Thanks.

Le vendredi 7 juillet 2023, denis walker <ripedenis@gmail.com> a écrit :

Hi Mirjam

Sorry for yet another long email, but this is an important issue.

Hi Denis,

Thanks for raising such interesting issues, brother.

[...]

The bottom line is that encouraging staff to speak openly and publicly
with the community has both benefits and risks. [...]

...agreed!

[...]

don't need to be involved. If a staff member is a WG chair can they
operate completely independently from any collective company view,
even if that means opposing a company view if that is in the best
interests of the WG, without any penalty?

How to address this risk?

Encouraging staff to be more involved in RIPE community activities is
a sensitive issue for the staff. It needs more than a couple of
paragraphs and some vague principles. This document looks to have been
written from a community perspective, "welcomed by the RIPE
community". Is it welcomed by the staff? Has anyone asked them? Works
Council or Senior Management? Or has it just been assumed the staff
welcome being in both camps?

A good opportunity to test the assumed *principle*.

Do staff want to be able to put forward
an idea, argue strongly in favour of it, implement it, then take the
blame if it is not right? I've been there and done that and it's not a
nice place to be.

...i'm not a RIPE NCC Staff! i'm curious to know

their answers; even an anonymised version would

suffice.

Finally I would like to comment on the principles in this document. I
have said many times...wording in RIPE documents is important. I am a
native English speaker and an analyst with OCD, so I do see things in
words more easily. But the NCC has a whole team of professional,
English speaking, communications experts. Perhaps they are not used
now to review these docs. Your principle No 2 "RIPE NCC staff
expertise is valuable to and welcomed by the RIPE community." cannot
be a recommended principle. It can be a supporting fact. But if you
recommend, as a principle, that staff expertise is welcomed by the
community, this becomes an instruction to the community that they must
welcome this expertise. That is what these words actually say.

...i welcome it! but i expect a RIPE NCC Staff to be

both protected and prevented to put the RIR org in

danger; while acting selfishnessly. Training and

capacity building would certainly be of great help

here, i agree.

Lastly, your principle No 1 may have unexpected consequences. "RIPE
NCC staff are part of the community and may participate in RIPE
activities on the same terms as anyone else.". You make no exceptions
here, "same terms as anyone else". So a RIPE NCC staff member can be
part of a task force, be a WG chair, be the RIPE chair (if it is no
longer a full time, paid position), be a member of the next NomCom,
make policy proposals, argue for or against policy proposals. So
consider this possible scenario. A staff member could make a policy
proposal. Other staff members could argue strongly in support of this
proposal. Consensus could be declared by a WG chair who is a staff
member. Any appeal would end up with the RIPE chair who could also be
a staff member. The policy will then be implemented and enforced by
the RIPE NCC staff. All of these people could be influenced by RIPE
NCC internal company policy and allowed time within working hours to
do all this. They are all FTEs paid for by the RIPE NCC membership and
expected to be following RIPE activities anyway, perhaps more closely
than FTEs of member companies. This is a theoretical scenario.

Indeed, it's sadly an unexpected & undesirable side

effect! at least for me :'-(

How to, safely, prevent it to happen?

But it does raise the question of how independent and neutral will the RIPE
NCC be seen as, if it's staff can be so involved in the bottom up
policy process at every level, to the point of dominating and
controlling, considering the often lack of other community member
involvement.

...for me, quantity alone would not satisfactorily

address the issue. Where, quality & appropriate

*safeguards* would likely achieve the objective,

imho!

But! which *safeguards*? that's a question i would

like to get answers from others with more clue...

:-)

I think some more thought is needed for this document.

...i actually agree too!

Thanks for your useful and detailed explanation

of the issues raised, dear Denis.

Shalom,

--sb.

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG
member of RIPE community
former RIPE NCC staff member
former chair RIPE NCC Works Council
(for full disclosure)

On Fri, 30 Jun 2023 at 12:00, <ripe-list-request@ripe.net> wrote:
>
> From: Mirjam Kuehne <mir@zu-hause.nl>
>
> [...]
>
> [1] RIPE NCC Staff Participation in the RIPE Community
> https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-documents/other-documents/ripe-ncc-staff-participation-in-the-ripe-community
>
> [...]

Best Regards !
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