[ripe-list] RIPE Accountability Task Force: Draft Report and Next Steps

William,

On 2018-10-03 13:36, William Sylvester wrote:
> We are now ready to share our draft report with the RIPE community and
> we invite you to share any input on this mailing list by 16 November.

Thanks to both you and the rest of the Accountability Task Force for 
this work.

Overall I found the report to be clear and comprehensive. The 
description of RIPE seems correct to me, and the recommendations 
by-and-large useful.

I've gone through the report and have a bit of feedback. Here you go!



Recommendation:
The task force acknowledges the long-standing relationship between the
RIPE community and the RIPE NCC. While there is a lot of goodwill
involved, and an overlap between RIPE NCC members and RIPE community
participants ensures alignment, there are no formalised commitments
from the RIPE NCC to the community. While this has never been a
problem to date, the task force nevertheless wishes to raise this as
something for community to consider.

My comment:
Since RIPE is not a legal entity, any formalized commitments would
have to be done as promises by the RIPE NCC. I believe there is
precedent for this, for example promises to allow other companies
to use patented technology and not be sued (not a contract, still 
possibly legally binding). Still, ultimately any such commitment by the 
RIPE NCC would have to be unilateral; not an agreement. Enforcement of 
any such commitment seems problematic as well, and would have to be 
considered.


Text:
This is why the community consciously developed a separation of powers
between individual working groups, the Working Group Chair Collective,
RIPE Chair, RIPE Programme Committee, and other roles and structures.

My comment:
Was this conscious? The role of the WGCC seems to have evolved over
the years, but I don't remember it ever being considered as a sort of
separation of powers. The PC is even newer, and my recollection is
that its current form was created after Joao Damas had been
single-handedly arranging the plenary (or rather the EOF session) for
years and wanted to give up the task. I think that it was heavily
influenced by the way PCs work in NANOG or other bodies, rather than
for any reason of separating powers within RIPE.

Citation needed. 😉


Text:
"Also, the RIPE Chair is able to waive the meeting fee for attendees
that have a legitimate need."

My comment:
Technically I believe that the RIPE Chair asks the Managing Director
of the RIPE NCC to waive the meeting fee.


Recommendation:
The community might want to consider whether the RIPE Chair should be
required to disclose details about expenses associated with performing
RIPE Chair duties, and who covers these.

My comment:
This is tricky. The RIPE Chair position is unpaid, and not full-time.
Certain RIPE Chair duties may be performed when the Chair is traveling
for other reasons. Personally I think this sort of transparency is
highly desirable, but I am not sure about how practical it is. Perhaps
a conversation with Hans Petter ask his opinion makes sense.

Also note that any such transparency would probably be strictly
voluntary from the RIPE Chair, as there is no obvious enforcement 
mechanism and it's not clear how any audit of expenses or other payments 
would work.


Text:
One of the RIPE Chair functions is documented as:
"1.7 Decides on content of Friday Plenary at RIPE Meetings"

My comment:
To be clear, the RIPE Chair is responsible for the Closing Plenary.
The RIPE NCC - in co-ordination with other RIRs - is responsible for
the first part, and the RIPE PC is responsible for the second part,
until handing it over to the RIPE Chair. This is a minor detail, and can 
be changed since the RIPE Chair also has control of the overall plan for 
the meeting.


Text:
One of the RIPE Chair functions is documented as:
"1.9 Makes final decision on waiver of RIPE Meeting fees"

My comment:
As mentioned above, I believe that the RIPE Chair asks the Managing
Director of the RIPE NCC to waive the meeting fee.


Text:
In the introduction to the Working Group Chair section we have:
"Finally, the task force notes that there is no formal process to
educate new chairs on their role within the community. This does not
need to be anything onerous – but perhaps the RIPE NCC could share a
set of relevant documents, responsibilities and timelines with
newly-selected chairs."

My comment:
It is not clear that the RIPE NCC actually has too much knowledge of
how the Working Groups actually work, or what the Working Group Chairs
do. However, all working groups (except IoT) have multiple co-chairs,
and I believe generally strive to maintain some level of consistency.
We could formalize the idea of new chair training and perhaps the RIPE
NCC can help organize that.


Section:
6.0 Programme Committee

My comment:
Note that the PC also meets during the RIPE meetings, and also
publishes its minutes.


Finally, there may be a couple of missing pieces in the document:

* I think that a missing piece of RIPE the picture in RIPE is any
   description of what RIPE Documents are and how they work. My
   understanding is that anyone can publish a RIPE Document, but I do not
   see any description of how that is handled anywhere, nor (as the
   report mentions) when a document becomes obsolete. Since these
   documents happen to be where RIPE Policies live, I think this is
   probably important.

* BCOP is called a task force, but really I think it is a separate
   thing. It is totally fine, but it is sort of like a working group and
   sort of like a task force but not really either. It might be confusing
   and/or seem suspicious if someone is looking at RIPE from an
   accountability point of view. From the point of view of RIPE it's just
   what seems practical and useful, which is a strength of the way RIPE
   does stuff IMHO.


Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks again for the excellent piece of work.

Cheers,

--
Shane