[ripe-list] some comments on the Accountability Task Force report

Hi Jim,

Thank you for taking the time to read the document and providing feedback. You will find my responses in-line. 

Regards

William Sylvester
Chair Accountability Task Force

On 04/11/2018 18:56, Jim Reid wrote:
The TF are to be thanked for their hard work and producing a fairly good report. The explanation of consensus is excellent and long overdue. Well done for that.

However I'm sorry to say the report misses a key point and also considers something that is out of scope and provides nothing to support that position.

It also uses horrible American spelling in places -- center instead of centre -- but that's nit-picking

First, the biggie. The report talks about how RIPE is accountable and who it's accountable to, it does not explain what RIPE is accountable *for*. I wonder if these considerations also need to be broken down and documented for various components of RIPE -- Chair, WG Chairs, WG Chairs Collective, Working Groups, Task Forces(!?), etc. The tables starting on p10 don't do that IMO. They describe the functional roles of these entities, not what they are accountable for or to whom. 

When we sought feedback from the community, we were told that it was better to avoid defining the scope of the RIPE community. This was briefly covered in the report when we said this:

"Although RIPE’s scope has never been officially discussed and agreed upon, and may change as circumstances change, there is a general understanding that there are limits to the issues and problems it can address. RIPE is not an unlimited body just because a problem exists does not mean it is RIPE’s problem to solve." (Page 6).

Similarly, when we discussed values, we were told that the community only really had hard agreement on the procedural values (e.g. open, transparent, bottom-up, consensus).

So, in this sense, I think all we could really say is that RIPE is accountable for ensuring that it follows its own processes and that these align with this narrow set of core values (as opposed to any specific outcomes - such as good policy or effective coordination between network operators).

We had thought this was more or less covered in the first part of the document. However, perhaps this was only implied and we can take another look to see if it needs to be stated more explicitly.

Next, I strongly object to the recommendation that the process for selecting WG chairs should be aligned. This is out of scope for the TF.

I fail to see how it fits with "potential gaps where RIPE accountability could be improved or strengthened", which is the closest vaguely suitable bullet point defining the TF's scope. Making that assumption still doesn't put the recommendation in scope because the reports says nothing about why or how aligning the selection process would improve or strengthen things. IMO, such a move would do the very opposite. Read on...

I would have expected the role of the TF here would have been to verify (or not) that WG chairs were selected by fair, open and transparent processes that had broad WG/community support. And if there were problems, to identify them. All of that is missing. There's just a recommendation that seems to have been teleported in from a parallel universe without any context or explanation for its inclusion.

In fact the report contradicts itself because it earlier states that aligning these procedures violates the principle of bottom-up decision-making. So why make that recommendation and where's the evidence to support it? Either RIPE has confidence in the bottom-up approach or we don't. If the bottom-up approach is unsatisfactory for deciding WG chair selection procedures (why?), what else at RIPE is it no good for?

WG's are self-organising and autonomous. They decide their own charters, who the (co)chairs are, what documents and policies get developed, time-lines, consensus decisions, etc, etc. A top-down directive -- from whom? -- saying WG chair appointment procedures must be aligned goes against all of that.

It will also undermine another key principle: diversity. [Admittedly that topic's out of scope for this Task Force.] The RIPE community should be perfectly comfortable that its WGs do things differently. That's a strength, not a weakness. Attempts to impose order on this "organised chaos" are the start of a slippery slope that leads to an institution that's in thrall to process. And look how those organisations turn out."

A common appointment process is incompatible with RIPE's core values of WG independence, autonomy and diversity. Now it might happen that WGs may one day eventually converge on a common selection procedure -- my bet is some time after the heat death of the universe -- but that has to be a choice for each WG to make for itself. Without outside interference. IMO the TF has no role or authority to get involved in this. It does/did have a role to determine if the WG Chairs were appointed in an open and transparent manner and that the appointees were somehow accountable.

Previous (top-down) attempts to have a common selection process have failed. IMO they always will. Getting WG consensus on any sort of selection process is already hard. I know. I've had to do it. Twice. I would prefer WGs spent their time and energies on productive work instead of bickering over process minutae that will just go on and on and on.

We take your point. However, we would suggest that just as there is a single PDP that applies to all working groups, and a requirement that the communitiy's policies are published as RIPE Documents - there are accountability benefits from having consistency in some aspects. You can still have a bottom-up community with a shared PDP.

With that being said, this was only a recommendation for the community to consider. The intent was not to enforce the task force ideals, during our process we identified there was inconsistencies leading to confusion things that caused for confusion. Bringing this to the attention of the community for review was our primary intent. 

It would be much less contentious for the report to say something like "The TF thinks a common WG chair selection process might be nice, but accept that has to be a matter for each WG to decide on its own by itself." 

This is very much the spirit we would like the community to take our recomendations in (though in most cases we're talking about the RIPE community rather than WGs).

I also object to the use of the word "believe" in various places. That suggests a faith-based assessment rather than an evidence-based decision. Matters of belief have no place in RIPE documents.