[address-policy-wg] Impact analysis in the PDP

On 11 Mar 2013, at 17:28, Tore Anderson <tore at fud.no> wrote:

> Having recently been told over dinner by an NCC employee something along
> the lines of «I don't think the RIPE Community quite realises how much
> effort goes into implementing policy changes», I find this worrisome as
> well. Especially considering that the Impact Analysis makes an explicit
> point out of it.

Tore, the whole point of the Impact Analysis stage of the PDP is to help the community to avoid doing things that create unreasonable burdens on the NCC. Or invent policies which are unworkable/illegal/etc. In principle the community could pass a policy which instructs Axel to hand out €100 notes on Dam Square until the NCC is bankrupt or lease offices on the Space Station. So some sort of sanity check in the PDP is needed before policies are finally nailed down.

Now it would be nice if that Impact Analysis could take place earlier in the PDP. But that's impractical. First, it could mean the NCC was "making policy". Which would be bad. Next, until a rough consensus forms around some policy proposal, it's not necessarily clear what that proposal's impact on the NCC (and beyond) is likely to be.

Cool domain name BTW!