Dear all, Thank you for this excellent notes. I am sorry to have missed the first call, and unfortunately will not be able to join the next one this month either. But I look forward to working with all of you in 2017. Kind regards, On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Antony Gollan <agollan@ripe.net> wrote:

Good afternoon everyone,

Please find the minutes from the first TF call below. Let me know any changes or corrections.

Also attached is draft copy for the website, including a scope based on your comments on the call.

Please also fill-in the following doodle poll for our next call: doodle.com/poll/6hqeseud6sbgkgb6

The proposed agenda for the next call is:

1) Finalise agenda - adopt minutes 2) Selection of Chair 3) FInalise scope - Prior to the call, please follow-up on the action item: 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. 4) Finalise deliverables 5) Finalise information for website - Please review the attached document before the call 6) Finding a regular time for TF calls 7) AOB

Cheers

Antony

###

*RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes30 November 2016*

*Attendees: *

Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Nurani Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz

*Agenda:*

*1) Introduction / finalise the agenda2) Selection of chair3) Scope of the Task Force4) Deliverables5) Openness and transparency6) Information for website7) Next meeting call8) AOB*

*1) Introduction / finalise the agenda*

Athina added another item (5) – about how transparent they wanted to be in terms of allowing observers to join Task Force calls or participate on the mailing list.

*2) Selection of Chair*

Alexander nominated Athina as Chair. Malcolm and Nurani supported her.

Nurani said they should have a RIPE community member for co-Chair. She suggested Hans Petter Holen could take this role.

Paul agreed they needed someone from the community, and suggested someone from the ASO AC.

Filiz said she was happy to help chair, but couldn’t commit without knowing what the time commitment would be.

Paul said the RIPE NCC would do the heavy lifting. The Chair would just need to help the group make decisions and keep things moving forward.

Filiz said they needed Hans Petter at the helm, but was happy to assist him in this. If he declined then they could find another solution.

Alexander offered to help co-chair.

William said he could also help with co-chairing, especially if Hans Petter was not available.

Athina suggested they not decide this on the call. She could act as interim Chair in the meantime until they had an opportunity to ask Hans Petter and discuss this further.

Nurani suggested they define the scope first, which would help them to understand the time commitments involved – this could be a month, a year, or they might end up as Chair of a new WG.

*3) Scope of the Task Force*

Athina suggested they do a round and give comments.

Alexander said accountability was primarily related to legal or commercial entities, but RIPE was not like these entities. When they moved into the ground of deliverables, they were stepping into the realm of governments and police, etc. RIPE was not a typical entity and perhaps they should start from there.

William said they needed to think what the current status of accountability was – who the stakeholders were, who they had accountability with. He noted that when registrars and registries were introduced into the domain space there were a lot of inbuilt accountability measures right from the start.

Filiz agreed with William and said communities could have accountability even when they didn’t have legally established identities. They could look at things like how the community selected Chairs and other individuals – this could be expressed somehow. They had been dealing with accountability issues over past several years and the Task Force could document and track these so outsiders could make sense of them.

**Action Item: Filiz suggested an action point should be for each of them to come up with a few topics they wanted the TF to address and share this on the mailing list.

Nurani said it might be good to put this into a context. Accountability questions hadn’t come from nowhere. RIPE had been improving its structures over the past 25 years, simply because it wanted high-performing structures. A lot of this work had been done over the years – some of this could be improved, but a lot of it just needed to be explained to the outside world. A lot of these questions were triggered when coming up for the Number Community’s proposal as part of the IANA transition and the CRISP team had been interviewed by the US Government’s accountability office. While they were satisfied with their answers, there were a lot of assumptions people had about the community’s accountability that were not correct. A lot of CCWG-Accountability’s work had come back to the RIPE community as well, and the CCWG wanted to impose their own accountability measures onto RIPE. RIPE didn’t have anything to hide and didn’t need to be in a defensive position.

Malcolm agreed with Filiz and Nurani. He suggested they identify what they were trying to do with these structures – what values they were trying to uphold, such as transparency or openness. Once these values had been identified, they could identify the mechanisms that were used to achieve them and provide an overview of how they might be improved.

Athina said there was an understanding that the RIPE community was accountable and did have its documents in place. Maybe they needed to review what was there and see if anything was missing. RIPE had to be able to explain how it worked, so it wasn’t seen as avoiding accountability questions. She added that they were noting everyone’s comments and could use this to create a consistent scope.

Paul replied to Alexander’s earlier comment that RIPE didn’t have the accountability of other entities. He said that after the transition RIPE was now the body that made important decisions and this had exacerbated things. It was important to get this accountability effort off the ground, because they needed to be looking at things that were further off. He said they needed to separate CCWG-Accountability from RIPE accountability.

**Action Item: Paul said the RIPE NCC could examine areas to see where they already had accountability features in place. If they could map this out and show it to the Task Force, they could use this as a starting point to work from.

Malcolm supported Paul’s suggestion.

Athina said they could discuss this further on the mailing list.

*4) Deliverables* Athina understood that the deliverables would be the review they would make, along with any new documentation that would be needed.

Malcolm said they could break this down into two separate categories: 1) A review of how things currently stood, which would result in a report with recommendations. 2) Communications materials for different audiences (to be developed after the review was completed). Some of this would be for external audiences like governments, and some would be for the RIPE community itself, particularly newcomers. He hoped the RIPE NCC could do the heavy lifting on the development of these materials.

Athina said the RIPE NCC was committed to providing any materials that would be needed.

Nurani agreed with Malcolm – mapping, review, suggested improvements, and communications efforts (noting efforts might involve more than just materials). They should also consider the possibility of an external view – which might help them to identify blind spots or gaps. This neutral party would have to chosen carefully.

William agreed with Malcolm and Nurani and said the review should include recommendations. A third party would add credibility as a stop-gap to ensure they weren’t missing key pieces. The deliverable should be an accountability scorecard or some measure – because accountability was not a finite value but something that would change over time. He said they should also think about community policies that might need to be established or maintained, possibly by a WG. This was something to consider, though it might be that accountability was just in the community’s DNA and wouldn’t require a policy.

*5) Openness and transparency* Athina asked how they wanted to operate in terms of allowing outside observers to subscribe/participate on the mailing list or attend Task Force calls.

Malcolm contrasted the models of RIPE WGs that were open to participation by anyone (including casual one-off participation) – vs the CCWG – where there was open participation with no limitations, but you had to officially join. While he thought the Task Force should always be open, he didn’t have a strong view on which model should be used.

Nurani said they should report back to the community and the material should be publicly archived. Her only concern was if there was information that came up in a review or external report that would put the RIPE community in a difficult position – they would need to handle this in a sensitive way. She could see why they might not want to allow outside comments on a conference call, but a good chair could handle this. She supported generally being as open as possible.

Filiz agreed that membership should remain open. But if people were not members, they should be limited to observing. She didn’t want a situation where there was interference from observers who were missing context. She agreed they could allow observers to make comments at the end of meetings if they had good chairs. She suggested they open the mailing list for posts so the Task Force could receive comments from observers – but make it so that observers couldn’t receive emails from the list.

Athina noted that they would still have access to the public archives.

Alexander noted that they had no deliverables to make “open” which was why he suggested they postpone this question.

*6) Information for website*

Athina noted that other Task Forces typically included things like scope, participants, email archives, etc. Given that they had no scope at this point, she suggested they include on this page the structure of the Task Force along with participants’ names. She said they would develop something and share this with the Task Force.

*7) Next meeting call*

It was agreed that they would run the meetings monthly, but would have one more meeting in December. Athina said she would create a doodle poll and share it with the group.

*8) AOB* Filiz said they could move the chair selection discussion to the next meeting. The group agreed.

Athina said this would be an agenda point for the next meeting, and they could have some discussion on the mailing list to prepare.

END OF MEETING.

*Action Items*

*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.

-- Corinne J.N. Cath Ph.D. Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute & Alan Turing Institute Web: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath Email: ccath@turing.ac.uk & corinnecath@gmail.com Twitter: @C_Cath

All, A few comments in response to our first call, and the distributed notes. Antony, Thank you for sending out this call notes, they are very thorough. I think the minutes capture our first call brilliantly, thank you for sending those out. It looks like with the end of year and pending holidays that we have only had a couple of people respond to the Doodle. We only have three days left this week, do we still want to have a call this week? I think it would be a great idea even if we focus on house keeping items. After our first call and seeing the direction of the group, I would be happy to help as a chair. I have the time, support, and ability and feel I can represent the community. As a regular RIPE meeting attendee and my experience in the Internet space since the early days of the InterNIC, this is a great opportunity to support the community. I do think it would be helpful to have more than once chair and encourage representation and support from RIPE NCC and others involved with the global community As a task force or team we need to look at the scope of this project. Initially we need to define the current state of accountability and identify each stakeholder. We need to establish the best methods to measure and monitor accountability. We will need to share all of these things with the community and the Internet as a whole. Finally we should be providing regular reporting on our successes (and failures) and our overall health in regards to accountability. I know that there are many things that have been used for many years which established a baseline of accountability. We have seen major changes to the Internet governance as a whole in recent years. We can not expect to publish a single white paper and feel that we have achieved accountability. In my opinion this will require a framework to maintain the processes and procedures for how accountability is managed and changed as needed. As for open items; Regular calls - I think a regular call after 14:00 CET (UTC+1) works best for me, but I can be flexible. for these calls. I would propose initially more frequent calls (2-4 per month) to build momentum for the group. As appropriate we can move that to less (maybe monthly). This will be appropriate especially as we have work being conducted on the mailing list or independently and the calls can become more status updates versus working sessions. Website - Do we have a website today? I think we need to establish a mission and identify how people can participate and help. We need to identify if we will publish drafts and interim work on only final work products. This is a great place to raise awareness. Who will maintain the website and how will it be updated? Mailing List / Task Force Access - We discussed the struggles of transparency versus productivity and I think most members felt that a delicate balance between the two is necessary. I propose that members post, others can view the archive publicly, membership is open, but we reserve the right that the group can agree to censure or block spam or parties who disrupt the work of the group. If we find that we have proprietary information to share, we can establish a protected website and grant access to participating members. This might be appropriate for certain drafts or other work on progress that may not be productive to publish until finalized. If needed we can open comment periods for those who wish to participate in the process after the work has been published. If those who felt the group should be closed, perhaps we could institute an invite methodology where new members could be invited by existing members. Deliverables - I think we need to consider what our goals are in this case. I think we need to raise awareness of the issues regarding accountability and related items. This should also document the processes used to create, manage, and report on accountability. How do we handle incidents of deficiency and remediation. This is also dependent upon which parties we are accountable to and for what. In the end, I think there is documentation, processes, policy, and reporting that will need to be available on the website. Additionally there will need to be presentations to each stakeholder group and others who participate in the ecosystem. Finally we need a framework around how we add, modify, or delete areas of accountability as the roles and responsibilities change or grow. The members on the call all brought diverse backgrounds and experience to this task force, and there are many wonderful ideas that have all been presented. I look forward to participate with each of you through this process. Thanks, William On Dec 16, 2016, at 9:34 AM, Antony Gollan <agollan@ripe.net<mailto:agollan@ripe.net>> wrote: Good afternoon everyone, Please find the minutes from the first TF call below. Let me know any changes or corrections. Also attached is draft copy for the website, including a scope based on your comments on the call. Please also fill-in the following doodle poll for our next call: doodle.com/poll/6hqeseud6sbgkgb6<http://doodle.com/poll/6hqeseud6sbgkgb6> The proposed agenda for the next call is: 1) Finalise agenda - adopt minutes 2) Selection of Chair 3) FInalise scope - Prior to the call, please follow-up on the action item: 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. 4) Finalise deliverables 5) Finalise information for website - Please review the attached document before the call 6) Finding a regular time for TF calls 7) AOB Cheers Antony <RIPE Accountability Task Force - draft web page.doc> ### RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes 30 November 2016 Attendees: Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Nurani Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz Agenda: 1) Introduction / finalise the agenda 2) Selection of chair 3) Scope of the Task Force 4) Deliverables 5) Openness and transparency 6) Information for website 7) Next meeting call 8) AOB 1) Introduction / finalise the agenda Athina added another item (5) – about how transparent they wanted to be in terms of allowing observers to join Task Force calls or participate on the mailing list. 2) Selection of Chair Alexander nominated Athina as Chair. Malcolm and Nurani supported her. Nurani said they should have a RIPE community member for co-Chair. She suggested Hans Petter Holen could take this role. Paul agreed they needed someone from the community, and suggested someone from the ASO AC. Filiz said she was happy to help chair, but couldn’t commit without knowing what the time commitment would be. Paul said the RIPE NCC would do the heavy lifting. The Chair would just need to help the group make decisions and keep things moving forward. Filiz said they needed Hans Petter at the helm, but was happy to assist him in this. If he declined then they could find another solution. Alexander offered to help co-chair. William said he could also help with co-chairing, especially if Hans Petter was not available. Athina suggested they not decide this on the call. She could act as interim Chair in the meantime until they had an opportunity to ask Hans Petter and discuss this further. Nurani suggested they define the scope first, which would help them to understand the time commitments involved – this could be a month, a year, or they might end up as Chair of a new WG. 3) Scope of the Task Force Athina suggested they do a round and give comments. Alexander said accountability was primarily related to legal or commercial entities, but RIPE was not like these entities. When they moved into the ground of deliverables, they were stepping into the realm of governments and police, etc. RIPE was not a typical entity and perhaps they should start from there. William said they needed to think what the current status of accountability was – who the stakeholders were, who they had accountability with. He noted that when registrars and registries were introduced into the domain space there were a lot of inbuilt accountability measures right from the start. Filiz agreed with William and said communities could have accountability even when they didn’t have legally established identities. They could look at things like how the community selected Chairs and other individuals – this could be expressed somehow. They had been dealing with accountability issues over past several years and the Task Force could document and track these so outsiders could make sense of them. **Action Item: Filiz suggested an action point should be for each of them to come up with a few topics they wanted the TF to address and share this on the mailing list. Nurani said it might be good to put this into a context. Accountability questions hadn’t come from nowhere. RIPE had been improving its structures over the past 25 years, simply because it wanted high-performing structures. A lot of this work had been done over the years – some of this could be improved, but a lot of it just needed to be explained to the outside world. A lot of these questions were triggered when coming up for the Number Community’s proposal as part of the IANA transition and the CRISP team had been interviewed by the US Government’s accountability office. While they were satisfied with their answers, there were a lot of assumptions people had about the community’s accountability that were not correct. A lot of CCWG-Accountability’s work had come back to the RIPE community as well, and the CCWG wanted to impose their own accountability measures onto RIPE. RIPE didn’t have anything to hide and didn’t need to be in a defensive position. Malcolm agreed with Filiz and Nurani. He suggested they identify what they were trying to do with these structures – what values they were trying to uphold, such as transparency or openness. Once these values had been identified, they could identify the mechanisms that were used to achieve them and provide an overview of how they might be improved. Athina said there was an understanding that the RIPE community was accountable and did have its documents in place. Maybe they needed to review what was there and see if anything was missing. RIPE had to be able to explain how it worked, so it wasn’t seen as avoiding accountability questions. She added that they were noting everyone’s comments and could use this to create a consistent scope. Paul replied to Alexander’s earlier comment that RIPE didn’t have the accountability of other entities. He said that after the transition RIPE was now the body that made important decisions and this had exacerbated things. It was important to get this accountability effort off the ground, because they needed to be looking at things that were further off. He said they needed to separate CCWG-Accountability from RIPE accountability. **Action Item: Paul said the RIPE NCC could examine areas to see where they already had accountability features in place. If they could map this out and show it to the Task Force, they could use this as a starting point to work from. Malcolm supported Paul’s suggestion. Athina said they could discuss this further on the mailing list. 4) Deliverables Athina understood that the deliverables would be the review they would make, along with any new documentation that would be needed. Malcolm said they could break this down into two separate categories: 1) A review of how things currently stood, which would result in a report with recommendations. 2) Communications materials for different audiences (to be developed after the review was completed). Some of this would be for external audiences like governments, and some would be for the RIPE community itself, particularly newcomers. He hoped the RIPE NCC could do the heavy lifting on the development of these materials. Athina said the RIPE NCC was committed to providing any materials that would be needed. Nurani agreed with Malcolm – mapping, review, suggested improvements, and communications efforts (noting efforts might involve more than just materials). They should also consider the possibility of an external view – which might help them to identify blind spots or gaps. This neutral party would have to chosen carefully. William agreed with Malcolm and Nurani and said the review should include recommendations. A third party would add credibility as a stop-gap to ensure they weren’t missing key pieces. The deliverable should be an accountability scorecard or some measure – because accountability was not a finite value but something that would change over time. He said they should also think about community policies that might need to be established or maintained, possibly by a WG. This was something to consider, though it might be that accountability was just in the community’s DNA and wouldn’t require a policy. 5) Openness and transparency Athina asked how they wanted to operate in terms of allowing outside observers to subscribe/participate on the mailing list or attend Task Force calls. Malcolm contrasted the models of RIPE WGs that were open to participation by anyone (including casual one-off participation) – vs the CCWG – where there was open participation with no limitations, but you had to officially join. While he thought the Task Force should always be open, he didn’t have a strong view on which model should be used. Nurani said they should report back to the community and the material should be publicly archived. Her only concern was if there was information that came up in a review or external report that would put the RIPE community in a difficult position – they would need to handle this in a sensitive way. She could see why they might not want to allow outside comments on a conference call, but a good chair could handle this. She supported generally being as open as possible. Filiz agreed that membership should remain open. But if people were not members, they should be limited to observing. She didn’t want a situation where there was interference from observers who were missing context. She agreed they could allow observers to make comments at the end of meetings if they had good chairs. She suggested they open the mailing list for posts so the Task Force could receive comments from observers – but make it so that observers couldn’t receive emails from the list. Athina noted that they would still have access to the public archives. Alexander noted that they had no deliverables to make “open” which was why he suggested they postpone this question. 6) Information for website Athina noted that other Task Forces typically included things like scope, participants, email archives, etc. Given that they had no scope at this point, she suggested they include on this page the structure of the Task Force along with participants’ names. She said they would develop something and share this with the Task Force. 7) Next meeting call It was agreed that they would run the meetings monthly, but would have one more meeting in December. Athina said she would create a doodle poll and share it with the group. 8) AOB Filiz said they could move the chair selection discussion to the next meeting. The group agreed. Athina said this would be an agenda point for the next meeting, and they could have some discussion on the mailing list to prepare. END OF MEETING. Action Items 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.