[members-discuss] Questions about the published Draft Agenda and Supporting Documents

Hi,


First, I think it is important to note that something was done. They did reduce the expenditure by 3.8% (budgeted 2023 vs forecasted 2023). Could they have reduced it more? Probably, but by how much more is debatable. What has been said is "without affecting current services", and management probably knows (or should know) better than we who are outside the organization.

Second, NCC is not an organization in [real] financial distress by any measure, either. NCC has plenty of runway to figure out what to do and where to go from where it is now. The important thing is to start somewhere and improve.

Third, "we" need to remember that NCC is an employer of approx. 195 give or take a few people + contractors. From previous Dutch experience I know that the use of contractors is very common over there even on long-term contracts. Companies tend to reduce these, too, first. Realistically, such an organization cannot, on a whim, lay off people in NL which is what it really amounts to. I mean, even if that would be the membership's collective desire. Even if it were possible, it's not one of the greatest ideas as sit will affect the whole organization in terms of motivation, retention, services, etc. One tends to do such things only if the alternative is going out of business. In this case, currently, it is not.

During the openhouse event yesterday, I observed that one of NCC's problems seems to be that it would like to do "something for everyone". Because of this there will always be stakeholders - direct, indirect, paying, non-paying, etc. or however you want to classify them. This of course is very idealistic and perhaps slightly simplified but it tends generally to lead to a situation where all initiatives need to be (= are) funded somehow. It can also lead to what some, including myself, call mission creep or expansion of goals beyond their original remit.

The "something for everyone" concept will probably need to be adjusted somewhat unless the membership wants to pay more in membership fees. Based on last spring, probably not but on the other hand only 12-15% of LIRs cast a vote. Many members in the spring weren't too keen on getting hit by higher fees for exactly the same service myself included. I also do not think the indirect, currently non-paying stakeholders are interested in paying full fare.

As for your example of reverse DNS, well, NCC needs to have some kind of DNS servers for their zones or alternatively outsource them to somewhere else. Most of this seems to be automated through ripedb so really the implementation cost was paid ages ago. Now, many of us on this list have probably designed authoritative high-query rate DNS servers and might agree that it is not a very resource intensive thing to have around. They're also relatively low maintenance by themselves. I doubt that the incremental cost of hosting one extra reverse zone is significant. But if you outsource this to some cloud anycast constellation you're suddenly paying per query (= cost is variable) rather than for a network port, some power, rack space and the servers whether through leasing or paid-up front (= cost is pretty much fixed and shared across many other services). Also, the use value is significant for owned assets rather than cloud where the residual value is zero once you stop paying. But this is a good example of something which is important to some stakeholders but not others. :)

To me, the draft plan and budget is rather high level, as it is supposed to be. Similarly, to me it is rather difficult to go and say off the cuff what is useful or where something could be reduced without going into deeper depth than what the document provides. Thus, any constructive criticism is also going to be on a very high level as well. Perhaps the easiest would be to look at contributions to external organizations, for example 400k+320k to ICANN, 50k for ISOC platinum... I mean, ICANN has about half a billion (yes, you read it right) and ISOC about 120M+ USD in assets. ICANN could do what it does without any of the RIRs paying them anything. As a member it is very unclear to me why "we" need to sponsor such organizations and what NCC really gets for the expenditure and how it translates into concrete benefits for the membership. I am happy to be educated about that, though 😉



Kaj

________________________________
From: members-discuss <members-discuss-bounces at ripe.net> on behalf of Erik Bais <ebais at a2b-internet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 1, 2023 21:15
To: Hans Petter Holen <hph+announce at ripe.net>
Cc: members-discuss at ripe.net <members-discuss at ripe.net>
Subject: [members-discuss] Questions about the published Draft Agenda and Supporting Documents

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Dear Hans Petter,

Thank you for providing the supporting documents for the GM in Rome.

Before we are going to be in Rome, I have a question for you and I cc:'ed the member-discuss ML, as I'm sure some other members might also have a couple questions on the following topic.

I would like to ask you, how the RIPE NCC thought it was a great slide to present just a 2Milj Euro budget cut .. as if it was the best it could do .. given that it was stated on the last GM .. that it wasn't going to increase the budget ..
And with the inflation, basically what that means .. you need to cut cost and cut hard ...

So I would assume that the Director of the NCC .. would see this as an opportunity ... and discuss with management and staff, what is excessive .. and where can we 'kill our darlings' ...

As for any writer that needs to do proper editing of a long novel .. I get the feeling that you didn't went/wanted to go through that process .. not as fierce as that the membership have suggested you to do ..
And I would suggest that this budget document, need some serious editing ...

One of the reasons for my disbelieve that you did that process already properly .. is that if I see an IT spend of 7.6 milj. Euro (2023 ) and you proudly present that the IT spend for 2024 is going to be 7.4 milj Euro ..

Either you have a HUGE technical debt that you can't manage .. or you didn't went head to head with your CTO / IT Director ... and stopped asking for more cuts until he actually sad in your office crying in despair.


Just an example ...
If I'm correct, the RIPE NCC is currently in a datacenter facility in Amsterdam .. with roughly 80 cabinets filled with $random equipment, almost half of that (most likely as my gut feeling is ) to store and hold every single ICMP ping/trace life on disk etc.. since the conception of the Atlas project..

And the best you can come back to the community is .. we've managed to reduce the cost of Atlas with 50.000 euro p/yr ?
The proper question to ask is, do we need every freaking completed test to store that into infinity on spinning disks .. because we never asked the community if we can just through away every PING test result after 60 days . and save 20 cabinets in storage, equipment and power usage.

Who are you kidding ...

And that colocation / hw cost is next to the already half milj. Euro charge for the public cloud (AWS) already (per year..)

So I seriously wonder if you asked the right questions instead of just tried to maintain the status quo ...

One of those 'services' that I seriously think that the NCC should step away from .. is providing 'secondary' DNS server for reverse dns .. I mean .. come on .. how hard is that for the community to manage that by themselves ..
and just because the NCC did that since the conception of the NCC ( or at least longer than I can remember ) .. is that still something that people use and expect the NCC to provide ?


It might be good suggestion to setup an impartial task force / audit team.. reporting to the Executive Board (EB) .. that does (IT) spending audits .. looking for projects that are WAY over budgets, technical debt, overspending due to historic reasoning etc..
These should be externals to the RIPE NCC (staff), but with lots of different views and know how to spot a pet project when they see one .Or project, because we always did it that way.
And then report to the EB with suggestions on how to act on it.

I think it is then up to the EB, to discuss those findings internally and decide to have the discussion with the RIPE NCC Management on how to change and reduce the technical debt and how to actual cut cost.

I have a gut feeling that the EB isn't getting all the information during the EB meetings or during the follow up's or it takes AGES to obtain the information or it is based on consolidated info, with 3 layers of management cutting and rewriting in between.

The "Kill Your Darlings Audit Team" ( KYDAT ), should be the fresh look, to see if the NCC is still doing the right things .. and if the RIPE NCC management is managing towards a more agile and leaner future.

This doesn't mean .. let's host everything at the public cloud and see how long the credit card keeps clearing .. it means that common sense with eye's from the outside of the RIPE NCC, might help to provide a better insight.

The benefit of KYDAT is that they aren't 'burdened' with employee politics or with smoke and mirrors of certain management that is withholding / stalling documents of how bad it really is .. they will look for themselves .. and report and suggest.

I don't envy the role that you have been tasked with ...

But I was expecting something more serious ..

Regards,
Erik Bais





















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