[ripe-chair-discuss] Chair nomination process

Dear all,

> On 12 May 2020, at 22:46, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> Probably like many others, I haven't been following the RIPE Chair nomination process as closely as it has deserved over the last number of months.
> 
> At the moment, the lineup looks like this:
> 
> - the current RIPE chair is now - with safeguards in place - the RIPE NCC managing director.
> 
> - one of the candidates is the previous chair of the RIPE NCC executive board.
> 
> - one of the candidates is a current employee of the RIPE NCC.
> 
> - the chair of the nom-com is a current employee of the RIPE NCC.
> 
> This isn't a statement of lack of confidence in any of the people concerned, either individually or collectively, but it looks troubling from the point of view of governance practices.


Thanks for voicing this Nick. I think it’s an important point to raise and personally I share this concern. 

For as long as I have been part of this community, we always been extremely responsible and clear about the separation between the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community. RIPE NCC staff members do not participate in the policy development process, they don’t appoint community members to leadership positions (such as WG chairs) and they have also never served as WG chairs whilst still being employed by the RIPE NCC. I have always believed that this has been a very healthy practice, in line with the bottom-up, community-driven decision making in RIPE.

The blurring of these lines caught me by surprise and it is something I do not feel is sound and in line with good governance practices. 

(I am a little less concerned with the RIPE NCC hiring a senior member of the RIPE community as MD, as I see that as a rather distinct and separate process. But it does of course raise questions about how good we are at getting new blood into this community. But that is a different discussion that I will leave for some other time.) 

On a related note, I am also concerned about the very small number of candidates that has been put forward for the positions of chair and vice chair. And I do think we need to ask ourselves if the process has been robust enough if the long list of candidates is this short. 

And to be absolutely clear from my side as well, this is in no way a comment on any of the volunteers, staff members or candidates involved. 

I am grateful for the work that many of the people here have put in and I don’t doubt the good intentions of anyone involved. 


Thanks,

Nurani 


> In the future, anyone should be able to look back at the nomination process and with full hindsight, feel comfortable that it was sound.  I am not completely sure that we are in this position right now.
> 
> Nick
>