[Accountability-tf] [ripe-list] RIPE Accountability Task Force: Draft Report and Next Steps

Hi Shane,

I wanted to follow up on your comments, while leaving time for the rest of the community to submit their feedback. Thanks for your feedback - very useful and much appreciated. My replies are in-line below. 

Regards

William
Chair Accountability Task Force

On 26/10/2018 09:42, Shane Kerr wrote:

Recommendation:
The task force acknowledges the long-standing relationship between the RIPE community and the RIPE NCC. While there is a lot of goodwill involved, and an overlap between RIPE NCC members and RIPE community participants ensures alignment, there are no formalised commitments from the RIPE NCC to the community. While this has never been a problem to date, the task force nevertheless wishes to raise this as something for community to consider.

My comment:
Since RIPE is not a legal entity, any formalized commitments would have to be done as promises by the RIPE NCC. I believe there is
precedent for this, for example promises to allow other companies to use patented technology and not be sued (not a contract, still
possibly legally binding). Still, ultimately any such commitment by the RIPE NCC would have to be unilateral; not an agreement. Enforcement of any such commitment seems problematic as well, and would have to be considered.

I think here there's a bit of confusion around our use of the term "formalised". We weren't thinking of this in a legal sense, but more in terms of some kind of "official statement" (or statements) from the RIPE NCC (with whatever caveats need to be included). The idea was some type of public statement to the RIPE community from RIPE NCC to detail the working relationship and clarify any ambiguity that might exist in regards to the relationship. 


Text:
This is why the community consciously developed a separation of powers between individual working groups, the Working Group Chair Collective,
RIPE Chair, RIPE Programme Committee, and other roles and structures.

My comment:
Was this conscious? The role of the WGCC seems to have evolved over the years, but I don't remember it ever being considered as a sort of
separation of powers. The PC is even newer, and my recollection is that its current form was created after Joao Damas had been single-handedly arranging the plenary (or rather the EOF session) for years and wanted to give up the task. I think that it was heavily influenced by the way PCs work in NANOG or other bodies, rather than
for any reason of separating powers within RIPE. Citation needed. 😉

You've got us here - perhaps we overstated. This is an easy fix if we remove the "conscious intention" and change it to something like:

"The risk of capture is partly mitigated by a separation of powers between individual working groups, the Working Group Chair Collective, ..."

(This is just an example - we'll avoid wordsmithing on this list).

Text:
"Also, the RIPE Chair is able to waive the meeting fee for attendees that have a legitimate need."

My comment:
Technically I believe that the RIPE Chair asks the Managing Director of the RIPE NCC to waive the meeting fee.

While this is correct, we think the important part is who makes the decision in the context of the RIPE community.

Perhaps in the future, due to some financial constraint, the RIPE NCC informs the RIPE Chair that it can afford fewer meeting fees to be waived. Then it would still be the case that the RIPE Chair makes the decision about who is eligible to receive this.

Recommendation:
The community might want to consider whether the RIPE Chair should be required to disclose details about expenses associated with performing RIPE Chair duties, and who covers these.

My comment:
This is tricky. The RIPE Chair position is unpaid, and not full-time. Certain RIPE Chair duties may be performed when the Chair is traveling for other reasons. Personally I think this sort of transparency is highly desirable, but I am not sure about how practical it is. Perhaps a conversation with Hans Petter ask his opinion makes sense. Also note that any such transparency would probably be strictly voluntary from the RIPE Chair, as there is no obvious enforcement mechanism and it's not clear how any audit of expenses or other payments would work.

What we take from this is that it's desirable but perhaps not practical. We will take a closer look at this with the relevant people.

Text:
One of the RIPE Chair functions is documented as: "1.7 Decides on content of Friday Plenary at RIPE Meetings"

My comment:
To be clear, the RIPE Chair is responsible for the Closing Plenary. The RIPE NCC - in co-ordination with other RIRs - is responsible for the first part, and the RIPE PC is responsible for the second part, until handing it over to the RIPE Chair. This is a minor detail, and can be changed since the RIPE Chair also has control of the overall plan for the meeting.

That's fair and we can update this.

Text:
In the introduction to the Working Group Chair section we have: "Finally, the task force notes that there is no formal process to educate new chairs on their role within the community. This does not need to be anything onerous – but perhaps the RIPE NCC could share a set of relevant documents, responsibilities and timelines with newly-selected chairs."

My comment:
It is not clear that the RIPE NCC actually has too much knowledge of how the Working Groups actually work, or what the Working Group Chairs do. However, all working groups (except IoT) have multiple co-chairs, and I believe generally strive to maintain some level of consistency. We could formalize the idea of new chair training and perhaps the RIPE NCC can help organize that.

We imagine the RIPE NCC could put together this information in cooperation with the WG Chairs/RIPE Chair. The RIPE NCC's role here would be more administrative (maintaining/sharing information) rather than defining how Working Groups should function.

Section:
6.0 Programme Committee

My comment:
Note that the PC also meets during the RIPE meetings, and also publishes its minutes.

Noted - we will update this in the final document.

Finally, there may be a couple of missing pieces in the document:
* I think that a missing piece of RIPE the picture in RIPE is any
    description of what RIPE Documents are and how they work. My
    understanding is that anyone can publish a RIPE Document, but I do not
    see any description of how that is handled anywhere, nor (as the
    report mentions) when a document becomes obsolete. Since these
    documents happen to be where RIPE Policies live, I think this is
    probably important

This is a good point, and it was something that the task force discussed earlier in our process. A RIPE Document has a little more authority behind it than, for example, a web page on ripe.net. There are also differences between RIPE NCC Organisational Documents, RIPE Policies, and other documents such as task force reports that could use some explanation.

We will look at putting something together for this.

* BCOP is called a task force, but really I think it is a separate
    thing. It is totally fine, but it is sort of like a working group and
    sort of like a task force but not really either. It might be confusing
    and/or seem suspicious if someone is looking at RIPE from an
    accountability point of view. From the point of view of RIPE it's just
    what seems practical and useful, which is a strength of the way RIPE
    does stuff IMHO.

Appreciate your point - however, as this is currently listed as a Task Force, we suggest it's best to stick with this definition and leave it at that.

Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks again for the excellent piece of work.
Cheers,
--
Shane