[Accountability-tf] Accountability TF - Call Notes, Draft Website Copy

Dear all,

Thank you for this excellent notes. I am sorry to have missed the first
call, and unfortunately will not be able to join the next one this month
either. But I look forward to working with all of you in 2017.

Kind regards,

On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 3:34 PM, Antony Gollan <agollan at ripe.net> wrote:

> Good afternoon everyone,
>
> Please find the minutes from the first TF call below. Let me know any
> changes or corrections.
>
> Also attached is draft copy for the website, including a scope based on
> your comments on the call.
>
> Please also fill-in the following doodle poll for our next call:
> doodle.com/poll/6hqeseud6sbgkgb6
>
> The proposed agenda for the next call is:
>
> 1) Finalise agenda - adopt minutes
> 2) Selection of Chair
> 3) FInalise scope
> - Prior to the call, please follow-up on the action item: 20163011-1 -
> Task force members to each come up with a few topics they want the Task
> Force to address and share this on the mailing list.
> 4) Finalise deliverables
> 5) Finalise information for website
> - Please review the attached document before the call
> 6) Finding a regular time for TF calls
> 7) AOB
>
> Cheers
>
> Antony
>
>
>
> ###
>
>
> *RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes30 November 2016*
>
> *Attendees: *
>
> Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Nurani
> Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz
>
>
> *Agenda:*
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *1) Introduction / finalise the agenda2) Selection of chair3) Scope of the
> Task Force4) Deliverables5) Openness and transparency6) Information for
> website7) Next meeting call8) AOB*
>
>
> *1) Introduction / finalise the agenda*
>
> Athina added another item (5) – about how transparent they wanted to be in
> terms of allowing observers to join Task Force calls or participate on the
> mailing list.
>
>
> *2) Selection of Chair*
>
> Alexander nominated Athina as Chair. Malcolm and Nurani supported her.
>
> Nurani said they should have a RIPE community member for co-Chair. She
> suggested Hans Petter Holen could take this role.
>
> Paul agreed they needed someone from the community, and suggested someone
> from the ASO AC.
>
> Filiz said she was happy to help chair, but couldn’t commit without
> knowing what the time commitment would be.
>
> Paul said the RIPE NCC would do the heavy lifting. The Chair would just
> need to help the group make decisions and keep things moving forward.
>
> Filiz said they needed Hans Petter at the helm, but was happy to assist
> him in this. If he declined then they could find another solution.
>
> Alexander offered to help co-chair.
>
> William said he could also help with co-chairing, especially if Hans
> Petter was not available.
>
> Athina suggested they not decide this on the call. She could act as
> interim Chair in the meantime until they had an opportunity to ask Hans
> Petter and discuss this further.
>
> Nurani suggested they define the scope first, which would help them to
> understand the time commitments involved – this could be a month, a year,
> or they might end up as Chair of a new WG.
>
>
> *3) Scope of the Task Force*
>
> Athina suggested they do a round and give comments.
>
> Alexander said accountability was primarily related to legal or commercial
> entities, but RIPE was not like these entities. When they moved into the
> ground of deliverables, they were stepping into the realm of governments
> and police, etc. RIPE was not a typical entity and perhaps they should
> start from there.
>
> William said they needed to think what the current status of
> accountability was – who the stakeholders were, who they had accountability
> with. He noted that when registrars and registries were introduced into the
> domain space there were a lot of inbuilt accountability measures right from
> the start.
>
> Filiz agreed with William and said communities could have accountability
> even when they didn’t have legally established identities. They could look
> at things like how the community selected Chairs and other individuals –
> this could be expressed somehow. They had been dealing with accountability
> issues over past several years and the Task Force could document and track
> these so outsiders could make sense of them.
>
> **Action Item: Filiz suggested an action point should be for each of them
> to come up with a few topics they wanted the TF to address and share this
> on the mailing list.
>
> Nurani said it might be good to put this into a context. Accountability
> questions hadn’t come from nowhere. RIPE had been improving its structures
> over the past 25 years, simply because it wanted high-performing
> structures. A lot of this work had been done over the years – some of this
> could be improved, but a lot of it just needed to be explained to the
> outside world. A lot of these questions were triggered when coming up
> for the Number Community’s proposal as part of the IANA transition and the
> CRISP team had been interviewed by the US Government’s accountability
> office. While they were satisfied with their answers, there were a lot of
> assumptions people had about the community’s accountability that were not
> correct. A lot of CCWG-Accountability’s work had come back to the
> RIPE community as well, and the CCWG wanted to impose their own
> accountability measures onto RIPE. RIPE didn’t have anything to hide and
> didn’t need to be in a defensive position.
>
> Malcolm agreed with Filiz and Nurani. He suggested they identify what they
> were trying to do with these structures – what values they were trying to
> uphold, such as transparency or openness. Once these values had been
> identified, they could identify the mechanisms that were used to achieve
> them and provide an overview of how they might be improved.
>
> Athina said there was an understanding that the RIPE community was
> accountable and did have its documents in place. Maybe they needed to
> review what was there and see if anything was missing. RIPE had to be able
> to explain how it worked, so it wasn’t seen as avoiding accountability
> questions.  She added that they were noting everyone’s comments and could
> use this to create a consistent scope.
>
> Paul replied to Alexander’s earlier comment that RIPE didn’t have the
> accountability of other entities. He said that after the transition RIPE
> was now the body that made important decisions and this had exacerbated
> things. It was important to get this accountability effort off the ground,
> because they needed to be looking at things that were further off. He said
> they needed to separate CCWG-Accountability from RIPE accountability.
>
> **Action Item: Paul said the RIPE NCC could examine areas to see where
> they already had accountability features in place. If they could map this
> out and show it to the Task Force, they could use this as a starting
> point to work from.
>
> Malcolm supported Paul’s suggestion.
>
> Athina said they could discuss this further on the mailing list.
>
>
>
> *4) Deliverables*
> Athina understood that the deliverables would be the review they would
> make, along with any new documentation that would be needed.
>
> Malcolm said they could break this down into two separate categories: 1) A
> review of how things currently stood, which would result in a report with
> recommendations. 2) Communications materials for different audiences (to be
> developed after the review was completed). Some of this would be for
> external audiences like governments, and some would be for the RIPE
> community itself, particularly newcomers. He hoped the RIPE NCC could do
> the heavy lifting on the development of these materials.
>
> Athina said the RIPE NCC was committed to providing any materials that
> would be needed.
>
> Nurani agreed with Malcolm – mapping, review, suggested improvements, and
> communications efforts (noting efforts might involve more than just
> materials). They should also consider the possibility of an external view –
> which might help them to identify blind spots or gaps. This neutral party
> would have to chosen carefully.
>
> William agreed with Malcolm and Nurani and said the review should include
> recommendations. A third party would add credibility as a stop-gap to
> ensure they weren’t missing key pieces. The deliverable should be an
> accountability scorecard or some measure – because accountability was not a
> finite value but something that would change over time. He said they should
> also think about community policies that might need to be established or
> maintained, possibly by a WG. This was something to consider, though it
> might be that accountability was just in the community’s DNA and wouldn’t
> require a policy.
>
>
>
> *5) Openness and transparency*
> Athina asked how they wanted to operate in terms of allowing outside
> observers to subscribe/participate on the mailing list or attend Task Force
> calls.
>
> Malcolm contrasted the models of RIPE WGs that were open to participation
> by anyone (including casual one-off participation) – vs the CCWG – where
> there was open participation with no limitations, but you had to officially
> join. While he thought the Task Force should always be open, he didn’t have
> a strong view on which model should be used.
>
> Nurani said they should report back to the community and the material
> should be publicly archived. Her only concern was if there was information
> that came up in a review or external report that would put the RIPE
> community in a difficult position – they would need to handle this in a
> sensitive way. She could see why they might not want to allow
> outside comments on a conference call, but a good chair could handle this.
> She supported generally being as open as possible.
>
> Filiz agreed that membership should remain open. But if people were not
> members, they should be limited to observing. She didn’t want a situation
> where there was interference from observers who were missing context. She
> agreed they could allow observers to make comments at the end of meetings
> if they had good chairs. She suggested they open the mailing list for posts
> so the Task Force could receive comments from observers – but make it so
> that observers couldn’t receive emails from the list.
>
> Athina noted that they would still have access to the public archives.
>
> Alexander noted that they had no deliverables to make “open” which was why
> he suggested they postpone this question.
>
>
> *6) Information for website*
>
> Athina noted that other Task Forces typically included things like scope,
> participants, email archives, etc. Given that they had no scope at
> this point, she suggested they include on this page the structure of the
> Task Force along with participants’ names. She said they would develop
> something and share this with the Task Force.
>
>
> *7) Next meeting call*
>
> It was agreed that they would run the meetings monthly, but would have one
> more meeting in December. Athina said she would create a doodle poll and
> share it with the group.
>
>
>
> *8) AOB*
> Filiz said they could move the chair selection discussion to the next
> meeting. The group agreed.
>
> Athina said this would be an agenda point for the next meeting, and they
> could have some discussion on the mailing list to prepare.
>
> END OF MEETING.
>
>
> *Action Items*
>
> *20163011-1* - Task force members to each come up with a few topics they
> want the Task Force to address and share this on the mailing list.
>
> *20163011-2 - *The RIPE NCC to map out areas where accountability
> features are already.
>
>
>
>


-- 
Corinne J.N. Cath
Ph.D. Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute & Alan Turing Institute

Web: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/corinne-cath
Email: ccath at turing.ac.uk & corinnecath at gmail.com
Twitter: @C_Cath
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