Hi Mirjam Sorry for yet another long email, but this is an important issue.
How RIPE NCC staff talk to the community and the extent to which they are involved in community activities has always been an internal matter for the RIPE NCC to determine. Historically, different managers had different views on how their staff get involved. Now you want to formalise it and define this in a RIPE document, it is open for the community to have their say. I partially support the idea of RIPE NCC staff participating in RIPE activities 'if they choose to do so'. The relationship between the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community is complex. I don't think such a brief and vague document can address this issue. Particularly considering the perceived neutrality of the RIPE NCC as a secretariat and executive body to the RIPE community. As I pointed out in my previous comment, there are no safeguards written into this document. If a member of staff expresses a personal opinion which goes against company policy or (senior) management views, or impacts on company plans, that member of staff must not be subject to any internal disciplinary procedures. Also members of staff must not be subjected to any pressure to (not) say something in public or to (not) take up a community position, for example a WG chair, because it is considered by the RIPE NCC to be in the interests of the company. It has also been mentioned that there is a (private?) internal document on how staff can/should/must engage with the community. In the interests of openness and transparency, that internal document should be published as a RIPE NCC procedural document. Otherwise the community doesn't know the extent to which staff members are able to discuss issues with them in public. Once a staff member has made a comment, the thread may further develop until they find themselves with a conflict of interest between the direction the discussion is now going in and this internal set of rules or guidelines. Any RIPE community member may find themselves in a conflict situation between their personal view and that of their employer. But the fact that the RIPE NCC is the secretariat for the RIPE community and the executive body who implement and enforce RIPE policies may elevate such conflicts to a different level. I also noticed that this document puts the responsibility for avoiding such conflicts onto the staff members, "RIPE NCC staff need to act sensibly", "RIPE NCC staff shall take care". The tone of this document is suggesting that RIPE NCC staff will be allowed, even encouraged, to become more involved in RIPE community matters in the future, "how RIPE NCC staff can and should participate in the RIPE community". In the past such personal involvement seems to have either been discouraged or at best undefined or managed, for most of the staff. It is very rare to see a comment on a mailing list from a staff member who is not a manager, except for technical or legal announcements or responses to direct questions (which may need to be approved by a manager). In fact I have looked back at the archives for all RIPE mailing lists for this year and there are no such comments from any staff anywhere on any list. This new encouragement, by the RIPE NCC CEO, for RIPE NCC staff to freely engage with the RIPE community in public discussions and be more involved in community activities may therefore be considered as a change in the working conditions of the staff. Particularly in view of the potential for conflicts and the responsibility being on the staff to avoid such conflicts and no specified protection for staff if a conflict does arise. I believe this falls under Article 27 section d of the Dutch Works Council Act https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0002747/2023-02-18#HoofdstukIVA_Artikel27 The CEO may need consent from the Works Council at the RIPE NCC in order to implement this change in attitude and responsibility of the staff. The Works Council should seek confidential feedback from staff on how they feel about this potential change to their working conditions and responsibilities. Staff may need some training on how to engage with the community, avoiding conflicts, given the unique relationship, or how to address (the perception of) such conflicts if they should arise. Such a training scheme is also subject to Article 27 section f. If any new regulations need to be considered to protect staff from any consequences of conflicts if they follow this new encouragement to freely engage with the community, that may be subject to Article 27 sections j, g and e. So the RIPE NCC Works Council really needs to take a look at this. The bottom line is that encouraging staff to speak openly and publicly with the community has both benefits and risks. Staff have access to information that the public, and members, don't have. They can see the bigger picture and trends and practises in areas like resource allocations and usage patterns and ways in which the RIPE Database may be (mis)used. They can (and do) analyse data that the public can't even see. Sometimes the line between what you know from public data and what you know from working at the RIPE NCC can get blurred. Either all comments must be approved by management. Or staff must be allowed to speak openly and freely, expressing their personal views, without any sanctions, accepting that sometimes mistakes will be made and lines crossed. Daniel often comments on issues and makes it clear he is speaking personally and not for the RIPE NCC. But Daniel is in a privileged position. Will all staff be given the same privilege to express personal views? If they are expected to only express a collective company view then they may as well just appoint a company spokesperson to express that collective view. The rest of the staff 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? 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? 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. 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. 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. 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. I think some more thought is needed for this document. 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, <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: Mirjam Kuehne <[email protected]> > > Dear colleagues, > > The deadline for comments for the draft document “RIPE NCC Staff > Participation in the RIPE Community” [1] ended. Many thanks for all the > comments sent to the RIPE list. > > There was a lot of support for the document, especially for the > principle that RIPE NCC staff are part of the RIPE community. It is > great to see that RIPE NCC staff is welcome and valued by community > members. > > There were some suggestions to explicitly allow RIPE staff to take on > certain community roles. Other community members disagreed and cautioned > that this could lead to conflict of interests. Hans Petter Holen > clarified that there are also RIPE NCC internal guidelines for staff. > > There were no concrete suggestions for changes in the document. > I believe that the current version is ready for adoption and publication > as a RIPE Document and would like to confirm this. > > This is therefore a LAST CALL for comments, to expire on Monday 10 July > at 06:00 UTC (08:00 Amsterdam time). Unless there are some substantial > comments, I look forward to declaring consensus and arranging > publication shortly after that. > > Kind regards, > Mirjam Kühne > RIPE Chair > > [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 > > > > -- > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, get a password reminder, or change > your subscription options, please visit: > https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-list -- To unsubscribe from this mailing list, get a password reminder, or change your subscription options, please visit: https://lists.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/ripe-list
