talking about documenting what already existed without giving themselves any special authority to fill gaps. He felt this could be ambiguous, as “document” could also be read as “fill in gaps”.  If they had some wording that noted that existing documentation would prevail, that might address any concerns about the task force giving itself special powers. 

Filiz asked if his concerns would be addressed if they changed “document” to “assemble a list of RIPE community processes and powers”. 

Peter said he would be happy with that. 

Nurani said they were basically talking about doing an inventory. But the next part about identifying potential gaps was clear enough. She agreed they could find a better word than “document” in support of what Peter was saying. 

Filiz said her understanding was that when they presented this to the RIPE community – they could emphasise that it was a draft and they were thinking of refining it further – but at some stage they needed to move from a draft scope to a scope. As she had mentioned to Daniel, so long as this remained a draft they couldn't make a solid work plan. Once they had a final scope, they knew that they had something that was approved by the community and a mandate to do the work.

Paul, Nurani and Carsten agreed. 

Filiz asked if they were fine with changing the second bullet to “assemble a list” rather than “document”. 

Nurani said she was happy with this. 

Peter said he was happy with it this way. Ultimately his concern was that “document” could be read as “write down unwritten rules”. “Assemble a list” seemed better in this respect. 

There were no objections to making this change. Filiz said she would therefore consider this as the final draft version that she would present to the community. 

ii. Approval process

Filiz asked if they wanted to put a deadline to the community for the approval process. 

Paul said they should. 

Athina asked for more clarification about the process – were they going to present this before the RIPE Meeting and ask for approval during the RIPE Meeting? 

Filiz said they could send a mail out, which would also increase awareness of their Tuesday presentation. On the other hand, she wanted to keep it light, or they would get locked into wordsmithing. 

Hans Petter agreed with Athina – post it now and approve it in the Closing Plenary. He said the scope had been on the list for a while, and this could be Last Call on the draft. The important thing was to start the work and not to keep wordsmithing the draft. 

***Action: TF Chairs to send an email to ripe-list asking for final comments on the draft scope, aiming to close this at the end of RIPE 74.* 

4) Feedback on accountability mapping document

Filiz noted that there were still not enough WG agendas published for the RIPE Meeting – this was a good way of improving accountability. She wanted this to be covered in that document somehow.  

Carsten said this agenda issue was a recurring one. He wondered if there was some way they could prevent this, as it was ultimately up to the WG Chairs. He asked what happened if a WG was not in a position to come up with an agenda in time – was its session cancelled? Did it pay a fine? He couldn’t think how to go beyond a problem statement in the document. 

Filiz said this was the stage they were in now – their job at this point was just to identify issues.

Nurani said they could also suggest improvements. On the topic of WG agendas, when you were a part of the community, you knew how things worked and where to find information – for example if you couldn't find the agenda on the website, you knew to check the mailing list. Maybe they could post helpful information/pointers on the website. 

Peter noted that he had never seen a WG complain about the timeliness of agendas. He thought the task force had bigger fish to fry, though it was worth noting. He added that the list of procedures in the mapping document should be separate from any issues they found – issues should be in a separate document rather than a separate column.

Carsten said improving this agenda issue could drastically improve the accountability framework of the RIPE community. He thought this was a somewhat core issue rather than "small fry" 

Filiz said they were just sketching out issues rather than assigning importance to them. Like it or not, WG Chairs had a big responsibility here – while agenda timelines might be known by the Chairs, she asked if they were known by the community. It was also relevant whether the community knew it could expect an agenda by a certain date. 

William said that as a new WG Chair, it was unclear what his responsibilities were, and it wasn't until the RIPE NCC had reached out that they knew their agenda was late. This issue was an example of how one little thing could jeopardise the accountability of the community. 

Peter referenced the RIPE WG Chair Job Description and Procedures document (ripe-542) – which had deadlines for agendas in there (“…2-3 weeks before a RIPE Meeting where possible”).  

Nurani said it was a matter of transparency. A newcomer might need an agenda to show their manager to get approval to attend. At this stage she didn’t think they needed to find a solution. At some point they might need to refer back to the community and ask if they thought it was an issue or not. She didn't think they needed to drill down so much at this stage.

Peter said in this case they did have the documentation. There might be issues of non-compliance – but this didn't become an accountability issue until there was a systematic failure. 2-3 weeks might not be a realistic timeframe for newcomers. He was concerned that they were losing themselves in details with this – he hoped they would discuss more central issues in their face-to-face meeting, like the interrelation of the PDP. 

Filiz said the PDP seemed to be well documented. But within the RIPE community, there were issues relating to newcomers that seemed to be more relevant to her. At the moment they had a stock-taking process to evaluate what they had there. This list might continue to grow and they could further evaluate quality and importance. 

5) RIPE 74 Preparation

i. Face-to-Face Meeting / ii. Presentation to community

Antony ran through the logistics of the meeting.  

Athina asked if they wanted remote participation. 

Filiz said yes and this should be via WebEx. 

Filiz noted that the face-to-face meeting would be after her presentation in the Tuesday morning plenary (at 9am). 

Nurani noted that people may want to attend their face-to-face meeting and recommended they think about what options they wanted to make available. Perhaps it was best to allow people to join via remote participation. 

Paul said this was a good question – but this was a working meeting and they needed to draw a line somewhere. People could comment in the plenary. It was appropriate to say that people could observe by WebEx if they wanted. The Chairs needed to make this clear while also ensuring they had some kind of inclusion and transparency. 

Filiz agreed that this needed to be transparent and accountable. However, this wasn’t a WG where people could just make a comment and disappear. They could announce the WebEx link, and observers on the call could supply any thoughts or feedback via the mailing list. 

Nurani, Peter and Carsten agreed with this approach. 

Athina said that in the past, when the TF had considered outside participation on their calls, they had said that anyone was welcome to observe – but they could reserve some time for comments at the end of the call. She suggested they could say that the call was open and there was an agenda item for outside feedback.
 
***Action: TF Chairs to decide how to handle community attendance/feedback during the face-to-face meeting at RIPE 74. Also to think about what sort of feedback they will be seeking from the plenary presentation.*

6) AOB

Filiz thanked everyone who had been participating regularly within the task force. However, she noted that only six of the 14 non-RIPE NCC task force members would be attending the face-to-face meeting. She really hoped that those who were unable to attend RIPE 74 would able to make their contribution on the mailing list or on later calls.


Action Items

20170502-1: TF Chairs to send an email to ripe-list asking for final comments on the draft scope, aiming to close this at the end of RIPE 74.

20170502-2: TF Chairs to decide how to handle community attendance/feedback during the face-to-face meeting at RIPE 74. Also to think about what sort of feedback they will be seeking from the plenary presentation.

20170306-1: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document with task force input.  
 
20170306-2: Task force members to review and comment on accountability mapping document.
 
Closed Action Items 

20170403-1: Respond to community comments on ripe-list regarding draft scope.  
 
20170403-2: TF to revise draft scope.  
 
20170403-3: RIPE NCC to send around poll for face-to-face meeting at RIPE 74.  
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