Dear task force members, Here are the notes from yesterday's call. Please let me know any comments or corrections. Kind regards Antony *RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes* 1) Finalise agenda/adopt minutes 2) Discussion of accountability mapping 3) Review of open action items 4) Task force meeting at RIPE 74 5) Task force presentation at RIPE 74 6) AOB Attendees: Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Peter Koch, Steve Nash, Nurani Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, Carsten Schiefner, Marco Schmidt, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz. *1) Finalise agenda/adopt minutes* Carsten joined the call and said he had spoken with Filiz earlier about joining the group. William welcomed him to the task force. There were no changes to the agenda. The minutes were adopted. *2) Discussion of accountability mapping* Athina ran through the accountability mapping document that the RIPE NCC had produced. They had decided to start by identifying the various bodies that made up the RIPE community, listing the roles they performed, and finding supporting documentation where possible. She noted that most areas were not documented – but they were current practices that weren't disputed. Aside from these bodies, they had also listed some procedures that were documented and things like the requirements of participation and some other comments. Peter thanked Athina and her colleagues for their work. He said he had a question and a comment. He asked why they had made a distinction between the RIPE Meeting attendees and the Plenary. He also noted that there was a RIPE WG Chair Job Description document (ripe-542) that covered a lot of the areas and was not listed in the documentation under the WG Chairs table. Regarding the Plenary/Meeting Attendees split, Athina said there was a lot of overlap between categories. However, they had separated this because anyone who attended the meeting could vote in the relevant PC/NRO NC elections without having to attend a plenary session. She said they would look at the document Peter had suggested and see how that affected what they had listed already. Filiz noted that in the "documented" column there was either a link to the relevant document or a "no" where no documentation existed. However, some of these fields had been left blank and she asked why that was. Athina said this was because in most cases these were broad categories and there was no document that applied. E.g. there was no single document for “mailing lists”. Paul said it was important to consider how they communicated this to people outside of the community and suggested they find a better way to explain what these gaps meant in the document. William asked how they should proceed with the document. Athina suggested they needed to decide if there was anything missing. And also to identify what things they needed to start documenting. Paul reiterated that the RIPE NCC was expecting to put in the majority of the legwork here (and was happy to do so). He said they wanted to hear if there was anything the task force felt was missing. He said it would be great if there were any alternative angles or perspectives the task force felt they could approach this from. Filiz suggested they come up with areas in the document that they thought were missing. Perhaps there might be aspects of the RIPE Chair role that had been left out, or perhaps they could start a new table for an area that had been missed altogether. This could be done in parallel by task force members. She suggested they start putting in some story around this. For example, how critical were the undocumented areas relating to the RIPE WG Chair Collective? And people who felt strongly about this could start to think about how to document this and what needed to be documented. Nurani supported this approach. Alexander said that as a representative of a local community (ENOG) he had not seen the word “community” used anywhere in the document, instead “participation” had been used. He also noted that ENOG, MENOG and SEE had been created to help parts of the community participate more effectively within RIPE activities. He suggested this could be explained a little further - that these were not different communities, but rather part of the larger RIPE community that had split off to work locally. He wasn’t sure how to document this, but felt it was worth doing. Peter supported Filiz’s approach. Instead of starting with a perfect list of everything that happened within RIPE (as they would discover more as they went), he suggested they begin evaluating some of the documentation. For example, there were changes to the PDP itself that had not gone through the PDP – which could have interesting implications for legitimacy. He noted one important aspect that the RIPE NCC had discovered in the document was around consensus not being documented within the RIPE community, and the fact that they followed the IETF model. They saw, for example, consensus noted as being used in Plenary decisions – however consensus was something that was reached by addressing objections and reaching agreement – often what was presented to the Plenary was an already-finished product that had been develop by another group that was merely seeking a final approval or decision. Malcolm said the consensus aspect was a core issue, so there could be a well-understood criteria for the WG Chairs to apply. He didn't know whether writing a draft around this was within the scope of this task force. Seeking clarity about what they were trying to say when they said "we have reached consensus" was an important thing to do for accountability purposes. Wim asked if the Cooperation WG was documented. Athina said this depended on what Wim was referring to. The WG Chair selection process, RIPE Meeting minutes and other information were documented on the website and the PDP was the same for all WGs. Athina asked Filiz to clarify what she meant by adding a “story” to the document. She asked if she meant taking a more descriptive approach to the tables. Filiz said they needed something for each line in the tables to show how important this was - and whether it was well documented, open, public and whatever their parameters were to evaluate it. Something might be documented but the quality of the documentation might not be enough. Athina said they could get started with this. ***Action: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document with task force input.* Paul echoed Nurani's comments from a previous meeting where she'd said they shouldn't be afraid to note where there were gaps – so they could then take a proposal to the community to fix this. William encouraged everyone to take another look at the document and discuss this further on the mailing list. *3) Review of open action items* 20170602-1: RIPE NCC to arrange face-to-face meeting for the task force at RIPE 74. Antony said that based on the results of the poll, Tuesday, 9 May 12:30-14:00 looked like the best spot to hold the meeting. There were no objections from the group. 20171801-2: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF. Athina proposed that they (RIPE NCC) develop a template on Google Docs that the group could use to fill with relevant actions. Peter said he was happy with this approach, so long as he didn't require a Google account. 20163011-1: Task force members to each come up with a few topics they want the Task Force to address and share this on the mailing list. Filiz said this should change now that they had the accountability mapping document. From now on they should base their input around the document and should take this action out. 20163011-2: The RIPE NCC to map out areas where accountability features are already. This was completed and could be closed. ***Action: Task force members to review and comment on accountability mapping document.* Carsten asked that they change the format of the action item numbering, as he felt this was confusing. The group agreed that this should go YYYYMMDD. *4) Task force meeting at RIPE 74* William suggested the group propose agenda items for the RIPE 74 meeting on the mailing list and they could discuss this on the next call in April. *5) Task force presentation at RIPE 74* Antony noted that the deadine for the RIPE 74 Call for Presentations was in about a week’s time. They had sent some draft slides to the task force Chairs and they needed to submit these to reserve a spot in the plenary. Filiz said they normally got 30 minutes for a slot and asked if this would be enough and what they would be aiming to present on. William said for May it would likely just be a progress update while October could be a larger discussion with the community. For the next step they would to secure a timeslot with the draft slides that they had. The other task force members agreed with this approach. *6) AOB* Peter asked if they really needed to have a call ahead of the RIPE Meeting on around 1 May. Filiz said she would like to use this as preparation for the Budapest meeting - maybe they would like to add more content to the presentation or to discuss how they would use their meeting slot. William agreed that they needed to maintain regular calls, even if they were quick because there was little to discuss. End of call. *Action Items* 20170306-1: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document with task force input. 20170306-2: Task force members to review and comment on accountability mapping document. 20171801-2: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF. *Completed Action Items* 20170602-1: RIPE NCC to arrange face-to-face meeting for the task force at RIPE 74. 20163011-1: Task force members to each come up with a few topics they want the Task Force to address and share this on the mailing list. 20163011-2: The RIPE NCC to map out areas where accountability features are already.