The report of the Executive Board Election Code of Conduct Team - General Meeting May 2021 is available for download in PDF format.
In 2020, the Executive Board Election Task Force recommended that a Code of Conduct for Executive Board election candidates should be implemented and that a neutral team should be formed to evaluate reports of violations of the Code of Conduct.
As this was the first time there would be a team formed to assess reports of Code of Conduct violations, and several new procedures were being introduced into the election process, the RIPE NCC Executive Board asked for volunteers from the Executive Board Election Task Force to form the new code of conduct team due to the time they had already spent discussing election issues. Seven of the eight members of the task force volunteered and formed the first team for the May 2021 Executive Board election process.
The original announcement from the Chairman of the Executive Board provides further detail on the background of the formation of this team:
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ncc-announce/2021-March/001474.html
The Code of Conduct that applied to Executive Board candidates is available at:
https://www.ripe.net/participate/meetings/gm/meetings/may-2021/eb-elections/code-of-conduct
The scope of the work of this team was to assess reports of violations of the Code of Conduct for Executive Board Election Candidates. Candidates were subject to this code of conduct from the moment their candidacy was confirmed to the final approval of the minutes from the General Meeting May 2021. Members could email [email protected] should they wish to report a violation by one of the candidates.
The team can confirm that there were no reported violations of the code of conduct by candidates in the May 2021 Executive Board election. This meant that there was no work carried out to assess reported violations.
However, we liaised with the RIPE NCC to decide how the team should function, and we established the systems and processes the team needed to be in place to carry out its work. A mailing list was initially created for the team, although it was decided that in the interests of privacy for those reporting violations and due to the potentially sensitive nature of correspondence that an email alias with the addresses of just the team would be more appropriate rather than storing mails on a RIPE NCC server.
In addition to this, the team worked with the RIPE NCC to create a standard response to people reporting violations. This response informs the person making the report of how their correspondence will be handled; that the team will not share details of its evaluation unless it leads to disqualification of a candidate; how the personal data of the reporter will be processed; the privacy rights of the person reporting a violation; and a statement on confidentiality.
The Code of Conduct Team received no reports of violations of the Code of Conduct by Executive Board candidates. The team also believes that the creation of a Code of Conduct and a team consisting of RIPE NCC members to assess reported violations of the Code of Conduct contributes towards the Executive Board’s stated goal of ensuring that elections see an open, respectful exchange of ideas among members and candidates.
For future Executive Board elections, the team recommends that its report be published as soon as possible following the conclusion of the election process and be announced to members. The team also recommends that for future elections, people from the wider membership be invited to volunteer to serve on the code of conduct team.
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This report was approved for publication by the Executive Board Election Code of Conduct Team:
Erik Bais
Randy Bush
Toma Gavrichenkov
Sergey Myasoedov
Arnold Nipper
Cynthia Revström
Jan Žorž
25 January 2022