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

Hi Jim, all,

Just re-sending my earlier comments, which will hopefully be clearer to 
read.

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 who
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.

> 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.