[ncc-services-wg] Update regarding the proposals to improve the technical infrastructure supporting the RIPE Policy Development Process

Dear colleagues,

Before the previous RIPE Meeting in Dublin, a number of proposals were 
brought forward in the RIPE NCC Services Working Group by members of the 
community, dealing with suggested updates to the technical 
infrastructure that supports the Policy Development Process.

You can read the corresponding threads here:
1. "plain text"
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ncc-services-wg/2013-March/002154.html
2. "PDP names"
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ncc-services-wg/2013-March/002150.html
3. "unified diff"
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ncc-services-wg/2013-March/002151.html
4. "everything should use GIT"
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ncc-services-wg/2013-March/002152.html

A lively discussion ensued on the mailing list, and it was also part of 
the agenda of the Working Group at the RIPE 66 Meeting in Dublin:
https://ripe66.ripe.net/archives/steno/13/

Following feedback from the community, a group was formed to address the 
issue and agree on a problem statement that would approach the issue 
from a high level, without going into technical and implementation 
details. The group consisted of Richard Hartmann, Alex Le Heux, Ruediger 
Volk, Emilio Madaio and myself.

The group had a number of remote conferences and email discussions over 
the summer, and would like to present to you a finalised version of the 
problem statement (attached below).

Please let us know if you think the text can be improved in any way, 
sending your comments and any suggestions to the list. Once a consensus 
is reached by the community, the RIPE NCC will evaluate the feedback and 
propose possible solutions.

Regards,
Mihnea-Costin Grigore
RIPE NCC


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Problem Statement
--------------------
The RIPE PDP process is too complicated for everyone: outsiders, new
members, experienced members, authors, and the RIPE NCC. Therefore,
participation should be made easier, especially for new-comers.

Main scope:
- The initial focus and effort are on the RIPE PDP -- proposals, drafts
and policy documents; if any progress is made here, then we can think of
applying the same or similar solutions to other areas of RIPE documentation
- Any solutions discussed should also work for non-techies

Details of the problem:

a) The meta-data provided is incomplete:
- RIPE Policy Documents and Policy Proposals don't have unique and
clearly identified global names/identifiers
- There is no clear version and date for publication
- There is no track of who and when requested and approved a certain change
- There is no clear up to date succession and obsolescence information
within documents
- There is no canonical way to get an overview of all currently active
documents

b) There is no systematic access to all versions of a document:
- There is no directly available history
- There are no easy to use tools to correlate between versions
- There are no tools for authors to submit new/corrected versions of a
document as it evolves through the PDP

c) There is no plain-text version of each document and version thereof
in ASCII format

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-- 
Mihnea-Costin Grigore
RIPE NCC Web Services Team Leader - http://www.ripe.net/