CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Give us one or two more minutes and then we should be ready to start. Is every one of us here? We are complete.
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Well, I guess, with that, as we are also five minutes past six, but our friend with his favourite Working Group was running over, so, with that, we'll start.
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Welcome to the RIPE 82 General Meeting. We have a regular agenda. There are one or two highlights which are worthwhile to note.
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One is regular election in May, we will come back to that, we will talk more than usual about the charging scheme, so we actually have Ondrej with two presentations about it, and we will go more into that detail. And we have an open mic session. What we had in the past was that at every point of the agenda you could ask questions and comments, but we didn't have a section for generic ones, where basically you could make a comment or a question to topics which were not presented.
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So we wanted to give that opportunity and that would be number 4 after my presentation.
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And with that, let's actually go to the administrative part.
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And the disclaimers. This is not particularly anything new, but we have it since three, four, five meetings. With that, I am appointing Athina from the NCC as the secretary for this GM, so if someone has objections to the minutes, then they can follow the process. So, with that, we make this official, I guess.
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The process is outlined here on the page, but it is actually also outlined on the web page, and not a particularly new thing either.
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Very quickly here. One generic thing for today. You can ask questions via two different ways today: One is you can put it in the Q&A section and they get read by the NCC. You can also ask for becoming a speaker, and then the idea is that we promote you to speaker and then you can ask it in the video as well.
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One part to mention, which actually is mainly a thank‑you component; you might have seen on the mailing list that we had a Code of Conduct for the EB candidates, which we elect this week, and I want to say thank you to the people who have worked on the Code of Conduct and putting that all together and helping us with that. So thank you a lot, much appreciated.
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And with that, we come to agenda item number 2, which is the report from the RIPE NCC Managing Director, Hans Petter.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you very much, Christian. I am being told that the slots for all the requested media are taken, so if you unshare your presentation, I can share mine. Thank you.
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And if only it had been sorted in number order, but I could find it anyway.
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So, yes, thank you very much. So, I am Hans Petter Holen, Managing Director of the RIPE NCC, and usually my presentation have only been in the Services Working Group, but this time we also created a spot in the GM for the Managing Director's report. I will not repeat what I did in the Services Working Group, but I will briefly go through the findings or the highlights from the annual report.
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And this then creates a venue for questions and answers to my ‑‑ to the annual report here in the GM itself.
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At the end of 2020, we had 23,569 active LIRs, while we had 19,843 active members. So you see here, which is very important when we come to discussing the charging scheme, a big difference between the active LIRs, which is what we charge for, and the membership. We got 1,295 new LIRs through 2020, spread over 112 countries. You can see the top ten member countries on the right.
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The membership during the year declined from 25,000 to 23,000 LIRs. The total income was €40,000,000, 7% higher than budgeted, and the reason that we have, in the past, always gone over budget on income is the high set‑up fee for new LIRs and that we have been always been very conservative in budgeting new LIRs. Now, we do see that, moving ahead, the growth is not going to be what it was in the past, so this is something to keep an eye on in the future.
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The expenditure was a health, actually, €29,000,000, 16% under budget, and the main reason for that, of course you, will see in the financial presentation later on, is lack of travel and events due to Covid.
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Transition to the road work was one of the highlights of last year, virtual engagement really took the centre of the stage. RPKI resiliency, we have started focusing on that but there is more work to be done. Celebrated ten years of RIPEstat and launched the RIPE NCC certified professional exams. Those were the main highlights of last year.
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Looking into the annual report, you will also see that there are risks and uncertainties acknowledged in the report. There is no framework in place to do a risk assessment. It's revalidated every year and reported to the Board. The main risks were in the organisational, legal and HR area, and, on the organisational risk, it's really the regulatory risks that is the main one there, and we are working to develop a regulatory play book there, so we are to some level prepared on what might be coming.
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On the legal side, the controls to ensure compliance with EU sanctions and strengthen the process for monitoring of natural persons and ultimate beneficiary owners of our members is an important mitigation here.
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And on the HR side, we have done a huge effort to change the secondary benefit programme and are working on optimising other HR processes.
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And last but not least, the ongoing work in improving the security measured by the critical security control scores has had high focus in the year that passed.
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We, then, in the activity plan and budget for 2020, said that we would investigate moving technical infrastructure to cost effective Cloud solutions, and we have done that investigation, so now we're in the phase of considering moves, and we had a lot of very useful feedback ‑ so thank you for that ‑ in the previous Services Working Group, and this is something that we will of course take into account internally and this will be one of the main topics on the June board meeting. So that you know that your feedback will be taken into account moving forward here.
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Move towards active registry data checks. That's still ongoing.
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Improve the stability and resilience of RPKI as one of the five global trust anchors. That's still ongoing.
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And improve the user experience across RIPE NCC platforms and applications. That's also still ongoing.
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Develop software probes for RIPE Atlas. That activity has been completed, and the software probes have been launched.
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We also have ongoing activities going into the activity plan and budget 2021. Proactive registry monitoring, further RPKI resiliency improvements, transitioning services to Cloud solutions, expansions of our auth DNS services, ensuring full compliance with sanctions, developing more e‑learning content, translating selected documents and going towards ISO 27001 certification. I think most of this, if not all topics, have been covered in other presentations during this week.
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As usual, the activity plan and budget is a yearly cycle. We are now at the May meeting where we are voting on a charging scheme at the GM. Then, in September, we will publish a draft activity plan and budget for 2022 and, just a heads‑up, we really want your input on that. And then it will be discussed at the GM in November, and the final version of activity plan and budget for 2022 will then be approved by the board in December.
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Work with us. As you will see, if you had a look this year's budget versus last year's budget, we have increased the head counts there, and we also had some vacant positions, so there are quite a few open positions; most notably, we're looking for a chief community officer. We had the first round of interviews by the recruitment company and we are moving into the second round of interviews in a couple of weeks, so hopefully we will see a conclusion on that recruitment process by, hopefully, early July.
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There other positions there, as has been mentioned in several places, so if you feel like working for us or have somebody who wants to work for us, feel free to have a look there.
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Last but not least, as you will see in the presentation after the next, the financial presentation this time will not be made by Gwen. Gwen, our CFO, has decided to leave the RIPE NCC. She has worked with us since 2017, I think, and she has done a great job in really pushing the financial department and the rest of the RIPE NCC into more critical thinking, looking at why we do things and see how we can improve them. She has introduced the risk awareness programme, new financial governance, new P&L design, simplified the budged and activity reports, started a lot of activities here. She also served as interim CEO, together with Felipe and Kaveh, and has done a tremendous job in that, so I really want to thank her. She is not transitioning out, she is still working at the RIPE NCC towards the end of June, but she is now serving as an advisor to me and to the finance manager moving forward.
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So, with that, thank you very much, Gwen.
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And I think that brings me to my last slide. Are there any questions?
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Any questions? There were a lot of questions in the Services Working Group so probably we are fine for the time being. Okay. Then we come to number 3, the report from the Executive Board, so from us.
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So, this is the Executive Board. You see everyone besides me because I would have to restart my browser, which doesn't seem to be a good idea to give camera permission during my presentation. So we'll try to fix that later on.
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But besides that, you see Falk. Can you wave? He is also up for re‑election. Ondrej, the Treasurer. Maria. Raymond. Me. Remco. That's very static. We've got to try that better the next time with the whole waving thing. And last but not least, Piotr, who is also up for re‑election.
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A little overview what we did since the last General Meeting.
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We had quite some board meetings. As you can see, the minutes, I think besides the last one because that was just last Friday, as ‑‑ you usually would find them on the website. And here a little overview of what we did.
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In the first one, 139, we reappointed Herve for the NRO NC. I want to thank Herve for doing that and supporting us and also the relationship is actually very good and he writes all these little updates to us that we know what they did and where they stand. So much appreciated. Thanks a lot.
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We removed the moderation from the Members Discuss mailing list. We put the Members Discuss at the time on moderation because it became a little bit too chaotic period during the last time, so in October we decided to take it away.
Then the next one was in December, we adopted the Code of Conduct for candidates for the Executive Board. We said thank you before for all the people who helped to create it. And we approved the publication of the activity plan and the management regulation of the RIPE NCC, and we reinstated the moderation of the Members Discuss mailing list at the time because it got a little bit too chaotic again, and so we put the list on moderation again.
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The next one, board meeting 141. That was actually this year, February. We reviewed the status regarding the sanctions and talked about this topic extensively with the NCC, and we discussed the option on consulting the membership for the charging scheme, and this is where, then, Ondrej will talk much more about it in his own presentation.
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The Executive Board meeting 142, in March. We decided to apply a low level risk ‑‑ we decided we have a low level risk appetite towards our operation and risk management. One of the things actually Gwen helped to introduce is an integrated risk management system, so we tracked the various risks we believe the NCC has in all the different aspects, and then we also choose how we want to deal with these risks and we decided that we are relatively conservative. I guess that doesn't come as a big surprise, because stability is more important than, you know, whatever.
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So, we went for a low level risk appetite.
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We discussed vendor, different vendor probes for RIPE Atlas. We adopted a board remuneration document. As you know, we are not remunerated, so this is all volunteered. But there are various parts, you know, which ‑‑ kind of policy and other parts, which we are using, which are documented there, and we never had a document where we wrote it down, so we thought it's a good idea to actually document it.
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We approved the submission of the financial report and the annual report for 2020.
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And that was actually a two‑day meeting, so we talked about the charging scheme again, looked into the draft agenda for the General Meeting and approved amendments to procedural documents.
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This was the time when we had a conversation again, what would we do with the members ‑‑ with the mailing list? And as you have seen now, we moved to moderation, we moved away from moderation, and then the question was: If we would actually moderate it or moderate a person and limit a person, how long would we do that? Is it one year, five years? And we actually never talked about that, so we decided that it would be one year, and, as this wasn't communicated from us before, we actually lifted it for the people which were under moderation at the given time so that they would have to trigger it once more to fall into that.
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Then board meeting 142, which was actually last Friday, the NCC board appointed Samani and Flavio for the community projects for Selection Committee, so that we have two new members there.
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This is the slide which we usually have. I actually asked Fergal to change the record, just to see, you know, that it looks kind of new. I am not sure if he actually did it, but these are the various things we do over the years. We give Hans Petter, the CEO, objectives. We are in regular contact with him. We get the NCC management in general, we of course have a corporate governance and fiduciary responsibility which we come up and follow and you see the activity plan and the budget from us. We also liaise and cooperate with other RIRs. That, I have to say, is in comparison to the years before, way more reduced, which has a lot to do with Covid, of course.
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These are the resolutions which we worked on here. We will not go through them now, because we will do that later and I will read them again in agenda point number 11.
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Executive Board elections. As I mentioned before, two members are up for re‑election. We also have three new ones, much appreciated, thanks for being a candidate. One of the parts I am interested in is, we were asked on chat and in the mailing list last time if we would give a plug form, so that instead of the members could just present themselves in two minutes as they will do via video today, that you actually have a chance to talk to them and go through a Q&A or probe them a little bit, especially if you don't know them, which we facilitated this week. The outcome was not on the high side. I think we were at around 30 people, of which five of the NCC staff or so. So, probably the open mic on the mailing list or in any other feedback, we would be interested if you have use for that, if you just ‑‑ it was new and you didn't see it coming, or if you actually think the videos are good enough and you read the platform statement and you do want to have an extra meeting for that. So feedback on that would be appreciated.
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That is, of course, a general statement. So, there are a couple of things you can do. You can elect board members which represent you. You have a chance today, as every May, but you also can give us feedback throughout the year, especially around charging scheme and activity plans, and whatever is on your chest, so please feel free and let us know, we are just as good as we know what you actually want and what we can do for you.
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These are the regular channels. It's the Members Discuss mailing list, which is usually used for charging schemes and other activity, so I think that actually works quite well, and once in a while someone sends an e‑mail, so please continue using that one.
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And finally, I also want to say thank you to Gwen, who is leaving. There are two takeaways from my side, why I want to say thank you, which made, at least for me, a big difference: Once was, as Hans Petter said, she was the interim manager with Kaveh and Felipe at the time before Hans Petter joined. So she had a lot of responsibilities and work, so very much appreciated. Thanks a lot, Gwen, for that.
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There is also the ‑‑ one of her babies, I think, is the IRM, the Integrated Risk Management, which, as I said, we use extensively, so I also want to say thank you for that one. And actually, Gwen, is here.
GWEN VAN BERNE: Yes. Thank you so much. I had a really good time. I just wanted to say that and share that.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks again, and wish you best of luck for your future endeavour.
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And with that, we take questions either to the presentation or we actually combine it with the open mic at the same time. And we can talk about various parts. So, please ‑‑
SPEAKER: I have got a question here from Brian Nisbet from HEAnet:
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"Has any consideration been given/decisions made in regard to better moderation of the Member Discuss list that allows for more rapid reaction to unfolding discussions and more rapid moderation decisions?"
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: I'm not sure if I understand, Brian, completely. So what we do right now is ‑‑ Brian.
BRIAN NISBET: Just to explain what I mean. Brian Nisbet. What we saw in relation to the Members Discuss issues that we had was that it took the Executive Board an extremely long time to react to conversations which were very unpleasant, I think, and should not have been on that list, meetings, days, discussions, and, you know, you and I and others had conversations about better moderation of the Members Discuss list, which is one of the front windows into the NCC. My concern is that while you have made some decision in relation to moderation practices, that if somebody starts something at nine o'clock on a Monday morning, it might be Wednesday before the exec board has come up with a response or decided to put things into moderation or otherwise. So this is my question, is: When something starts, who is moderating? Who is monitoring that list and how quickly can they react?
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thank you. Piotr, do you want to take it?
PIOTR STRZYZEWSKI: You put me a bit in a difficult situation here right now. I obviously can't moderate because I am standing for re‑election, but with regards to this situation, I am afraid that this is not that easy as it looks like, although I can communicate quite quickly with ‑‑ to staff members who actually can put someone on moderation, then it will be the wider decision needs to be made for this. So, right now, and I think this is reflected somewhere in the minutes from other board meetings, I am not a moderator because of the elections. So Remco took over that role, but as I said, we can communicate quite quickly with the staff members, put someone on hold for a second and then we will take the decision. I hope that answers your question.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: If I may answer that. We do have staff members monitoring the list also and we will call upon the contact person on the board when we see something. So, this is of course not a 24/7 monitoring service and it's not the only task that our legal department has, but we do have people both in web services and legal and in management that are on this list, and we do follow it and take action.
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We do, however, not have active monitoring and approval there, we have a trust‑based system so that mails go through and we have to take action. So whether that is something that we can continue with, depends on the membership I think.
BRIAN NISBET: If I may, and I'll just say this quickly. Thank you. But I feel that does not address my question, It does not address the situation and, as I have said repeatedly to Christian and other members of the board, I believe that this is a community that requires more active moderation, because we're into 2021, and communities require more active moderation, so I shall leave it there and hopefully look forward to more from the board on this matter in the future. Thank you.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thank you, Brian. Antony?
SPEAKER: I have another question here from Maximilian Whilhelm speaking for himself. And he is asking:
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"So it's only people who will be moderated in the future, not the whole mailing list?"
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Yes. That's correct, Piotr, right?
PIOTR STRZYZEWSKI: Yes, people, in general, but one cannot serve that somewhere... also subscribe some things to the... if you consider that most people also ‑‑ mail orders, is basically.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: As I presented before the ideas that the person has to ‑‑ gets moderated for one year. So this is the, whatever, the cool‑down time, if you want to call it like that.
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Any other questions, comments? Thank you ‑‑ ah, something came up. Let's see. Okay. And I see in the chat the comments from Danesh and Max, so thanks for the feedback.
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Good. Then, with that one, I hand over to point number 5, and Simon‑Jan, which will present the financial report.
SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: Yes. I cannot share my screen at this moment. Thank you. Can everybody hear me? Hello. Let me start with a short introduction. The financial report 2020, presented by myself. My name is Simon‑Jan Haytink. I started with the RIPE NCC in February 2003 as a finance intern, and here I am now, 18 years later, presenting the financial report at the General Meeting.
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So as you can imagine, this is a little bit of a moment for me. My position with the RIPE NCC is as financial manager reporting directly to Gwen. And I would like to take that moment to thank Gwen and Hans Petter and the board for giving me this opportunity to present, and, Gwen, thank you for all the works you have put in over the last years and the opportunities you have provided for the team and myself.
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So sorry to see you go, but nothing but respect for your decision; we will miss you. So let's get started.
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Our financial strategy. We have a non‑for profit funding model. Our funding strategy aims to generate sufficient income so we can fulfil our obligations in a stable and predictable manner. Equality between members in the current charging scheme reinforces simplicity and predictability and we are committed to maintaining a low‑risk profile.
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Our financial performance compared to the 2020 budget.
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Income is over budget, costs are under budget and we have more LIR counts than we anticipated. In short, the RIPE NCC is financially in a very sound position.
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2020 in numbers. Our income was 7% higher than projected, at €40.2 million. The total expenditure was 29.1 million, 16% under the budgeted 34.4. This is mainly due to the impact of Covid.
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Our average FTE for 2020 was 159 versus a budgeted 165.
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There is a surplus of 11.1 million euros in 2020, which we have redistributed to our members in 2001.
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LIR validation took place in line with expectation, from 25,125 to 23,569.
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Income from sign‑up fees drops to 2.5 million from 12.1 in 2019.
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And our capital expense ratio increased from 101% to 112, meaning that at the year end 2020 we had sufficient capital to cover 112% of the operating expenses.
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The impact of Covid‑19 on the financials: To facilitate our members for the possible hard times Covid may have created, we provided a payment extension of three months in April 2020.
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All the events and in‑person training courses from March 2020 onwards were cancelled. All travel was and remains suspended.
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And finally, the recruitment of staff has proven to be slower than we want.
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Payment behaviour during Covid‑19:
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5% to 10% of our LIR accounts seems to have taken advantage of the payment term extension of the 36% paid during the extension. In the percentage of closed LIR accounts due to non‑payment has not been affected by the extension and remained steady at 0.8%. Of course we do not know what the percentage would have been if no extension was provided.
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From the 1st May 2021, only 6% of membership.... outstanding.
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The 2021 payment behaviour again is very positive, confirming the healthy interest in our membership. So for that, members, we thank you.
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Moving on to the balance sheet. There remains a very healthy balance sheet, specifically the time we are in; we are in a very sound position financially.
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Out fixed financial assets do show a decline. However, the government bond value at €900,000 reached end of term in 2020. So taking this into account we still have an increase in value over asset portfolio. The payout of this bond included a cash at bank.
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In the next slide I will zoom in a bit more on or capital and liabilities.
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We have an increased reserve with the addition of 50% of the 2019 surplus. The surplus of 2020 declined compared to 2019, explained by the full redistribution of the 2020 surplus. Our capital remains stable. The redistribution is at the same level at 2018. In a non‑Covid 2020, I would expect the redistribution to be considerably lower.
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Last notable item are the other current liabilities. The difference is mainly explained by the payable taxes of 2019. The main item is a corporate income tax out of 29 which we paid in 2020.
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We ended up paying around 20% tax on the retained surplus. All in all, I am very happy to report a very healthy and robust financial position.
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LIRs in 2020.
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The anticipated LIR validation is reflected in a number of LIRs at year end. In total, 2,851 accounts closed and we had a steady addition of roughly 100 new LIRs per month, totalling 1,295 new LIRs in 2020. Q1, 2021, has again shown an increase with a net growth of 144 LIR accounts.
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The membership income versus average income per LIR accounts. Clearly 2019 was an exceptional year for income. 2020 has been, looking at income only, more of a normal year. Average income per LIR dropped from €1,900 to just slightly under €1,700 per LIR accounts.
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Explaining this difference is explained by declining percentage of the sign‑up fees and the total membership income. All in all, we can conclude a continued healthy interest in the membership of the RIPE NCC.
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Moving on from the expenses, I am happy to share that the costs are under control. Total expenditure has been €2.1 million, 16% below the budget of 34.4. 61% of the total costs have been personnel costs. We budgeted this at 54% of the total cost for 2020. The difference is again explained by Covid and not being able to spend as planned.
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Furthermore, the budget for 2021 is down 1 million compared to the 2020 budget.
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Zooming in on the differences between the budget and the actuals, totalling €5.4 million. Most significant items are: Personnel, 1 million under budget. Travel, also just 1 million under budget. Outreach and PR, just over €2 million euros under budget. Outreach and PR includes, amongst others, the RIPE meeting budget, regional meetings and on‑location training courses.
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To provide a complete overview of the average income in cost for LIR, I added this slide. Average expenses per LIR decreased from €1,232 to €1,276. If the full budget would have been spent, the average cost for LIR would have been just over the €1,400 annual membership fee.
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The procurement report 2020.
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To start, I would like to state that we fulfilled our disclosure obligations via the financial report on an annual basis. In presentation we will provide additional information on procurement as we promised to our members.
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In total, we had 12.8 million turnover for all our creditors, 1,876 invoices, which means, on average per invoice, €6,800. Of these invoices, 23 have been €100,000...... 42 of these invoices related to capital expenditure and they averaged €12,000 per invoice. Of these 42 invoices, 6 invoices were higher than €25,000.
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In total, we used 225 creditors, giving an average of €57,000 per creditor. To be clear, all of these numbers include VAT.
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Suppliers with a turnover of €100,000 or more.
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To be clear, this overview excludes all consultancy costs. As per our annual report 2020, we spent a total of 2.9 million on consultancy out of a 3.2 million budget. So, in total, we have 18 suppliers that received €100,000 or more in 2020, of which I will highlight a few:
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1.3 million to our pension provider, being 12 monthly invoices in 2020. IT housing concerns rental of physical space to store servers, network and storage equipment. These costs include general services such as power.
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Office rent and IT...
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The next nine in the top 18: €128,000 for laptops and ancillaries. This resulted on €105,000 on our balance sheet. The difference is explained by VAT. These costs originate from before Covid for Q1/2020. The majority of travel is booked and paid via a travel agent and again here all costs include VAT.
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Income and expenditure. Putting all the information together and compare it to previous years we can conclude, the yearly growth has tomorrow to an end in 2020. Regular member fee income is stable and healthy over the years. Covid and limited expenses in 2020. Resulting in a redistribution of 11.1 million euros to our members. All in all, stability and stable development of income in costs over the years.
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Capital and liquidity. We are balanced and healthy. We have a clearing house buffer to respond to uncertainties. Aim is to keep the capital expense ratio at 100%. It did, however, increase to 112 percent due to Covid. Expenses down and capital remained at the same level, but we are solvent and in a very robust financial position and therefore we are ready for the future.
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Executive Board remuneration. I would like to height that, by Dutch accounting standards, we are required to disclose remuneration of our Executive Board, and therefore an audit statement is included on page 23 of our 2020 financial report.
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The year ahead. We have a budget of €33.5 million for 2021. Hopefully this pandemic will be over soon and we can all get back to our normal lives. We expect to see a further LIR validation which might have an impact on our financials but we are prepared for this.
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We will continue to engage with our banks to resolve invoicing issues for members in countries impacted by sanctions. And we will ensure we can deliver our promise to all of our members. Negative interest rates are a concern, and therefore we will review our treasury statute in 2021, together with our Executive Board.
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And with that, I have reached the end of my presentation. Thank you for your time and attention and I am happy to answer any questions you have.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Let's start with Erik.
ERIK BAIS: Thanks, Simon. Can you go back to page number 6, about the late fees.
SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: The late payment?
ERIK BAIS: Yeah, this one. I had a discussion with Gwen already earlier, and there is a difference in the process currently about how the RIPE NCC is dealing with invoices that are being paid late, because the NCC is currently in the process charging a €2,000 reinstatement fee. The process itself, however, is that the member receives an e‑mail stating that the SSA is going to be cancelled. Now, if you cancel a contract, then it's ‑‑ you need to have a reinstatement fee. However, if the contract is cancelled and you pay a reinstatement fee, you need to resign the SSA again. And if the SSA is signed again, that means that you need to set up either a new LIR, where the old LIR and the old resources are gone, or, if the member retains the resources, it's not a reinstatement fee, because the Dutch law actually has maximum fee percentages based on the outstanding invoice which is 15% under €2,500 per incident, which means that instead of €2,000, the company can actually only invoice €210 max on a €1,400 invoice which is outstanding. Now, obviously I don't expect you to answer this currently. I do think that this is something that the board needs to have a look at, together with Athina, because this process needs to have a review, because currently it's not clear, if you look at the procedure and if you look at the procedure itself, I think it's about ten years old if not longer, but it clearly needs a review. It needs to be more precise, when is an invoice from the NCC late? And when is the LIR SSA going to be cancelled? Which also means that, at that point, the resources are to be deregistered.
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And if that point has come, that also means that the ‑‑ a new SSA needs to be signed. The new sign‑up fee needs to be set and then the new LIR can request a new /24 and go to the waiting list. So, yes, we need to have this clear because I have seen things go bad in the last year with a couple of LIRs. Some we can actually manage to, you know, sort out during the process, but I have also seen a couple of LIRs actually being deregistered completely where they actually had to resign a new LIR and actually request a /24.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: Thank you, Erik, for that. We had to have actually reviewed this based on your previous comments and I am happy to take it back to the Board for one more review. I think there are some different opinions on the process, as you stated. It is not clear that for the outstanding invoices now, that the 6% on the screen, they are now late, we are sending further notifications and at some point we will actually send them a letter of cancellation. The legal review has shown that in the membership, in the services agreement and in the Articles of Association, it describes exactly what is then happening, that the membership can be open again without resigning the membership agreement now maybe it would be better to make it clearer to actually add that additional paperwork but our legal assessment at the time was that that is, strictly speaking, not necessary. I'm happy to do an offline discussion with you on this to see that we get this entirely right.
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I also plan this year to do a bit more PR around when we reach certain phases to be open with the members saying now we have reached the stage with we will start to close down the number of members. We can't disclose the list of the members, then those of you who are connected knows that we have a month to rescues the remaining ones if somebody needs help. We do also send the reminder, we do contact upstreams, we do try to call them, we do an extensive job to do this, but of course we can always be better and if this is something that we can do to improve the process, yes of course we will do that.
ERIK BAIS: Thanks, Hans Petter, and I'll be more than happy to talk with you about this.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thank you, Erik. Antony.
ANTONY GOLLAN: I have got one question here from Maximilian, again speaking for himself. He is saying: "Did I get this correct, that the NCC was consulting for nearly €3,000,000? Did I get this correct, that the NCC bought consulting for nearly €3,000,000?"
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SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: The NCC had a budget for consultancy of €3.2 million in 2020 and spent 2.9 million. Correct.
SPEAKER: I have got another question from Terence from Darkness Reigns: "What effect, if any, would increased inflation or even hyper‑inflation have on the financial future of the RIPE NCC?"
SIMON‑JAN HAYTINK: That is a very good question. To be honest, I have actually never thought of that. So my answer would be a very shortly thought over answer. So, yeah ‑‑ that ‑‑
HANS PETTER HOLEN: I can add to that, that with the current set of, if the costs increase due to inflation, we will make a deficit within a year. Now, in the current setup, we can make a resolution at the GM to distribute the surplus but we can also make a resolution at the GM to cover a loss. So that would be one‑stop gap to do this, that the members would then simply vote to cover the lost.
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Now, if the members vote not to cover the loss, well then we have reserves that will cover the lost for a year and then we would have to discuss with the boards and with the members how to deal with this increased cost and then at the next GM either increase the membership fee or simply cover the loss by adding that to the members for the next year: So the mechanisms are in place, of course with situations with very high inflation are not pleasant to deal with but it should be possible since we have such large reserves.
REMCO VAN MOOK: One thing I would like to add is that we don't have a lot of different currencies, so most of the obligations that RIPE NCC have are in euros and most of our income is in euros, so inflation will cut both ways, and that's essential.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Any other questions? I guess the answer is no.
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Good. Then thanks a lot. Then we move on to agenda item number 6, and that is the the discharge of the board: That is resolution number 2, one of the things you can vote on today, and the board asks you to discharges us, as appears from the annual report 2020, which you just have seen and the financial report, and the voting will take place later in ‑‑ actually, I think agenda item number 11. And with that, I am handing over to Ondrej who will talk about the charging scheme and put a little bit into perspective what the board was thinking, what we have presented, a little bit of the history of the charging scheme and what our plans are.
We do not hear you, at least ‑‑ we hear some static noise.
ONDREJ FILIP: So actually I have two presentations, they are both related so actually I suggest to combine them and I'll take the Q&A after both of them because they are related, although they are both a little bit different topic.
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Before I start, I want to join in the word of thanks to Gwen because since I overtook the role of Treasurer from Remco, thank you very much Remco, Gwen was the closest ally in NCC for me so thank you very much Gwen for the cooperation and, you know, whatever your steps will go, I hope you will have good luck.
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With that, I will start my presentation. As I said, the first part will be about the proposed charging scheme for the year 2022. And the other one will be a little bit more general about the future but also I will talk a little bit about the history, just to explain the evolution of the whole thing.
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So, the proposed NCC charging scheme for the year 2022 is not radically different from the year 2021, as you will probably assume. We are a conservative kind of association and we need to take care of the finances of the association, and any radical change would require a much broader discussion among the membership, of course, which is the plan for the future.
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So, we propose to keep the annual fee of €1,400 per LIR account plus €50 per independent resource, and there is one change, and that's to reduce the signup fee from €2,000 to €1,000. Again, the charge for independent resource keep €50, there is nothing different, so it's ‑‑ by that I mean IPv4, IPv6 provider independent assignments, Anycast assignments, IPv4 and IPv6 IXP assignments, and legacy IPv4 resource registrations through a sponsoring LIR.
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As in the past, autonomous systems are excluded from this charge.
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So, the main goal for this small change in the charging scheme was to reduce some entry barrier to the new networks. You know, they increased naturally because previously we were able to serve the new members /22s while now we can just put them into a waiting queue and then offer them /24. So, that's a very different situation.
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Also, this fee is related to re‑opening of a closed LIR account. We had a short discussion about this in ‑‑ during the financial report. Such a situation doesn't happen very frequently, but we had about 220 re‑openings in 2019 and 53 of them in 2020.
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In the long term, the idea was to reduce the dependence of NCC on the signup fee because that fee is not so predictable as the recurring membership fee. Although of course with the slow down of influx of new members, this happened naturally. I think you could see in Simon's presentations that in 2009, the income from signup fee was a little bit more than €12,000,000, while in 2020, it was just 2.5 million euros. It's decreasing naturally and that means it's not so important for the RIPE NCC, so this change will definitely not harm the financial position of the RIPE NCC.
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And we expect roughly about 1,200 new LIR accounts, so if you read the numbers in the Simon's slides, you know there is no huge impact in the future.
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So, we believe that this charging scheme continues to provide equality, predictability and the simplicity which is important, and again I will come to this point once more in the next presentation about the future.
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This charging scheme will, for sure, you know, cover all the costs that will probably happen in the year 2022. And also, just one thing about the future: It was roughly two years ago we voted and we had to choose between two different charging scheme models. There was option A, which is currently in place, and option B, which lowered the yearly membership fee but added, I think it was €50 per resource record, and the majority of the members decided that they prefer option A, so the current model.
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So therefore, we didn't see any kind of huge need to have a drastic change of charging scheme. But this is not the same for the future, and again the next presentation will be about the future.
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So, the proposed resolution is:
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"The General Meeting approves the adoption of the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2022", and the voting take place under agenda point number 9.
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So, although I said there will be no presentation, I can see some which are related to this one, so I will probably take them not to delay the questions. Antony?
ANTONY GOLLAN: I have got a question here from Hank from IUCC: "At what point was it decided, as stated in slide 4, the main goal is to reduce the entry barrier to new networks? Can you indicate when it was discussed on any RIPE list?"
ONDREJ FILIP: Well, this wasn't discussed in the RIPE list, that's for sure. This was discussed among the board and the board thought that this might be an option that we can offer to the membership, and of course the decision is still on the members, so if the members will not like this option, then we will stay with the current model.
SPEAKER: I have got another question from Peter Koch from DE‑NIC: "What is the projection regarding membership growth, based on status quo versus reduced signup fee?"
ONDREJ FILIP: That's a good point, and we don't think that the effect will be really huge to kind of change the financial position of the RIPE NCC, so not a huge change for income, therefore we don't have any like slides related to that projection.
SPEAKER: And the last question is from Gert Döring, former Address Policy Working Group Chair: "I just wanted to remark that we currently do not have a good unused AS number reclaim mechanism that would not incur lots of work for the NCC's RS department. So having the yearly per AS charge back would be helpful. A small yearly fee invoice plus paperwork to be done is annoying enough to consider do I really need to hold to this if I'm not using it any more?"
ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much, Gert. I think it's an excellent remark, but this belongs mainly to the future, that was one of the reasons why I wanted to have questions and answers later. So if there are not any others, I will continue with the second presentation and you will have time to ask questions then.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: I gave speaking rights to Erik, so I guess you have to deal with him as well, I am sorry.
ERIK BAIS: Thank you. Erik Bais. I find the choice for lowering the setup fee interesting, specifically just, you know, a year after we have lowered the allocation for new LIRs from a /22 to a /24 with the waiting list. It actually helped immediately to ‑‑ because of the markets, workings out of that, it became cheaper to get a /24 from the market than to actually sign up a new LIR. And by lowering the setup fee, you are actually undoing this. So I will predict that once this new charging scheme is going to be accepted, and most likely it will, what will happen next week is a lot of new LIRs will start to be signed up. I expect a new run on new LIRs and the whole waiting list of the free pool that we have of the, you know, 1,200, 1,500, how many /24s that are currently there, will be gone in a couple of months and will just have to wait for the new scarcity, and people that are actually in requirement for /24s will actually have to go ‑‑ you know, have to wait for the stuff. You know, is this actually in the benefit of the community? What are we trying to do here?
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I understand that we have a surplus and that we have ‑‑ want to have a look at the interest for smaller networks, lower entry, I think it's bullshit and the reason for that is we're trying to ‑‑ you know, there are people that are, you know, with their own interest are setting up new LIRs and do we actually want to do this? And I think this is not the way to promote this from the NCC.
ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. I think that's more a comment than a question, I believe. So thank you for the statement.
ERIK BAIS: Well, the question is still: Why are we lowering the setup fees? Because, you know, I understand for the ‑‑ that we want to lower the surplus, but this doesn't help if we look at the larger scheme of things. So what was the reasoning behind it to actually lower the setup fee here, knowing that this would be the result? Because the result was already discussed and I actually talked to several of the board members about this, including the former CFO, you know, this is what is going to happen.
HANS PETTER HOLEN: So if I may Erik, since I presented this analysis to the Board. What's driving me here is to reduce the barrier for new members. I do see your logic in the links to market price, but as I made a comment in Address Policy yesterday, we shouldn't really let the membership fee structure of the RIPE NCC be dictated by the market price of IPv4. So, I think if you look at the previous years surplus and the refunds to the members, it's been exactly the same as the signup fee for new members, so in any ways, what's been happening is that if we welcome new members into the fold, their money is distributed back to the exists members and for a co‑op style organisation like the RIPE NCC that may actually be good. But when we look ahead, I am looking for stable revenue long term, that means that I would rather have many more members, so how can we increase the membership still while we are in a situation where we now have 2, 3,000 LIRs that have just been setup in order to get address space.
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So we have in my mind an unhealthy construction here where we de facto sell address space by setting up an administratively heavy construction like establishing an LIR for people to get that.
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So, whether it is right to lower the setup fee now or not, well that's actually up to the membership to vote on now. But as you will see in the next presentation, and I really think that we should move the rest of this discussion until after Ondrej's next presentation is, what shall we really do now? This needs more thinking, and we should move on to that discussion.
ERIK BAIS: Okay.
ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. So I will continue. So this presentation will be more about the future.
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I guess it's really not worth to explain this group what is charging scheme, I think most of you know it. It's the way how to cover the cost which are related to the activity plan and budget, that's the comment you always provide an input and comments during the autumn GM, so something you are very familiar with that.
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And that's the way how to finance this.
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So, let me dig a little bit into the the past of the RIPE NCC and talk about old good times.
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Until 1997, the signup fee, there was a signup fee and a voluntary charging model, so it's something cannot imagine in these days of course, and then there was a study in 1996 that look at the usage‑based charging model. The study is documented, it's RIPE 143 ‑‑ I really recommend you to read it just for ‑‑ because it's an interesting document.
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This document has a lot of English alphabet and also one Greek letter, a capital significant may which is very often in the document, and you can see this letter also is in this presentation as well. And this model actually proposed three options of membership. So there were large, medium and small. And which category you fit in was expressed by a mathematical formula which you can see in the screen, and that is exactly that capital Sigma I was discussing ‑‑ I was speaking about.
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So this model worked until 2013, although this was some small modification mainly two categories were added, extra small and extra large ‑‑ that was in 2004. A refinements of the algorithm of course, there was a takeover fee and administration fee, and so on. There were addition and remove of AS numbers, IPv4 PIs and special purpose IPv6. And there was one time rebate of surplus in 2007.
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So, now a little bit more recent, although kind of Alt 2. So what happened in roughly in the year 2012? There was a charging scheme task force and the people in this task force set some principles, and they are listed on the screen so the scheme should be applied for many years, so there should be some predictability, stability of this scheme. There should be a table fees per member. And that simultaneously number of members should not pay most of the fees. That basically we should act as an equal association.
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So three options were presented to the members at the General Meeting in 2012, and those options were one LIR‑one fee model, self‑categorisation and updated version of the previous model, so more categories, similar algorithm basically a continuation of the old model.
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And that time we chose one LIR‑one fee model and this was presented roughly to these days. There is a separate charge of PI assignments, so that's a little bit separate and again I will not repeat the categories because I read them in the previous presentation.
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And also, there was some discussion about charging ASNs and this goes to the comment, and I see a few minutes ago, and this resolution was rejected ‑‑ that was in 2015.
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The signup fee hasn't changed since 2005, and it was €2,000, we discussed. And since 2013, PI is €50 per assignment. And since 2015, we have surplus distribution to the membership, which is a great thing, that helps stabilise the finances, and, you know, avoids creating a huge surplus and also allows us to have some reserve, which is also kind of an answer to the question related to inflation because we have reserves so we are ready to, you know, survive some changes in the financial or economical market.
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So during this charging scheme, during this redistribution, redistributed ‑‑ better say to ‑‑ returned members' money to members, about 46 million, so, it's roughly between 7 and 8 million per year.
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There are some other fees which ‑‑ but they do not create vast majority of our income of course, that's meeting fees and certified professional exam fees. Those are excluded from the charging scheme.
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This slide was commented by Simon, so you saw it already. This slide shows the expenses per LIR versus average income per LIR. As you can see, the year 2019 was extraordinary since the difference between those two numbers was highest. The last year it returned to kind of normal, and we can expect that those numbers will a little bit converge in the future.
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So, the future.
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We believe, as a board, that after almost ten years, you know, it's nine years when this charging scheme was implemented, it's time to look at it again. Not just because there is a magical number of ten of course, but more importantly the environment has changed. Of course, the main one ‑‑ one of the main game changers was IPv4 depletion and we have a, you know, during that period we have a rapid membership growth which probably will not sustain for next years, that's for sure. You saw there is more than 3,300 LIRs that are part of some multi‑LIR members, so there is probably a chance that the number of LIRs will shrink a little bit.
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And so, we need to find ‑‑ or we believe that it's time to look, if we can find another model to fund our operation.
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So, what we plan to do is to talk to you and we will try to find possible ‑‑ some good ways how to do it, and, you know, talk to several topics. I have some of the topics on the screen. Of course, the main question is what are the main flaws? Whether we really need to change with ‑‑ you know, should there also be some new administration fees related to some resource intensive requests? I think Felipe had an interesting presentation related to the complexity of NCC operations during RIPE NCC Working Group, so he explained how much resources we allocated to those activities, of course.
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Another question is about signup fee of course. We saw, even today, that there was one question related to autonomous system numbers, whether that allocation should be charged or not, and again of course, should we use this model to encourage a take up of IPv6?
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So that's not, you know ‑‑ that's not everything we would like to discuss but those are some questions you probably should think and, you know, reach us and discuss with us.
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So, of course a charging scheme is not the only way how to ‑‑ how the budget is influenced. Of course another part of it is policy, because for example the policy that says the IPv4 resources must be retained for two years before they can be transferred had a huge influence in the budget and in the number of members and so on. So, those questions cannot be separated although technically they are different items, but we need to have a complex discussion about them, and policy is part of the discussion too, of course.
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So, should policy lead the way in issues relating to membership charging?
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Should policy be formed to accommodate the needs of the membership in relation to charging?
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Again, some important questions that need to be taken into account in this discussion. This is a perfect opportunity to speak to the members of course, the most active members are here, so we would like to take input at this GM and we started already a little bit.
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We would like to have a discussion on the members' mailing list, of course, then we can have some more structured and more detailed information, more detailed discussion with ‑‑ also with implications, so I hope the discussion will evolve there as well. And we also discussed some other possible means of discussion with the members because I can imagine that not everybody is super happy with the mailing list, not everybody is here, so we would like to have open house discussions or something like that. And with all the feedback that we will be able to collect from you, and by "we" I mean the board of course, the RIPE NCC staff, we would like to create a new model, and then, you know, bring it to the next GM and possibly also vote on that.
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So that was my presentation. I am sure there will be some questions and comments. So, I would like to open this discussion part.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Do you see in the participation list the requests from Erik and Antony right now? Because it's easier for you to do it.
ONDREJ FILIP: I will start with Erik.
ERIK BAIS: Thanks, Ondrej. I think that the option for recovering the AS numbers, I agree with Gert, yes, that is an issue. The soft option in that could be that there is an option in the next charging scheme to charge for the non‑first AS number. So for ‑‑ if you have more than one AS number, that you can charge for, you know, an additional fee, like €50, similar at PI space or something, so that ‑‑ the majority of the people will not have a large impact on that. It will not have a large impact on the finance side, but it will actually have ‑‑ ask people do I really need a second AS number and then, if you need it, you have to pay for that, especially if you have more than that.
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On the topic of the charging scheme in regards to this whole recovered v4 space. You know, there was some discussions already on the chat as well. Lowering the setup fees will not give us more membership. It will give more LIRs. And those LIRs will be merged in two years, because the pricing now is much lower than the marketing fees.
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Now, I understand that this may be a bit controversial, but, you know, we have a free pool of IP space. Why not sell it to the highest bidder, get out of the business of handing out IP space with an LIR and actually sell it off? You will get more funds and actually be done with it. And if we get new recovered IP space, sell it off, be done with it. You know, this is not something that we want to keep dragging on and we need to do something different than what we have done, and then we can talk about membership fees.
ONDREJ FILIP: Okay. Thank you very much. The remarks about the kind of garbage collection and the selling of IP space, that's a question that came to the discussion quite often. Thank you for that. Antony, please?
ANTONY GOLLAN: So, I have got one from Cynthia Revstrom from IT Nord Security Solutions: "Writing as a member of the RIPE NCC and not for the EB selection Code of Conduct team, I like the idea of reducing the dependence on one‑time fees but it could probably have been better with more input from members."
ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much, Cynthia.
ANTONY GOLLAN: Another one from Sebastian: "So, with with regard to lowering the barrier of entry for smaller networks, we should ‑‑ we also should aim to have fee schedule continuity. What will likely happen is that a fee reduction gets followed by a rush of new LIRs, a lot of transfers and then LIR closures in two years' time. So in three years, new members will have a signup fee plus yearly fee and, in addition to this, they will have to go to the after market for their first /24. This will lead to a high entry barrier instead of a smaller one. So how does this change help in the short and long term?"
ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much. I think this was partially answered by Hans Petter. We truly believe that we should lower this barrier and that this model would help the market. I can understand that there might be some kind of speculative LIRs, but I do not expect this to be so vast as many of you of afraid of but this remark was taken into account. Thanks.
SPEAKER: I have got one from Harry Cross speaking for himself: "Has the NCC considered something like discussion forums for communication? RIPE has previously locked important discussions behind sometimes closed mailing lists which not everyone wants it look at, whereas a forum would let people dip in and out as they want."
ONDREJ FILIP: I must say, I am not aware of anything locked in ‑‑ you know, the members' mailing list, which is moderated for a while and we explained the reasons why this was. Otherwise there is nothing locked in the communication, I believe. Maybe I misunderstood the question, Harry, if you can clarify that again.
ANTONY GOLLAN: Shall I go to the next one in the meantime?
ONDREJ FILIP: Probably.
ANTONY GOLLAN: I have got Terence from Darkness Reigns (Holding) BV: "I have heard multiple questions regarding AS numbers. Is there an ASN shortage on the horizon with 32‑bit numbers that I'm not aware of?"
ONDREJ FILIP: Good, yes, and I don't think there is anything like that. But ‑‑ on the other hand, I understand the kind of need for garbage collection in that area. I see Gert, who was raising the question, so I will grant him ‑‑ I believe he can comment on that.
GERT DÖRING: Thanks for the audio. As far as I understand, there is no shortage. This is sort of like housekeeping. So, if something is unused, make it easy to return it so it's clear who has what and what's being used and what might be abused. So there is no urgent need but still good practice, I think. Thank you.
ONDREJ FILIP: Thank you very much for clarifying this point. Are there any other questions /comments? As I said, if you want ‑‑ if you need to think about the situation, there will be plenty of opportunity to express yourself to this topic, so the discussion just started. It will continue. You will have a lot of chances to contribute, of course.
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I don't see any requests for a question. I will give it 10 more seconds just to be sure that everybody was able to express themselves. None. So then I hand over to CK, and thank you very much for all the discussion and all the topics you raised, we will take them seriously and, of course, react accordingly. Thank you so much.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thank you, Ondrej. As Ondrej was presenting, I was reading all the comments in the chat. Bring this energy and these opinions to other members' lists or, you know, whatever forum we will show so that we can discuss them and your points and views are not lost in this chat here today.
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Good. With that, we move on to the candidate videos. As I said, we have five candidates for two positions. The platform statements are on the web page. The interactive session with them was whatever, two days ago I believe, and now we show the videos and then you should make a decision.
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And with that. I think the NCC is playing them one after the other.
Videos are now being shown of candidates:
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FALK VON BORNSTAEDT: My name is Falk. I am living in Bonn, Germany. I have diplomas in economics from Paris and Bonn University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Cologne. For 25 years, I worked at Deutsche Telekom and now I am a senior consultant for BENOCS and DE‑CIX. And a lecturer of Internet economics at the Technical University of Berlin. I have attended 30 RIPE meetings, a source of inspiration, discussion and a lot of positive energy in the Internet community. I feel this culture is worth preserving.
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My term in the Executive Board was a very dynamic period, with quite some challenges, allocation of the last /22 IPv4 address block, membership and revenues started to decrease. Replacement of the chairman of the Executive Board, the managing director, some senior management and the RIPE Chair, and, last but not least, the Covid‑19 crisis.
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In spite of this difficult situation, we managed to focus on our core mission, the registry. It reviews financial transparency and risk management, increase budge discipline, increase capital expense ratio from 91 to 112%. Now, we have a 32 million hearing buffer to respond to uncertainties.
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For the next three years, I want to keep the RIPE NCC as a best class registry, push IPv6, continue to support the very constructive EB team with my economics background, increase customer orientation of RIPE NCC, e.g. support non‑English communication.
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I believe continuity in the board is necessary for good productivity. Please vote for me. I am looking forward to see you again face‑to‑face. Stay healthy until then.
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FARZANIH BADIEH: Hello everybody, my name is Farzanih Badieh, and this is my violin. I am now going to play the violin for you because I want to you vote for me, but now that I have your intention, I am an internal governance scholar at Yale Law School. I lived in Europe for 12 years, in Germany, the UK and Switzerland. I am originally Iranian.
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The Internet that the government and regulators imagine is quite different from the Internet that the operators experience every day. Bad laws and norms and regulations are encroaching upon Internet infrastructure. One of the examples of this is the sanctions that has affected access to a number of resources in Iran and Syria. It is not enough to just desire or imagine or depoliticise Internet infrastructure. We need to be strategic and I can help the board to navigate the Internet governance landscape.
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The other reason is diversity. By diversity I mean diversity of gender, region and expertise. The RIPE is a diverse set of communities, and in order to preserve the community and bottom‑up processes, as well as keep the mission of RIPE NCC limited and distinct, we need the board to reflect that diversity, and we need the board to include more than just the operators.
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So I hope you vote for me.
JOB SNIJDERS: Hello from a sunny day in the Netherlands. My name is Job Snijders. I currently work for Fastly, a global content delivery provider, and previously worked for NTT's global IT network. I have helped shape the IR ecosystem and was instrumental in the global deployment of RPKI origin validation.
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For many years I have been an active and vocal participant in the Internet community. I believe my talent is identifying where the status is hindering our ability to grow the Internet further. For example, when it became clear that 2 byte ASNs were running out, I put all my energy into ensuring that large BGP community would be available to the Internet industry in a timely fashion. With the advent of RPKI, the role of the RIRs has changed and I believe that it's important to help transfer the RIPE NCC from a Monday through Friday from 9 to 5 organisation into an institution that is ready and available 24/7. It is my hope that I can contribute my experience and expertise to fellow board members and to the RIPE NCC senior management to help transfer the organisation into becoming the most reliable RIR.
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Furthermore, I want to ensure there is financial stability, sound and trustworthy governance, and that the RIPE NCC remains a respectable institution that is a cornerstone of modern day Internet infrastructure.
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Thank you for your consideration. I am excited to be given this opportunity.
PIOTR STRZYZEWSKI: Good evening, everyone. I am currently the secretary of the Executive Board. I was elected first time three years ago and I quickly took over the other role. Today, I would like to encourage you to support me in the upcoming elections.
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For over a year now we have been experiencing many things. We have seen both unforeseen changes and quite a big changes. We have been forced to quickly adopt to all of them and I believe that we have managed to do so in a very good way.
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With this changing environment in mind, I believe that the stability is a key factor for our organisation. That also means the stability of the board. And with my experience as a board member, together with my knowledge about the organisation, I offer the stability I am talking about.
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Moreover, in these uncertain times, I find the role of our community and especially our local communities are extremely important for the stability of the Internet, both inside and outside of our region. Keeping in mind the fact that the RIPE NCC plays the role of the secretariat for the RIPE, I once again promise to be the board liaison for our local community.
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With my hard‑working attitude and detailed personality, together with my strategic thinking and mind, I would like to once again devote my time to work for our organisation.
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If you want to know more about my background, please read my bio on the election web page.
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Once again, thank you for your vote and for your kind support.
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SILVAN GEBHARDT: My name is Silvan Gebhardt. I am a network engineer from Finland. I have originally grown up in Switzerland and I have relocated ahead of the pandemic. Apart from my involvement in Open Factory, I also take an active role at the CHIX Internet Exchange in Switzerland, as a founding and board member of the association. I am actively involved in bringing new people in to participate in the network community, with a focus on educating and sharing knowledge to train the next generation of network engineers, as we are going towards a generational rollover over the next couple of years in the industry.
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I sometimes feel the networking community still suffers from gate‑keeping, where many of us believe that trying to keep to ourselves keeps the Internet safe from people from breaking it by accident.
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As my focus over the years before the pandemic has been actively engaging in many communities, from the... CCC to different NOGs, I want to continue engaging with the community inside and outside of RIPE. I think the topics that I would be involved within RIPE over the next years is the RPKI database, it's a very critical and sometimes fragile part of the global Internet, potential change in membership structure and numbers as well as a considered focus on delivering the registry services with good speed, cost efficient and high quality.
(End of videos.)
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: So, with this, you have seen all of the videos, and I hope you could make a decision who you want to vote for. How we are voting is getting presented by Ulka.
Ulka: Hi. Good evening, everyone. It's been a long day and I know that my presentation normally stand between people and their dinner, so I'll keep this crisp.
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I will explain how voting works and also share a short overview of who is voting this evening.
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We have a total electorate of 19,489 eligible voters, and we have 1,682 votes registered this evening, giving a voter turnout of about 8.6%, with people voting from 79 countries.
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The countries with the most voters registered this evening are Germany, Poland, Russia, the Netherlands and the UK.
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At this General Meeting, there are three resolutions to be voted on. All three resolutions require a simple majority, that is to require more than 50% yes votes to pass. Abstentions are noted but they do not count towards the voting results.
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At the Executive Board election, we have ‑‑ we are looking to fill two seats on the Executive Board, and we have five candidates in the running. We are using instant run‑off voting in the election. This means that we use the same list of candidates to fill two seats, and this is done by ranking candidates in order of reference with 1 being your most preferred candidate. You must fill in at least one preference for it to be valid. You can choose to abstain. You can choose to fill as many preferences as candidates, which is five in this case, but please note that we're looking to fill two seats to it makes sense to fill at least two options.
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So those of you who are not familiar with instant run‑off voting, it's a preferential voting system where candidates must receive more than 50% of top preference votes to be elected.
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If no candidate receives more than 50% in a round of voting, the candidate with the fewest top votes is eliminated.
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The system then recalculates and redistributes the votes in order of preference.
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And this process of elimination and recalculation continues until a candidate receives more than 50% of the top preference votes.
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One seat is then filled. We use the same list to continue for the second seat. The process is the same except this time the votes for the winner of the first round are first eliminated and then the next preferences are redistributed.
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This can be a bit confusing, but we do have a really simple voting animated video on how instant run‑off voting works. And I will put the link in the chat just after my presentation. Please do watch it, it's just three and a half minutes long.
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So, voting will take place once the Chairman declares it to be open. There are no paper ballots at this GM. Electronic voting is available and electronic votes can be cast until 9 a.m. (UTC plus 2) on Friday 21st May, and we use a third party system, BigPulse, for voting.
You have already received an e‑mail from BigPulse which contains your unique voting link. You simply click on the link you received in the e‑mail to start voting.
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You will vote on each resolution in turn. You just need to select the check box and proceed to the vote confirmed page.
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If you are voting on behalf of more than one member, you can adjust the weight you assign to each vote that you submit.
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You always receive an e‑mail confirmation for each vote that you cast. What you can select is the information that you want included in this receipt.
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For the Executive Board election, you need to number the candidates in your preferred order, with 1 being your top preference. The way BigPulse works is, when you select the check box, the first check box that you select is automatically 1 and the next one is 2 and so on, so please be careful when you are selecting it. The other point I would like to make is the candidates are listed in a random order so this is the order that I saw when I tested the voting system. The order that you see when you go to BigPulse will be different so please look carefully as you order the candidates. You can also choose to abstain, and of course if you choose to abstain, you cannot selecct any candidates. On Friday 21st May, the GM will reconvene at 10:15. If you are a veteran of several GMs, it's not at 10:45, we have changed the timing slightly to fit the format of this meeting, so it's at 10:15 UTC plus 2. The Executive Board Chairman will announce the results and we will stream the results live.
If you do have any questions, please e‑mail [email protected]. Thank you.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Thanks a lot, Ulka. Much appreciated.
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We actually seem to have a question right away. Antony.
ANTONY GOLLAN: I have got two questions here. The first from Jordi Vanneste from Openfactory: "What does the RIPE NCC think about setting up better justification for 16‑bit ASNs? From experience, most customers that request one of these with us end up just wanting it because it looks cool."
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: That's a little bit out of ‑‑ I would actually skip that. Can we get an e‑mail, Jordi, and we'll look into that, but we are know at the election part. So, sorry.
SPEAKER: There is one from Sergey Myasoedov NetArt Group: "In order to provide more transparency, could the RIPE NCC publish anonymised but raw voting data. Many people still don't understand how the instant run‑off is voting or how to recommend people to support them with the most impact. For example, I don't know whether voting for only candidate or voting for how or the two most preferred candidates differs. So someone might want to reproduce a voting result by counting the votes themselves. Publishing only voting ID will not allow such counting, but publishing raw data or voting without their ID will help to be more transparent. The votes could be shuffled to ensure privacy. Thank you."
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I have got a third question as well.
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Ulka: I am not sure if I fully understood your fairly complex question. We do publish the voting report which does include vote receipt codes and the votes recorded so, yes, the results could be retabulated based on that. But we do not publish any ID along with it.
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The voting report is available for all the GMs, it will be linked after the voting results are out. Thank you.
ANTONY GOLLAN: The next question is from Blake Willis, speaking for himself: "Worth pointing out that a ranked choice vote is still a vote. Do not vote for a candidate that you do not want to see on the board."
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Ulka: Thank you, Blake.
CHRISTIAN KAUFMANN: Good. Thank you, Ulka, and, with that, we come to agenda point 11 and the last one for today.
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The resolution which we talked about today and which you then can vote on:
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"The General Meeting adopts the RIPE NCC Financial Report 2020" ‑ resolution number 1.
Resolution number 2:
"The General Meeting discharges the Executive Board with regard to its actions as they appear from the Annual Report 2020 and Financial Report 2020."
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Resolution 3:
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"The General Meeting approves the adoption of the RIPE NCC charging scheme 2022."
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The one Ondrej presented.
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Then the RIPE NCC Executive Board election is to fill two seats. So, we talked about that.
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And with that, I am opening the voting. And the GM will reconvene, as it was said, on Friday, 21st May, at 10:15, where I will read the results.
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And with that one, I wish you a nice evening. Thanks for all your feedback and your comments. And have a good dinner. Bye‑bye.
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LIVE CAPTIONING BY
MARY McKEON, RMR, CRR, CBC
DUBLIN, IRELAND.