When comparing RIPEs operation to the remaining RIR's around the globe, one can't help but draw the comparison that RIPE feels extremely bloated. If there are indeed a vast majority of LIR's that will be combined then so be it. Combine the LIR accounts and adjust your spending downward to fall in line with the needs of a smaller member base.

Daniel~

Dear all,

We have seen many comments on the RIPE NCC's budget, expenses and staffing. We take all those comments on board and they will be valuable when we start work on our Activity Plan and Budget 2024 later this year. However, for this consultation, we are working to come up with a charging scheme model that will work for the foreseeable future regardless of whether the budget is higher, lower or the same as the current one. I understand that there is a connection to our charging model, but the two consultation processes aim at different things. This one is about how we charge in a way that is acceptable to the membership. The later one is about what activities we carry out, as well as how much we pay for them and how we resource them. I note that currently over 50% of our costs (budget and actuals) are staff-related costs.

Having said that, we have seen some comments that might create misconceptions about our staff levels and our overall budget. For instance, our Community Projects Fund allocates 250,000 euro across all Good of the Internet projects rather than 250,000 euro for each project.

Also, there have been comments that fewer LIRs should have meant less work for the RIPE NCC. However, this has not proven to be the case for many reasons. We still need to ensure there is an accurate registry, and there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of transfers since IPv4 run-out that need proper due diligence from our side. Similarly, the effects of sanctions compliance on the RIPE NCC has been significant for our work on the registry side but also on the legal, financial and political fronts. We also need to put resources into ensuring a resilient and secure RPKI Trust Anchor. We have seen the need to greatly increase our security and compliance efforts to protect our infrastructure and your resources. Members across our service region have very different needs in terms of capacity building and training. We provide measurements on the Internet that we are uniquely placed to provide and we see much demand for those insights. And of course the effect of instability in the service region (war and dealing with ultra high-risk countries, for example) has caused uncertainty around being able to collect part of the membership fees and that has in turn increased our workload.

There are many other examples of how our workload has increased in recent years, and I encourage you to look at our Activity Plans over the past few years to see more details on this.

Best regards,

Hans Petter Holen
Managing Director
RIPE NCC

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