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<p>Thoughts:</p>
<p>Accountable for what? (reflecting the minute of William's comment
in 3)<br>
</p>
<p>We could focus on how RIPE NCC's accountability is managed.</p>
<p>RIPE is open and accepting of new participants, but it has a
clearly defined core in those who have a vote in the RIPE NCC
General meeting, the LIRs. This voting group seems to be the
most directly accountable for the actions of the RIPE RIR, and has
transparent and open membership. <br>
</p>
When this work group was proposed I understood that there was an
aspiration to describe RIPE itself. The wider RIPE is the only
community of Internet Operators that spans the entire region, and
hence might be compared to NANOG, for explanation purposes. It has
a DNS working group, it is not exclusively a subset of the "Numbers
Community". <br>
<br>
Regards<br>
Steve Nash<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 16/12/2016 14:34, Antony Gollan
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:92323938-9611-42D5-9D35-319D2B1DA6B7@ripe.net"
type="cite">
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<div class="">Good afternoon everyone, </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Please find the minutes from the first TF call
below. Let me know any changes or corrections. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Also attached is draft copy for the website,
including a scope based on your comments on the call.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Please also fill-in the following doodle poll for
our next call: </div>
<div class=""><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://doodle.com/poll/6hqeseud6sbgkgb6" class="">doodle.com/poll/6hqeseud6sbgkgb6</a></div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">The proposed agenda for the next call is: </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">1) Finalise agenda - adopt minutes </div>
<div class="">2) Selection of Chair</div>
<div class="">3) FInalise scope </div>
<div class="">- Prior to the call, please follow-up on the action
item: 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.</div>
<div class="">4) Finalise deliverables</div>
<div class="">5) Finalise information for website</div>
<div class="">- Please review the attached document before the
call</div>
<div class="">6) Finding a regular time for TF calls</div>
<div class="">7) AOB</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Cheers</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Antony</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
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<div class="">###</div>
<b class="">
<div class=""><b class=""><br class="">
</b></div>
RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes<br class="">
30 November 2016</b><br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">Attendees: </b><br class="">
<br class="">
Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin,
Nurani Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, William Sylvester, Filiz
Yilmaz<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">Agenda:<br class="">
</b><br class="">
<b class="">1) Introduction / finalise the agenda<br class="">
2) Selection of chair<br class="">
3) Scope of the Task Force<br class="">
4) Deliverables<br class="">
5) Openness and transparency<br class="">
6) Information for website<br class="">
7) Next meeting call<br class="">
8) AOB</b><br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">1) Introduction / finalise the agenda</b><br class="">
<br class="">
Athina added another item (5) – about how transparent they wanted
to be in terms of allowing observers to join Task Force calls or
participate on the mailing list.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">2) Selection of Chair</b><br class="">
<br class="">
Alexander nominated Athina as Chair. Malcolm and Nurani supported
her.<br class="">
<br class="">
Nurani said they should have a RIPE community member for co-Chair.
She suggested Hans Petter Holen could take this role.<br class="">
<br class="">
Paul agreed they needed someone from the community, and suggested
someone from the ASO AC.<br class="">
<br class="">
Filiz said she was happy to help chair, but couldn’t commit
without knowing what the time commitment would be.<br class="">
<br class="">
Paul said the RIPE NCC would do the heavy lifting. The Chair would
just need to help the group make decisions and keep things moving
forward.<br class="">
<br class="">
Filiz said they needed Hans Petter at the helm, but was happy to
assist him in this. If he declined then they could find another
solution.<br class="">
<br class="">
Alexander offered to help co-chair.<br class="">
<br class="">
William said he could also help with co-chairing, especially if
Hans Petter was not available.<br class="">
<br class="">
Athina suggested they not decide this on the call. She could act
as interim Chair in the meantime until they had an opportunity to
ask Hans Petter and discuss this further.<br class="">
<br class="">
Nurani suggested they define the scope first, which would help
them to understand the time commitments involved – this could be a
month, a year, or they might end up as Chair of a new WG.<br
class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">3) Scope of the Task Force</b><br class="">
<br class="">
Athina suggested they do a round and give comments.<br class="">
<br class="">
Alexander said accountability was primarily related to legal or
commercial entities, but RIPE was not like these entities. When
they moved into the ground of deliverables, they were stepping
into the realm of governments and police, etc. RIPE was not a
typical entity and perhaps they should start from there.<br
class="">
<br class="">
William said they needed to think what the current status of
accountability was – who the stakeholders were, who they
had accountability with. He noted that when registrars and
registries were introduced into the domain space there were a lot
of inbuilt accountability measures right from the start.<br
class="">
<br class="">
Filiz agreed with William and said communities could have
accountability even when they didn’t have legally established
identities. They could look at things like how the
community selected Chairs and other individuals – this could be
expressed somehow. They had been dealing with accountability
issues over past several years and the Task Force could document
and track these so outsiders could make sense of them.<br class="">
<br class="">
**Action Item: Filiz suggested an action point should be for each
of them to come up with a few topics they wanted the TF to address
and share this on the mailing list.<br class="">
<br class="">
Nurani said it might be good to put this into a context.
Accountability questions hadn’t come from nowhere. RIPE had been
improving its structures over the past 25 years, simply because it
wanted high-performing structures. A lot of this work had been
done over the years – some of this could be improved, but a lot of
it just needed to be explained to the outside world. A lot of
these questions were triggered when coming up for the Number
Community’s proposal as part of the IANA transition and the
CRISP team had been interviewed by the US Government’s
accountability office. While they were satisfied with their
answers, there were a lot of assumptions people had about the
community’s accountability that were not correct. A lot
of CCWG-Accountability’s work had come back to the RIPE community
as well, and the CCWG wanted to impose their own accountability
measures onto RIPE. RIPE didn’t have anything to hide and didn’t
need to be in a defensive position.<br class="">
<br class="">
Malcolm agreed with Filiz and Nurani. He suggested they identify
what they were trying to do with these structures – what values
they were trying to uphold, such as transparency or openness.
Once these values had been identified, they could identify the
mechanisms that were used to achieve them and provide an overview
of how they might be improved.<br class="">
<br class="">
Athina said there was an understanding that the RIPE community was
accountable and did have its documents in place. Maybe they needed
to review what was there and see if anything was missing. RIPE
had to be able to explain how it worked, so it wasn’t seen as
avoiding accountability questions. She added that they were
noting everyone’s comments and could use this to create a
consistent scope.<br class="">
<br class="">
Paul replied to Alexander’s earlier comment that RIPE didn’t have
the accountability of other entities. He said that after the
transition RIPE was now the body that made important decisions and
this had exacerbated things. It was important to get this
accountability effort off the ground, because they needed to be
looking at things that were further off. He said they needed to
separate CCWG-Accountability from RIPE accountability.<br class="">
<br class="">
**Action Item: Paul said the RIPE NCC could examine areas to see
where they already had accountability features in place. If
they could map this out and show it to the Task Force, they could
use this as a starting point to work from.<br class="">
<br class="">
Malcolm supported Paul’s suggestion.<br class="">
<br class="">
Athina said they could discuss this further on the mailing list.<br
class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">4) Deliverables<br class="">
</b><br class="">
Athina understood that the deliverables would be the review they
would make, along with any new documentation that would be needed.<br
class="">
<br class="">
Malcolm said they could break this down into two separate
categories: 1) A review of how things currently stood, which would
result in a report with recommendations. 2) Communications
materials for different audiences (to be developed after the
review was completed). Some of this would be for external
audiences like governments, and some would be for the RIPE
community itself, particularly newcomers. He hoped the RIPE NCC
could do the heavy lifting on the development of these materials.<br
class="">
<br class="">
Athina said the RIPE NCC was committed to providing any materials
that would be needed.<br class="">
<br class="">
Nurani agreed with Malcolm – mapping, review, suggested
improvements, and communications efforts (noting efforts might
involve more than just materials). They should also consider
the possibility of an external view – which might help them to
identify blind spots or gaps. This neutral party would have to
chosen carefully.<br class="">
<br class="">
William agreed with Malcolm and Nurani and said the review should
include recommendations. A third party would add credibility as a
stop-gap to ensure they weren’t missing key pieces.
The deliverable should be an accountability scorecard or some
measure – because accountability was not a finite value but
something that would change over time. He said they should also
think about community policies that might need to be established
or maintained, possibly by a WG. This was something to consider,
though it might be that accountability was just in the
community’s DNA and wouldn’t require a policy.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">5) Openness and transparency<br class="">
</b><br class="">
Athina asked how they wanted to operate in terms of allowing
outside observers to subscribe/participate on the mailing list or
attend Task Force calls.
<div class=""><br class="">
Malcolm contrasted the models of RIPE WGs that were open to
participation by anyone (including casual one-off participation)
– vs the CCWG – where there was open participation with
no limitations, but you had to officially join. While he thought
the Task Force should always be open, he didn’t have a strong
view on which model should be used.<br class="">
<br class="">
Nurani said they should report back to the community and the
material should be publicly archived. Her only concern was
if there was information that came up in a review or external
report that would put the RIPE community in a difficult position
– they would need to handle this in a sensitive way. She could
see why they might not want to allow outside comments on a
conference call, but a good chair could handle this.
She supported generally being as open as possible.<br class="">
<br class="">
Filiz agreed that membership should remain open. But if people
were not members, they should be limited to observing.
She didn’t want a situation where there was interference from
observers who were missing context. She agreed they could allow
observers to make comments at the end of meetings if they had
good chairs. She suggested they open the mailing list for posts
so the Task Force could receive comments from observers –
but make it so that observers couldn’t receive emails from the
list.<br class="">
<br class="">
Athina noted that they would still have access to the public
archives. </div>
<div class=""><br class="">
Alexander noted that they had no deliverables to make “open”
which was why he suggested they postpone this question.<br
class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">6) Information for website</b><br class="">
<br class="">
Athina noted that other Task Forces typically included things
like scope, participants, email archives, etc. Given that they
had no scope at this point, she suggested they include on this
page the structure of the Task Force along with participants’
names. She said they would develop something and share this with
the Task Force.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">7) Next meeting call</b><br class="">
<br class="">
It was agreed that they would run the meetings monthly, but
would have one more meeting in December. Athina said she would
create a doodle poll and share it with the group.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">8) AOB<br class="">
</b><br class="">
Filiz said they could move the chair selection discussion to the
next meeting. The group agreed.<br class="">
<br class="">
Athina said this would be an agenda point for the next meeting,
and they could have some discussion on the mailing list to
prepare.<br class="">
<br class="">
END OF MEETING.<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">Action Items</b><br class="">
<br class="">
<b class="">20163011-1</b> - 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.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
<b class="">20163011-2 - </b>The RIPE NCC to map out areas
where accountability features are already.</div>
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