Well I look forward to you making suggestions on how this can be done. As I said before, there should be a role for this WG in developing/discussing requirements, reviewing progress and so on. Well, I already mentioned online member surveys. This can be good method of interaction between members and RIPE NCC / this WG. If there are several things to develop and limited resourcess, we can ask members about their own priorities. We can ask members, which new functionality they would like to have on LIR portal in these surveys in addition. For example - i would like to have access to ticket details on LIR portal, it's one feature I miss.
There's a balance here Daniel. Of course the NCC could publish everything. But I very much doubt this will actually help: who'd have the time or inclination to read all of that stuff? All of us have day jobs. :-) It would very probably lead to the sort of LIR micro-management by mailing list or organisational paralysis that we agree is undesirable. At the very least, I'd expect members to complain about money being wasted pumping out so much unwanted and unread detail. You can give this option. Nobody will read ALL of this stuf. But if someone is interested in partucular document, he can just look. Complains about micromanagement are just phobia. I just think organisations like RIPE NCC should be to their members open and transparent. This means, that member can review, how particular public policy is implemented inside RIPE NCC processes. I believe, that if there's nothing wrong to hide, nobody will try to micromanage over lists.
Broadly speaking the current level of detail is just about right IMO. If members generally wanted more information I'm sure they would have asked for that and more detail would be forthcoming. That doesn't mean more information can't be provided. And if there were regular or repeated requests for more detailed reports from the NCC, they would pretty soon be getting published as a matter of routine. Over to you and the rest of the membership.... Recently I found, that general audit policy mentioned in RIPE-423 has some internal implementation document describing how to audit some LIR. There's no reason to hide documents like this. And this is only (real) example. How many other public RIPE policies have some internal "implementation" document, which is not public? Why should be documents like this hidden?
So rather than go on here about how the NCC or this WG should/could do A or B, which is all very well in theory, how about turning that into practical suggestions or requests? For instance, you say you want members to have some input into requirements for the LIR portal. Fine. Please make some suggestions about how that discussion could be done. Better still, suggest a process for that so this WG has got something to consider instead of trying to deal with this in the abstract. We seem to be going round in circles here. In general - survey is the first answer. Probably this should be done in two stages, in first we can ask members generally, what features they would like to have on portal. After evaluation, second survey we can ask members for priorities of frequently asked features, this step can be skipped in some cases (if sufficient resources are available). I have several sugestions about some enhancements. But I'm not sure, if just posting them here will tend to real implementation.
Perhaps. Assuming there's consensus on what's meant by significant. FWIW the NCC chairman said at the May AGM that adding e-voting to the LIR portal was estimated to cost €150K. Is that significant? It's around 1% of the annual turnover. It's not little amount of money. At least in accordance to fact, that many percent of turnover we spent in day-to-day operation, staff and so on. We have to look at this amount from the perspective of budget we have available for all new developments. Not only from perspective of whole turnover, where mandatory expenses are calculated.
I'm not sure member surveys are the answer here. Or that only the interested will respond. Still, it's worth trying... Yes, you're true here. But there's better some interaction rather than none. Same thing aplies to RIPE NCC meetings - only interested people attends. Mailing list in general is not realy usable for aggregation of requests. This mailing list I think many members doesn't watch at all. We have statistical comparison of live meetings and online surveys already.
The sort of thing I had in mind was a simplified and lightweight version of the PDP. A proposal for a new project or service emerges somehow. A draft requirements document is produced. It gets discussed and refined on this list. When the Chairs of this WG declare consensus, the proposal goes forward the NCC to implementation after getting board approval. Again - I think many LIRs aren't avare about importance of this list. And watching several mailing lists in parallel isn't easy. And isn't easy to orientate here. This can be barrier for many LIR actively participate on PDP. Well, but there're some general questions, which can be asked in general (not only in specific WG mailing list). This is another argument for general surveys.
Indeed. This is a concern and something is being done about it. The intention is to have an e-voting system in place for the 2010 AGM. Provided the membership reaches consensus and approves a scheme. I saw this, and I hope this will be approved :-)
Maybe some informational newsletter issued periodically (one per quarter, for example) going to general list shortly informing about active work on policies in each WG should be solution helping with better involvement of members. With regards, Daniel