[cooperation-wg] Another one MoU bites the dust

Thank you, Hans Petter. 

To clarify, a report will be forthcoming to this list shortly on last week’s ICANN event, and that will include announcement of the MoU with EURALO (the goal being not to bombard the community with multiple emails). 

That said, I’m very happy to discuss the thinking behind the RIPE NCC’s plans to establish agreements with third parties. In fact, it’s almost exactly a year since we published an article regarding this on RIPE Labs: 
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/chrisb/building-and-documenting-stronger-relationships-with-external-organisations

Since then, we’ve been practicing our “elevator pitch”, which might be more useful in this instance:

The RIPE NCC is looking to develop agreements (such as Memoranda of Understanding) with third parties, including business associations, community organisations and government bodies, for three reasons: 

1. To identify opportunities to better cooperate on activities of mutual benefit. Basically, the content of the specific agreement - what do we plan to cooperate on, what are our common goals? 

2. To build more robust relationships. While personal relationships are important and can help establish organisational relationships, people move jobs, positions change - formal agreements help ensure that those organisational relationships remain clear and intact. 

3. Transparency! The RIPE NCC has relationships with many different kinds of organisations, and our membership and community have a legitimate interest in what those relationships actually entail - by documenting what we hope to achieve through these relationships in an MoU (or similar), we provide greater transparency towards for our membership and community. 


As Hans Petter noted, all of the agreements that the RIPE NCC has made are available on ripe.net:
https://www.ripe.net/about-us/what-we-do/engagement-external-organisations

With specific regard to the EURALO MoU, this was an agreement that both EURALO and the RIPE NCC were very pleased to sign (and indeed, the RIPE NCC is the last of the five RIRs to sign an MoU with their regional At-Large association), and the ICANN meeting seemed the appropriate venue. Our common interests, both in technical matters (e.g. raising awareness of the need for IPv6 adoption) and more governance-related issues (e.g. support for open, bottom-up, inclusive policymaking structures) are clear and long-standing. 

Best regards,

Chris Buckridge
External Relations Manager
RIPE NCC



> On 6 Nov 2017, at 18:48, Hans Petter Holen <hph at oslo.net> wrote:
> 
> The MOU is published here https://www.ripe.net/about-us/what-we-do/ncc-euralo-mou.pdf
> 
> Together with other MOUs https://www.ripe.net/about-us/what-we-do/engagement-external-organisations
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, 6 Nov 2017 at 14:02, Michele Neylon - Blacknight <michele at blacknight.com> wrote:
> Alexander
> 
> It was discussed briefly on the EURALO mailing list
> 
> I've no idea what if any value it brings.
> 
> Olivier might be able to enlighten us.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Michele
> 
> 
> --
> Mr Michele Neylon
> Blacknight Solutions
> Hosting, Colocation & Domains
> https://www.blacknight.com/
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> On 02/11/2017, 06:31, "cooperation-wg on behalf of Alexander Isavnin" <cooperation-wg-bounces at ripe.net on behalf of isavnin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>     Congratulations!
> 
>     Another one MoU signed. RIPE NCC and EURALO.
>     I have really strange feeling about it.
>     Like my Right hand establishes Memorandum of Understanding with my Left hand: as member of ISOC Russian Chapter which is member of EURALO do i need to memorandumize understanding with me as representative of member of RIPE NCC?
>     Do Axel Pawlik needs additional understanding with Olivier Crepin-Leblond?
> 
>     And there are more questions:
>     What kind of additional understanding needed between such organizations?
>     Why it 's so urgent to sign up MoU for 2 European organizations no close to Europe than Abu-Dhabi?
>     How to measure reasonability of such memorandums?
> 
>     And even more, really important:
>     How to control effectiveness and outcome of such MoUs?
>     I have sad example of MoU with Russian Telco Ministry.
>     NOTHING done from Russian Ministry side. Ministry promises to understand and promote RACI. Well, Ministry have educational institutions of professional and high education. NO RACI submissions to ENOG programme at all.
>     (also question effectiveness of RACI in region).
> 
>     So, i want to rise discussion about such MoUs.
>     I do not feel need of such MoUs just to do something, or demonstrate "external relations" activities or demonstrate cooperation just to have possibility to report on cooperation.
> 
>     In some cases "non-legal binding document" harmless for Europeans could be dangerous for others: mentioned MoU with Russian telco ministry - brings words "IP address" and "database" to official language of telco regulator, dreaming of "enforced routing registry".
> 
>     There only one really important MoU - one around RIR system.
>     Having number of meaningless documents around really inflates importance of that MoU.
> 
>     Also, no discussions prior and announcements were made.
>     Even no news is published, no possibility to see text of this MoU (at this moment).
> 
>     Kind regards,
>     Alexander Isavnin
> 
>     Sent via RIPE Forum -- https://www.ripe.net/participate/mail/forum
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> -- Hans Petter Holen Mobile +47 45 06 60 54 | hph at oslo.net | http://hph.oslo.net