Recent Mails to the list

If I may add a few words...

I agree with you, at least partially.

The semi-academic approach has been and still is an excellent way of 
carrying out discussion in the RIPE environment.

I believe the RIPE NCC follows this model when discussions relate to 
our services and their quality, proposing new services, policies that 
services are based on and their required level of performance.

Further, as Axel Pawlik stated, we are all (and that means all) open 
and willing to discuss any and all aspects of the above.

However, I believe we should not be discussing dirty or non-dirty 
internal operation matters in forums like this because there is no 
open semi-academic style for discussing staff performance, salaries, 
health (mental or physical) and related issues that you come across 
as part of normal company operations. I really do not think that we 
should go through the process of throwing doubt at all of a company's 
staff just because of a few rotten apples.

It is quite evident that the RIPE NCC currently has some problems. I 
will not discuss here where these problems come from but they are 
certainly not the result of spontaneous generation.

We, the RIPE NCC management, have been addressing them. We are 
possibly even more annoyed than you about the current status of the 
wait queue.

I would not like anyone to get the impression from what has 
transpired that the RIPE NCC's staff is not up to the task or what is 
commonly referred to as professional. There are quite a few excellent 
people here and I believe it would be unfair to tag them all with bad 
markings as a result of some individual actions, which are being 
taken care of.

Since I took the position of Head of External Services at the RIPE 
NCC, just over two months ago, we have engaged in a full review of 
work methods in the departments I oversee and have addressed the 
background problems. The effects of those actions, however, take some 
time before they are visible.

We are now in the process of improving our internal training, first 
in registration services, later in other areas. Our policy for 
external training has always been quite flexible and generous. I 
trust everyone at the RIPE NCC will be able to corroborate.

We are now starting a full review of the operational environment that 
supports the registration activities in order to make hostmaster work 
more efficient and less tedious. This is however, a process that will 
take a few months to conclude.

As far as addressing the current problem that cannot wait for a 
utopian perfect world, we are hiring additional human resources 
dedicated to registration activities. Since this also takes time, we 
are also looking at shorter term solutions such as re-shuffling the 
current internal pool of human resources within the RIPE NCC to 
alleviate the current situation as soon as possible.

I believe the upcoming RIPE meeting will provide an excellent forum 
for interactive discussion about our service level. We intend to go 
there with as much information as possible to give you a good view of 
where time is spent when dealing with "tickets" and if needed enable 
you to take decisions about policy changes (eg. the assignment 
window) based on fact rather than gut feeling.

I am looking forward to a constructive discussion on all these issues 
in order to constructively move the RIPE NCC forward. We will 
continue to do our best to clean up the few remaining problem areas 
in the RIPE NCC and improve our services to the community.

Regards,
Joao Damas
Head of External Services
RIPE NCC


At 22:51 +0200 19/4/00, registry at EU.net wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Apr 2000, Axel Pawlik wrote:
>
>>>  As you may be aware, we have a longstanding policy of not discussing
>>>  internal matters of the RIPE NCC in public.
>
>Well, here's my point of view: no matter how everyone is shocked by the
>information about internal RIPE NCC matters, I think Axel is right: we
>should really focus on the services we get from the RIPE NCC.
>
>However, from time to time, when we don't get a satisfying quality of
>service, we have to scream. And we can do it using two ways:
>
>* Strictly corporate style - to escalate the problem to the highest
>   level possible (RIPE NCC Executive Board, General Manager etc.) and
>   wait for their action. If no result - fire the management, elect a
>   new board and repeat the procedure in an infinite loop, or:
>
>* Open semi-academic style - determine the real cause of the problem
>   and find a solution together, in an open, constructive discussion.
>
>For many, many years of dealing with RIPE NCC, we somehow used to deal
>with all problems using the latter, open approach. Maybe it's because
>RIPE was born in an academic environment ... or simply because the
>open approach worked!
>
>I'm aware, like many other people, that RIPE NCC is not an academic
>institution any more. Why, however, to change things that worked so
>fine for years? Let's discuss!
>
>Regards,
>Beri
>
>--
>----- ___                       Berislav Todorovic, Network Engineer
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>-                           --- Email: beri at EU.net; Mobile: (+31651) 333-641