Extract from TERENA Annual Report 1997 Volume II: Secretariat Report Introduction According to Article 14.3 of the TERENA Statutes the President shall submit to a meeting of the General Assembly in the first half of the year "the Annual Report of the TERENA Executive Committee which shall include a report on the Secretariat". Like last year, the Annual Report on the year 1997 comes in two volumes. Volume I is a printed booklet which will be distributed widely and serves as a public relations instrument for the association. Volume II is the report on the Secretariat. The split-off of the RIPE NCC The preparations for the establishment of the RIPE NCC as a separate legal entity were a major item of attention in 1997. Not only took these preparations much time of the Secretariat staff, but the work packages of various staff members were significantl y effected by this coming change. Personnel policy Much attention has been given to developing a personnel policy for the Secretariat. A system of annual assessment interviews was introduced, with follow-up meetings half-way through the year. The introduction of this system initially caused some unrest among the staff, especially at the 1996 assessment round. However, the mid-year interv iews and the 1997 assessment interviews went much more smoothly, and once used to the system most staff members appreciate its usefulness as a management tool. With the help of an expert external consultant, job descriptions were made for all functions in the Singel 466-468 staff and for the RIPE NCC Manager. On the basis of a market comparison the consultant then development salary scales for these functions. The new salary scales were the last element of the new TERENA Terms of Employment. Much work had been done in preparation for these new Terms of Employment. The new Terms, including the salary scales, were approved by the TERENA Executive Committee in De cember 1997 and came into force in January 1998. Secretary General The Secretary General holds the general responsibility for the running of the TERENA Secretariat. He promotes in particular TERENA's relations with external bodies, such as the European Commission and national governments and funding agencies. Karel Vietsch had been serving as Secretary General on the basis of a one-year secondment contract between TERENA and his employer, the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. This secondment contract expired on 28 February 1997. Shortly b efore the Executive Committee and Karel reached agreement on his employment with TERENA, and he continued as a TERENA employee from 1 March 1997. Technical Staff The Technical Staff support the TERENA Technical Programme. In particular they support the Convenors of Working Groups and the Leaders of Task Forces, and they are the contact persons for the TERENA projects. Also they give presentations on TERENA's work at various events and they teach at TERENA workshops. John Dyer served as Chief Technical Officer on the basis of a secondment contract between TERENA and his employer UKERNA. John provided direction to the TERENA Technical Programme, managed the Technical Staff and served as Secretary to the TERENA Technica l Committee. He was the Project Manager of the SCIMITAR project, provided TERENA's contribution to the CRII project and presented TERENA at a number of conferences. He left TERENA on 1 October 1997 to return to UKERNA. John Martin, TERENA's longest serving Project Development Officer, has been based in Glasgow since January 1996. During 1997 John was involved particularly with the SIRCE pilot and other security activities. He was in charge of the NATO Advanced Networkin g Workshop in Edinburgh in May. A fter October 1st he took over most of the tasks of the Chief Technical Officer while this function was vacant. Peter Valkenburg has been a Project Development Officer since May 1996. He has a major role in the work for the SCIMITAR project. His other tasks are mainly in the areas of information systems and user support. In particular the GNRT project and the Web indexing activities have been major points of attention for Peter during 1997. Kevin Meynell has been serving as a Project Development Officer since 1 February 1997, on the basis of a secondment contract between TERENA and his employer UKERNA. Kevin succeeded Ariel Sobelman, who had left on 31 December 1996. Kevin's main activities were in the TF-TEN and TF-ETM task forces. Peter Heijmens Visser took care of Automation Support on a part-time basis and was in charge of the LAN. He served as the TERENA postmaster and took care of mail related issues. At the end of the year there were two vacancies in the Technical Staff: the post of Chief Technical Officer and a half-time function for IT Support Officer. For both functions capable candidates were selected who would take up their respective functions early in 1998. Administrative Staff The Administrative Staff supports all TERENA activities, including membership issues, conferences, administrative support to projects, public relations and administrative support to the TERENA services. Fay Howard served as Interim Executive Officer, having taken over the tasks from Marieke Dekker McClure who was on leave of absence during the first half of the reporting year. Fay provided support to the TERENA Executive Committee and the General Assembl y, and took care of membership matters and of the overall organisation and co-ordination of the JENC8 conference. She also provided management to various activities involving accounting and legal liaison. Fay left her temporary position at TERENA on 1 Sep tember 1997. Marieke Dekker McClure returned from a one-year leave of absence on 15 July 1997. She took up the function of Chief Administrative Officer, a new function which had been created following some changes in responsibilities and which had been taken up in the job description and evaluation process described above. Marieke took over the management of the Administrative Staff, and the support of the TERENA Executive Committee and the General Assembly. The preparations for the TERENA Conference in 1998 in Dresde n were major item of attention for Marieke towards the end of the year. Paul Rendek continued as PR and Conference Officer. He supported the preparations for the JENC8 conference, in particular by providing support to the Programme Committee. During the year Paul has been taking on more general public relations tasks. Mina Janssen, TERENA's Personnel and Organisation Officer, left on 1 April 1997. First as a temp and later (from 19 June until 1 September 1997) as a TERENA employee, Hansko Hagen took over the personnel related tasks. Because most of the personnel work w as related to RIPE NCC staff members, it was decided to create a function of Personnel Officer in the RIPE NCC staff, with that person providing services to the entire TERENA organisation. This new function was filled on 1 July 1997 with the appointment of Angela MacLeod. The other, non personnel related tasks of the Personnel and Organisation Officer were taken over by the Chief Administrative Officer, the Bookkeeper and the Secretary. Andrea Kramer continued as TERENA's Bookkeeper. She took care of bookkeeping duties in general and provided accounting and financial reporting. Andrea's workload was reduced when early in the year a separate bookkeeper for the RIPE NCC was appointed. This provided the opportunity for Andrea to take on additional tasks and greater responsibilities. Towards the end of the year it became clear that the TERENA Secretary, Madeleine Oberholzer would be leaving on 1 January 1998. A successor was found in Carol de Groot-Crone, who started work on 17 November 1997. The General Office Assistant, Tanja Christensen, resigned early in the year. On 15 January 1997 she was succeeded by Thalia Lesener. After the end of Thalia's contract on 15 July 1997 it was decided to leave this position vacant. RIPE NCC Staff The RIPE NCC Staff is responsible for providing the RIPE NCC services. The structure of the RIPE NCC staff remained unchanged in 1997. Manager Daniel Karrenberg continued as the RIPE NCC Manager. Registration Department Mirjam Kühne continued as Manager Registration Services. Because of the increasing size of the tasks and the number of staff, three Hostmasters were given special responsibilities: on 1 May 1997 John Crain was promoted to Quality Assurance Manager, and on 1 October 1997 Nick Reid and Paula Caslav became Audit Support and Workflow Co-ordinator and Quality Management Administrator respectively. Els Willems, Lee Wilmot, Eamonn McGuinness and Jon Bredo Øveraas continued as Hostmasters. Pepa Tejedor joined as a new Hostmaster on 24 March, Jaco Lockhorst on 14 April, and Sabrina Waschke and Julia Edwards on 1 September. Engineering Department Carol Orange continued as Manager Engineering Department. Geert Jan de Groot, who had served the RIPE NCC as a Network Engineer for a number of years, left on 5 July 1997. Two new positions for Scientific Programmers were created, and they were filled by Henk Uijterwaal and Olaf Kolkman from 14 April 1997. Maldwyn Morris, who had been working as an external consultant to the RIPE NCC before, joined as a Network Engineer on 1 March 1997, and Monica Cortes and Joao Damas joined as new Network Engineers on 1 5 September 1997. Administration Department Paul Ridley continued as Business Manager. Angela MacLeod was appointed as Personnel Officer on 1 July 1997, serving the whole of the TERENA organisation until the end of the year. Karen Kranen joined as RIPE NCC Bookkeeper on 1 February 1997; initially s he was based part-time in the TERENA Secretariat office, taking over RIPE NCC related tasks there, and later she moved full-time to the RIPE NCC office. Naomi de Bruijn continued as a Secretary and Mandy Jonkers joined as a new Secretary from 12 May 1997. Martijn Schuuring was employed for Financial Support from 19 November 1997, on an on-call basis. RIPE NCC Report December 1997 The RIPE Network Co-Ordination Centre performs its activities for the benefit of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Europe and the surrounding areas; primarily activities that the ISPs need to organise as a group, although they may be competing with each other in other areas. The RIPE NCC must therefore observe strict neutrality and impartiality with respect to individual service providers. In particular, it refrains from activities that are clearly in the domain of the ISPs themselves. Activities are defined, performed, discussed and evaluated in an open manner. Results of activities such as software tools are made available to the public. Budgets as well as actual income and expenditure are published. Individual data will be kept in confidence where required. For example, the amounts of address space allocated and assigned are published, as are database entries of individual assignments including the relevant contact data; however, the information supporting individual assignment requests is kept in strict confidence. While an activity may result in services being provided to an individual ISP, performing the activity as a whole must benefit the European ISPs as a group. For example, address space registration services are provided to ISPs individually but the common activity as such benefits all ISPs by distributing address space according to common standards as well as maintaining a neutral and accessible registry. Key activities provided by the RIPE NCC for its contributors include: - Maintenance of the RIPE Network Management Database The Role of - Regional Internet Registry Domain Name System (DNS) co-ordination - Maintenance of the RIPE document store. The growth of the European Internet Industry as a direct bearing on the operations and future of the RIPE NCC and as such is carefully monitored. An indicator of this growth is the number of individual European Internet hosts registered in the DNS. The RIPE NCC records this data and publishes the count on a monthly basis. The growth for 1997 matched that of 1996 and can still be considered rapid and linear. The accuracy of this information is however slightly questionable due to the increasing number of hidden hosts such as those using generic top level domains (for example .com) or those hidden behind fire walls. Another indicator of the growth of the industry is the number of local Internet Registries (local IRs) in Europe and the surrounding areas, RIPE NCC’s Contributors. The growth in the number of local IRs, which the RIPE NCC closely monitors, has continued to be linear throughout 1997. At this growth rate one new local IR joins the RIPE NCC every calendar day, resulting in a total of 905 local IRs being Contributors of the RIPE NCC at the end of 1997. The increase in the number of local IRs has a directly proportional effect on the RIPE NCC workload and the RIPE NCC’s growth closely matches it. RIPE NCC Management Structure The internal management structure of the RIPE NCC, which was first introduced in 1996, was consolidated during 1997. Many highly skilled new members of staff were taken on in order to be able to handle the increased workload. At the end of 1997, a total of 31 people were employed in the RIPE NCC staff. The increased workload and staff size made it necessary to introduce some more function differentiation. RIPE NCC Activities The activities carried out by the RIPE NCC during 1997 were in accordance with document ripe-146. The activities were classified to be either Registration Services activities, Other activities, New activities or Administration and Reporting activities. The Registration Services activities are probably the most visible of these four; they are carried out by the hostmasters. The aim of these activities is the allocation of Internet layer address space to European users. The 900 local IRs, which are in fact mostly Internet Service Providers and some large enterprises, assign address space locally to end users. The RIPE NCC in turn allocates address space to the local registries, supports them and ensures that address space assignment occurs in a fair and regular manner. Where needed, the RIPE NCC is also involved in large end user address space requests. The Other activities and New activities are primarily conducted by the engineering staff, who also provide technical support to all other activities of the organisation. Other activities mainly concern the RIPE database, but also include any other projects that the RIPE NCC Contributors deem worthy of more attention. New activities are proposed in the Activity Plan preceding the current year and are agreed to by the Contributors. Administration and Reporting activities are conducted by the administrative staff and aim to ensure the smooth running of the RIPE NCC, and to inform external and internal parties of relevant events and deployments. Some highlights and items of interest from 1997 are: - As described in one of the earlier editions of this Annual Report, preparations were made for the establishment of the RIPE NCC as a separate legal entity; this process was successfully completed and all responsibilities for the provision of the RIPE NCC services as well as all staff, assets and liabilities were transferred to the new RIPE NCC Association as from 1 January 1998. - The RIPE NCC ticketing system received an improved user interface - Certain information on individual tickets was put up on the RIPE NCC Web site - Three RIPE meetings were organised in 1997 – two in Amsterdam and one in Dublin - The test traffic measurement project made significant progress in 1997, with the initial results looking very promising - The Registration Services wait queue was kept down to an average of one day - Due to continuing growth and limited office space at the old location, the RIPE NCC staff moved to a new office in the Amsterdam city centre in June - A concerted effort was made to update and improve the RIPE NCC Web site Outlook for 1998 In a new legal framework, the RIPE NCC is entering 1998, which promises to be another very busy year. Activities will be based on the approved “RIPE NCC Activities and Expenditure 1998” document ripe-162. Many factors will influence what the year will hold, some of which are known and others that will remain surprises. In 1998, the RIPE NCC will put a focus on reliability and quality. To that end, the following activities will be promoted: - Replacement of the database software - Database consistency and security improvements - Improvement of internal operations resilience and security - Full implementation of workflow management for Registration Services - An increase in the number of local IR courses given - Monitoring of and giving input to the developments surrounding IANA As always the growth and development of the RIPE NCC will, to a large part, be dependant upon the growth and development of the Internet industry as a whole. This growth is expected to remain rapid during 1998. The RIPE NCC will however closely monitor this and match its own expansion to mirror the increasing workload.