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

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.

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.

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." But even that's pushing it. The evidence so far in favour of a common procedure is at best thin. It's certainly not found in the TF report.

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.