Hi Jim, all,
Just re-sending my earlier comments, which will hopefully be clearer to
read.
Regards
William Sylvester
Chair Accountability Task Force
On 04/11/2018 18:56, Jim Reid wrote:
The TF are to be thanked for their hard work and producing a fairly
good report. The explanation of consensus is excellent and long
overdue. Well done for that.
However I'm sorry to say the report misses a key point and also
considers something that is out of scope and provides nothing to
support that position.
It also uses horrible American spelling in places -- center instead of
centre -- but that's nit-picking
First, the biggie. The report talks about how RIPE is accountable and
who it's accountable to, it does not explain what RIPE is accountable
*for*. I wonder if these considerations also need to be broken down and
documented for various components of RIPE -- Chair, WG Chairs, WG
Chairs Collective, Working Groups, Task Forces(!?), etc. The tables
starting on p10 don't do that IMO. They describe the functional roles
of these entities, not what they are accountable for or to who
When we sought feedback from the community, we were told that it was
better to avoid defining the scope of the RIPE community. This was
briefly covered in the report when we said this:
"Although RIPE’s scope has never been officially discussed and agreed
upon, and may change as circumstances change, there is a general
understanding that there are limits to the issues and problems it can
address. RIPE is not an unlimited body just because a problem exists
does not mean it is RIPE’s problem to solve." (Page 6).
Similarly, when we discussed values, we were told that the community
only really had hard agreement on the procedural values (e.g. open,
transparent, bottom-up, consensus).
So, in this sense, I think all we could really say is that RIPE is
accountable for ensuring that it follows its own processes and that
these align with this narrow set of core values (as opposed to any
specific outcomes - such as good policy or effective coordination
between network operators).
We had thought this was more or less covered in the first part of the
document. However, perhaps this was only implied and we can take another
look to see if it needs to be stated more explicitly.
Next, I strongly object to the recommendation that the process for
selecting WG chairs should be aligned. This is out of scope for the TF.
I fail to see how it fits with "potential gaps where RIPE
accountability could be improved or strengthened", which is the closest
vaguely suitable bullet point defining the TF's scope. Making that
assumption still doesn't put the recommendation in scope because the
reports says nothing about why or how aligning the selection process
would improve or strengthen things. IMO, such a move would do the very
opposite. Read on...
I would have expected the role of the TF here would have been to verify
(or not) that WG chairs were selected by fair, open and transparent
processes that had broad WG/community support. And if there were
problems, to identify them. All of that is missing. There's just a
recommendation that seems to have been teleported in from a parallel
universe without any context or explanation for its inclusion.
In fact the report contradicts itself because it earlier states that
aligning these procedures violates the principle of bottom-up
decision-making. So why make that recommendation and where's the
evidence to support it? Either RIPE has confidence in the bottom-up
approach or we don't. If the bottom-up approach is unsatisfactory for
deciding WG chair selection procedures (why?), what else at RIPE is it
no good for?
WG's are self-organising and autonomous. They decide their own
charters, who the (co)chairs are, what documents and policies get
developed, time-lines, consensus decisions, etc, etc. A top-down
directive -- from whom? -- saying WG chair appointment procedures must
be aligned goes against all of that.
It will also undermine another key principle: diversity. [Admittedly
that topic's out of scope for this Task Force.] The RIPE community
should be perfectly comfortable that its WGs do things differently.
That's a strength, not a weakness. Attempts to impose order on this
"organised chaos" are the start of a slippery slope that leads to an
institution that's in thrall to process. And look how those
organisations turn out.
A common appointment process is incompatible with RIPE's core values of
WG independence, autonomy and diversity. Now it might happen that WGs
may one day eventually converge on a common selection procedure -- my
bet is some time after the heat death of the universe -- but that has
to be a choice for each WG to make for itself. Without outside
interference. IMO the TF has no role or authority to get involved in
this. It does/did have a role to determine if the WG Chairs were
appointed in an open and transparent manner and that the appointees
were somehow accountable.
Previous (top-down) attempts to have a common selection process have
failed. IMO they always will. Getting WG consensus on any sort of
selection process is already hard. I know. I've had to do it. Twice. I
would prefer WGs spent their time and energies on productive work
instead of bickering over process minutae that will just go on and on
and on.
We take your point. However, we would suggest that just as there is a
single PDP that applies to all working groups, and a requirement that
the communitiy's policies are published as RIPE Documents - there are
accountability benefits from having consistency in some aspects. You can
still have a bottom-up community with a shared PDP.
With that being said, this was only a recommendation for the community
to consider.
It would be much less contentious for the report to say something like
"The TF thinks a common WG chair selection process might be nice, but
accept that has to be a matter for each WG to decide on its own by
itself."
This is very much the spirit we would like the community to take our
recomendations in (though in most cases we're talking about the RIPE
community rather than WGs).
I also object to the use of the word "believe" in various places. That
suggests a faith-based assessment rather than an evidence-based
decision. Matters of belief have no place in RIPE documents.
