[Accountability-tf] Notes from Fourth Call

Dear task force members,

Here are the notes from yesterday's call. Please let me know any 
comments or corrections.

Kind regards

Antony



*RIPE Accountability Task Force Meeting Notes*

1) Finalise agenda/adopt minutes
2) Discussion of accountability mapping
3) Review of open action items
4) Task force meeting at RIPE 74
5) Task force presentation at RIPE 74
6) AOB

Attendees:
Athina Fragkouli, Antony Gollan, Malcolm Hutty, Alexander Isavnin, Peter 
Koch, Steve Nash, Nurani Nimpuno, Paul Rendek, Wim Rullens, Carsten 
Schiefner, Marco Schmidt, William Sylvester, Filiz Yilmaz.

*1) Finalise agenda/adopt minutes*

Carsten joined the call and said he had spoken with Filiz earlier about 
joining the group.

William welcomed him to the task force.

There were no changes to the agenda. The minutes were adopted.

*2) Discussion of accountability mapping*

Athina ran through the accountability mapping document that the RIPE NCC 
had produced. They had decided to start by identifying the various 
bodies that made up the RIPE community, listing the roles they 
performed, and finding supporting documentation where possible. She 
noted that most areas were not documented – but they were current 
practices that weren't disputed. Aside from these bodies, they had also 
listed some procedures that were documented and things like the 
requirements of participation and some other comments.

Peter thanked Athina and her colleagues for their work. He said he had a 
question and a comment. He asked why they had made a distinction between 
the RIPE Meeting attendees and the Plenary. He also noted that there was 
a RIPE WG Chair Job Description document (ripe-542) that covered a lot 
of the areas and was not listed in the documentation under the WG Chairs 
table.

Regarding the Plenary/Meeting Attendees split, Athina said there was a 
lot of overlap between categories. However, they had separated this 
because anyone who attended the meeting could vote in the relevant 
PC/NRO NC elections without having to attend a plenary session. She said 
they would look at the document Peter had suggested and see how that 
affected what they had listed already.

Filiz noted that in the "documented" column there was either a link to 
the relevant document or a "no" where no documentation existed. However, 
some of these fields had been left blank and she asked why that was.

Athina said this was because in most cases these were broad categories 
and there was no document that applied. E.g. there was no single 
document for “mailing lists”.

Paul said it was important to consider how they communicated this to 
people outside of the community and suggested they find a better way to 
explain what these gaps meant in the document.

William asked how they should proceed with the document.

Athina suggested they needed to decide if there was anything missing. 
And also to identify what things they needed to start documenting.

Paul reiterated that the RIPE NCC was expecting to put in the majority 
of the legwork here (and was happy to do so). He said they wanted to 
hear if there was anything the task force felt was missing. He said it 
would be great if there were any alternative angles or perspectives the 
task force felt they could approach this from.

Filiz suggested they come up with areas in the document that they 
thought were missing. Perhaps there might be aspects of the RIPE Chair 
role that had been left out, or perhaps they could start a new table for 
an area that had been missed altogether. This could be done in parallel 
by task force members. She suggested they start putting in some story 
around this. For example, how critical were the undocumented areas 
relating to the RIPE WG Chair Collective? And people who felt strongly 
about this could start to think about how to document this and what 
needed to be documented.

Nurani supported this approach.

Alexander said that as a representative of a local community (ENOG) he 
had not seen the word “community” used anywhere in the document, instead 
“participation” had been used. He also noted that ENOG, MENOG and SEE 
had been created to help parts of the community participate more 
effectively within RIPE activities. He suggested this could be explained 
a little further - that these were not different communities, but rather 
part of the larger RIPE community that had split off to work locally. He 
wasn’t sure how to document this, but felt it was worth doing.

Peter supported Filiz’s approach. Instead of starting with a perfect 
list of everything that happened within RIPE (as they would discover 
more as they went), he suggested they begin evaluating some of the 
documentation. For example, there were changes to the PDP itself that 
had not gone through the PDP – which could have interesting implications 
for legitimacy. He noted one important aspect that the RIPE NCC had 
discovered in the document was around consensus not being documented 
within the RIPE community, and the fact that they followed the IETF 
model. They saw, for example, consensus noted as being used in Plenary 
decisions – however consensus was something that was reached by 
addressing objections and reaching agreement – often what was presented 
to the Plenary was an already-finished product that had been develop by 
another group that was merely seeking a final approval or decision.

Malcolm said the consensus aspect was a core issue, so there could be a 
well-understood criteria for the WG Chairs to apply. He didn't know 
whether writing a draft around this was within the scope of this task 
force. Seeking clarity about what they were trying to say when they said 
"we have reached consensus" was an important thing to do for 
accountability purposes.

Wim asked if the Cooperation WG was documented.

Athina said this depended on what Wim was referring to. The WG Chair 
selection process, RIPE Meeting minutes and other information were 
documented on the website and the PDP was the same for all WGs.

Athina asked Filiz to clarify what she meant by adding a “story” to the 
document. She asked if she meant taking a more descriptive approach to 
the tables.

Filiz said they needed something for each line in the tables to show how 
important this was - and whether it was well documented, open, public 
and whatever their parameters were to evaluate it. Something might be 
documented but the quality of the documentation might not be enough.

Athina said they could get started with this.

***Action: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document 
with task force input.*

Paul echoed Nurani's comments from a previous meeting where she'd said 
they shouldn't be afraid to note where there were gaps – so they could 
then take a proposal to the community to fix this.

William encouraged everyone to take another look at the document and 
discuss this further on the mailing list.

*3) Review of open action items*

  20170602-1: RIPE NCC to arrange face-to-face meeting for the task 
force at RIPE 74.

Antony said that based on the results of the poll, Tuesday, 9 May 
12:30-14:00 looked like the best spot to hold the meeting.

There were no objections from the group.

20171801-2: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF.

Athina proposed that they (RIPE NCC) develop a template on Google Docs 
that the group could use to fill with relevant actions.

Peter said he was happy with this approach, so long as he didn't require 
a Google account.

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.

Filiz said this should change now that they had the accountability 
mapping document. From now on they should base their input around the 
document and should take this action out.

20163011-2: The RIPE NCC to map out areas where accountability features 
are already.

This was completed and could be closed.

***Action: Task force members to review and comment on accountability 
mapping document.*

Carsten asked that they change the format of the action item numbering, 
as he felt this was confusing. The group agreed that this should go 
YYYYMMDD.

*4) Task force meeting at RIPE 74*

William suggested the group propose agenda items for the RIPE 74 meeting 
on the mailing list and they could discuss this on the next call in April.

*5) Task force presentation at RIPE 74*

Antony noted that the deadine for the RIPE 74 Call for Presentations was 
in about a week’s time. They had sent some draft slides to the task 
force Chairs and they needed to submit these to reserve a spot in the 
plenary.

Filiz said they normally got 30 minutes for a slot and asked if this 
would be enough and what they would be aiming to present on.

William said for May it would likely just be a progress update while 
October could be a larger discussion with the community. For the next 
step they would to secure a timeslot with the draft slides that they had.

The other task force members agreed with this approach.

*6) AOB*

Peter asked if they really needed to have a call ahead of the RIPE 
Meeting on around 1 May.

Filiz said she would like to use this as preparation for the Budapest 
meeting - maybe they would like to add more content to the presentation 
or to discuss how they would use their meeting slot.

William agreed that they needed to maintain regular calls, even if they 
were quick because there was little to discuss.

End of call.


*Action Items*

20170306-1: RIPE NCC to further develop accountability mapping document 
with task force input.

20170306-2: Task force members to review and comment on accountability 
mapping document.

20171801-2: RIPE NCC to come up with a draft timeline for the TF.


*Completed Action Items*

20170602-1: RIPE NCC to arrange face-to-face meeting for the task force 
at RIPE 74.

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.