RIPE
Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes
17 January
2017
Attendees:
Athina Fragkouli,
Antony Gollan, Hans Petter
Holen, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Peter Koch, Steve Nash,
Nurani Nimpuno,
Wim Rullens, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz.
1) Finalise agenda –
adopt minutes
2) Selection of
Chair
3) Finalise scope
4) Finalise
deliverables
5) Finalise
information for website
-Please review the
attached document before the
call
6) Openness of calls
to third parties
7) Finding a regular
time for TF calls
1) Finalise
agenda – adopt minutes
There were no
changes to the agenda. The minutes
from the last call were adopted.
2)
Selection of Chair
Hans Petter said
that as a matter of principle
the RIPE Chair shouldn’t act as Chair of any Task Forces
directly and someone
from the community should take this position.
Alexander suggested
that Athina could be Chair.
Filiz suggested they
have someone form the
community with Athina as co-Chair.
Nurani said she had
complete trust in Athina’s
abilities, but it might not be appropriate for a RIPE NCC staff
member to chair
the TF, though the RIPE NCC had already said they were willing
to provide
support to the Chair. It was good to have Hans Petter involved,
but she agreed
that he also shouldn’t be Chair. On the last call they had
suggested Filiz be Chair
and she was happy with that.
William said he
would be happy to be Chair. There
seemed to have been a lack of participation over the past weeks,
so the
question was who was willing to have regular interactions.
Athina agreed with
Filiz and Nurani that while
this would be supported 100% by the RIPE NCC, the TF had to be a
community-driven effort. She noted that William had stepped up
and Nurani had
nominated Filiz.
Filiz said she would
be willing to be co-Chair
with William, but she didn’t have time to be the sole Chair.
Peter and Nurani
seconded William and Filiz as Chairs
of the RIPE Accountability Task Force.
Filiz said she
wanted to confirm Hans Petter as
a member of the TF, as it was appropriate for him to be involved
to help ensure
they stayed within scope.
Hans Petter agreed
and said he would participate
as much as he was able.
3) Finalise
Scope
Filiz noted that
William had sent through some
thoughts on the mailing list earlier.
William said they
should identify the various
groups involved and determine what kind of accountability they
had to these
groups. Then they could publish some kind of ongoing status or
scorecard with
how they were doing in terms of accountability. This wasn’t a
one-time checkbox
but rather an ongoing thing. In areas where accountability was
missing, they
could give a timeline when they expected a particular issue or
area to be
addressed.
Nurani said they
needed to clarify what they
meant by accountability. She mentioned a presentation at an
ICANN meeting on
accountability that she would share with the group as a starting
point. She
agreed that accountability was not something you achieved and
then forgot about,
but they needed to define what the task of the group was. What
did they intend
to actually look at for the various groups that this community
should or should
not be accountable to? Maybe they should ensure they had the
same definition of
accountability and then come up with the scope of the group. She
thought they
wanted the TF to do an initial assessment and come up with some
recommendations
that the community could move forward on.
Athina suggested
they look at the draft scope
that Antony had put together from the previous call that was in
the draft
website copy.
Antony
ran
through the draft scope [included here]:
“The
RIPE Accountability Task Force agreed to:
Steve
said he
thought the process began with identifying what structures they
intended to
look at. He said it was the accountability of each RIPE
community structure. He
had sent an email on 18 December along these lines. There were a
number of
places were accountability was moderately clear but other places
where this
wasn’t so clear.
Hans
Petter
said a useful scope restriction was to focus on RIPE. Plenty of
work had
already been done on the RIPE NCC. He wasn’t sure what they
meant by “community
structures”, but he thought they were talking about the RIPE
community which
consisted of Working Groups, Task Forces, Mailing Lists, etc. He
thought this was
what they needed to look at, as the lack of a well-defined
community membership
meant that it was difficult to determine accountability.
Filiz
agreed
with Hans Petter.
Alexander
said he
had an addition. First they should define who they were – as
even on the TF
there was confusion about the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community.
He said they
shouldn’t only talk about WG Chairs et al, but also about who
the community was
and how it could be defined. Once they had this they could start
talking about
accountability. He said RIPE didn’t exist in the legal world and
so they needed
to define its existence in a satisfactory way.
Nurani
said she
mostly agreed with Hans Petter and Filiz that the work should
focus on the RIPE
community and its mechanisms and they needed to be clear about
not mixing up
membership processes and community powers. So they needed to be
crystal clear
about these things before they proceeded. Long-term
accountability work would
not be complete without looking at the whole structure,
including the RIPE NCC’s
membership and its board. This was probably something that
needed to be done in
future work. If there were other issues that needed to be
explored, this might have
to be undertaken by the membership and the secretariat. So maybe
they could
proceed with a note that a full accountability review would
include a review
of/by the membership and secretariat.
William
said
everything on the list looked good, but they needed to define
who the
participants and stakeholders were, and what organisations were
encompassed by
the review. He didn’t think that they needed to define this
today – this could
come out in later discussions.
Peter
said he
agreed with most of what had been said. Policy setting was the
most important
part where accountability came in and there were challenges
around this. They
had learned in recent years that policy setting by RIPE and
policy
implementation by the RIPE NCC resulted in some interesting
interactions,
particularly where fees had been used. He said they should be
clear on where
they were talking about RIPE and where they were talking about
the RIPE NCC.
This needed to be especially clear for readers. The RIPE and
RIPE NCC
interaction came after they had reviewed the structures. He
suggested bringing
the third bullet-point up [“Document existing RIPE community
structures or
processes where needed”], which would include things like the
process for
selecting WG Chairs.
Filiz
said they
seemed to be leaning towards a scope that the TF would study the
existing and
future stakeholders within the RIPE community. The other option
would be to
create another “stakeholders” section below the scope where they
could list who
they thought this work would be relating to.
Hans
Petter
said he just wanted to add two bits of formalism. If they looked
at existing
TFs, they should create a charter — which would be the existing
scope shaped into
what they would achieve. They also needed a timeline. Once they
had established
this, they should bring this back to the community to get
feedback or consensus.
And starting with the community, they could also look later at
the borders between
the community and the membership organisation.
Filiz
agreed
that they would need to get community input/support for their
charter. They
therefore needed to focus on an initial scope among themselves
that they could then
present to the community at the next RIPE Meeting. She suggested
the RIPE NCC
come up with a timeline for this.
Hans
Petter
said they could also do this on the RIPE mailing list.
Filiz
said they
could do both.
Athina
said she
understood that having an accurate and complete scope approved
by the community
was important. In the meantime she asked if they should do some
preparatory
work, and some of the things they could already work on (such as
the action
item for the RIPE NCC to map out areas where accountability
features were
already in place) and have a tentative scope on the website to
share with the
community, with a note that it was draft and would be finalised
in the coming
months.
Filiz
agreed
with this and said this wasn’t just related to the scope – they
also needed a
timeline for the group’s work. The first deliverable was a scope
on the mailing
list by the RIPE Meeting, and this also needed to be on the
meeting agenda. Working
back from this, eight weeks before RIPE 74 a draft scope would
need to be
agreed on by the TF. Then they could start preparing what they
needed to do to socialise
this with the RIPE community.
**Action
item:
RIPE NCC to capture the wording of the TF’s comments on scope
and produce an
updated document to send to the mailing list.
**Action
item:
RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF.
William
said he
was also happy to help with this.
4) Finalise deliverables
Filiz
suggested
that they defer this, as it depended on the scope and timeline.
5) Finalise
information for website
Nurani
said she
wanted to be transparent as possible – she suggested they put up
meeting minutes
and any other documentation the group produced.
Filiz
agreed
but said they should discuss this further on the mailing list.
**Action
item:
Filiz to start a discussion about transparency/web documentation
on the mailing
list.
Athina
said
having a web page about the TF was something that they had to do
soon, as they
were already very late. The reason they hadn’t published yet was
because they
weren’t sure what to publish. She understood they hadn’t agreed
on the final
version of the scope but suggested they could publish what they
already had as
a draft. They already had members, and could add others. They
now had Chairs. It
was important that they agree on this soon.
There
was
strong support for this.
Filiz
said they
should therefore publish the website content along with the
draft scope. She
asked that the TF be informed as soon as this was published.
6) Openness of calls to
third parties
Filiz
said this
needed some more discussion, as they would be dealing with
possible
interventions by other third parties or observers. She suggested
they discuss
this further on the list.
**Action:
Filiz
to start a discussion regarding openness of TF calls on the
mailing list.
7) Finding a regular time
for TF
calls.
Filiz
said they
needed a poll for this, and asked the RIPE NCC to create one.
She suggested
they consider as a priority times that would suit the RIPE NCC,
but to give the
TF options. She suggested they start with one hour meetings.
Nurani
said
they should agree on frequency.
William
said
monthly would be appropriate if they would be participating on
the mailing
list, but this wouldn’t be enough if they didn’t have this
mailing list
interaction.
Nurani
said
monthly was most practical, but that didn’t stop them adding in
extra calls if
needed.
Filiz
said they
should agree on monthly calls, and the Chairs could call for
extra meetings if
the need arose. If there was enough engagement on the list, then
she didn’t see
any need for additional meetings.
The
group
agreed.
**Action:
RIPE
NCC to make poll covering Feb, March, April, and one meeting
before RIPE 74.
The deadline for TF members to enter their preferences should be
one
week.
Nurani
said she
wasn’t sure how much of the community was aware of the TF being
formed. She
suggested they invite members of the community to join. This
would also avoid
having people jumping in with comments and suggestions late in
the process.
Athina
said the
RIPE NCC had sent an email to the RIPE mailing list and the
Cooperation WG a
month or so earlier – informing the community and inviting
people to join. She
asked if there was more they should be doing.
Filiz
said once
they had published the draft scope and website content they
could drop a note
to the RIPE mailing list and invite interested parties to send
messages to the
Accountability TF mailing list. Once they had produced the
signed-off scope,
they could send another email to RIPE-list.
Nurani
said this
was about being as inclusive as possible. There might also be
community members
who didn’t know what the RIPE Accountability TF was. If another
mail was sent
once the draft scope was published, people might get a better
idea of what they
were doing.
Peter
said getting
enough people on the call was already complicated. Having more
people onto the TF
would result in random walk-ins and walk-outs and he didn’t
think this was what
they were trying to achieve.
Filiz
said it
was good to have feedback from the community, but it was
important to limit
access to the TF at some point – otherwise they risked having
people coming
into the group at a late point and asking them to change the
scope. Latecomers
would likely have some catching-up to do, and this might impact
the group’s
deliverables. Being an active TF member required some definition
and she would
take this to the ML.
**Action:
Filiz
to start a discussion on the mailing list about how open the TF
should be.
Action
items
20171801-1: RIPE NCC to capture the wording of
the TF’s comments
on scope and produce an updated document to send to the mailing
list.
20171801-2: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft
timeline for the
TF.
20171801-3: Filiz to start a discussion about
transparency/web
documentation on the mailing list.
20171801-4: Filiz to start a discussion regarding
openness of TF
calls on the mailing list.
20171801-5: RIPE NCC to make poll covering Feb,
March, April,
and one meeting before RIPE 74. The deadline for TF members to
enter their preferences
should be one week.
20171801-6: Filiz to start a discussion on the
mailing list
about how open the TF should be.
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.