[Community-Discuss] Accountability assessment - PDP review?

Wed Oct 26 09:01:08 UTC 2016

Hi Seun,

You wrote,

SO: This is indeed one of the challenges that Co-Chairs have had to wrestle with, while the PDP indicated events that will happen before consensus (+rough) is observed, the actual gauging was left to the Co-Chairs and while it has been a difficult task, I believe the Co-Chairs have all made effort to uphold the principles highlighted in section 4 of the PDP in determining  consensus. That said, during my time as Co-Chair, myself and my colleagues (yeah colleagues because I welcomed at least 2 co-chair while I was still Co-Chair) and the Policy manager did put up a draft consensus building document which we also presented to the community a couple of times. It may be good to revisit and refine that document... Nevertheless, I believe this may indeed be a point to consider in other to better assist the Co-Chairs in their voluntary work.

Thanks for acknowledging the issues and your challenges as former Co-chair.  Can you please provide links to the document or discussion in archive?

Thank you,

Marcus

________________________________
From: Seun Ojedeji <seun.ojedeji at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 12:36:36 PM
To: Omo Oaiya
Cc: General Discussions of AFRINIC; AfriNIC RPD MList.
Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Accountability assessment - PDP review?

Hello,

Speaking on my personal behalf and as a former Co-Chair of PDWG, do find a few comments inline:

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 8:05 AM, Omo Oaiya <Omo.Oaiya at wacren.net<mailto:Omo.Oaiya at wacren.net>> wrote:

While the new PDP succeeded in addressing #1 and #2, it has not addressed #3 and #4.

The current PDP introduced the PDWG with co-chairs to perform the "administrative functions” of the group.

- It did not describe what these administrative functions were.

SO: The overall "administrative" roles and responsibilities of the co-chairs can be found at the PDWG homepage. Does it need to be further broken down than it currently is or does it need to be expanded? I will leave that to the community to discuss and determine. I put the current roles below:

Roles and Responsibilities of the PDWG Chairs

  *   Determining whether there is consensus during open policy discussions.
  *   Publishing minutes of the proceedings of public policy meetings.
  *   Initiation and termination of final review of proposals (Last Call).
  *   Sending a report of the outcomes of policy discussions at public policy meetings to the Board of Directors.

ref: http://www.afrinic.net/en/community/policy-development/pdwg

- It did not prescribe criteria for co-chairs selection or an election mechanism.

SO: Hmm...for every election/selection, there has always been election/selection criteria[1].  Although the nomcom leads this process, a quick look at the Bylaw seem to imply that nomcom scope is within Board/Board related elections alone[2] (that may also be something to fix). However the Bylaw was clear on the fact that the Election committee coordinates all election processes[3] which I believe includes that of the Co-Chairs.

The question I think the community may need to address is whether the current criteria set is sufficient, if not, should the community recommend more criteria to nomcom or an AFRINIC member propose hard-coding a requirement into the Bylaw which must then be adhered to by nomcom in addition to their own criteria.

- It also did not describe the process for determining “rough consensus”.

SO: This is indeed one of the challenges that Co-Chairs have had to wrestle with, while the PDP indicated events that will happen before consensus (+rough) is observed, the actual gauging was left to the Co-Chairs and while it has been a difficult task, I believe the Co-Chairs have all made effort to uphold the principles highlighted in section 4 of the PDP in determining  consensus. That said, during my time as Co-Chair, myself and my colleagues (yeah colleagues because I welcomed at least 2 co-chair while I was still Co-Chair) and the Policy manager did put up a draft consensus building document which we also presented to the community a couple of times. It may be good to revisit and refine that document... Nevertheless, I believe this may indeed be a point to consider in other to better assist the Co-Chairs in their voluntary work.

As a result, we have seen:

- co-chairs candidates who could be more familiar with PDP and Internet Number Resource management.

- insufficient moderation of policy proposal discussions on the mailing list and at face to face meetings leading to endless repetitive discussions.

SO: This is indeed one of the things Co-Chairs find challenging; the current PDP requires that comments on the list and that of the face 2 face should be the basis for checking consensus to last call. It would indeed be helpful if all comments that comes in on the list are addressed (as much as possible) by the author(s) and it will also be good if people use the mailing list to raise their concerns as much as possible. However that is usually not the case, hence the challenge. While the Co-Chairs moderation may not have been perfect (depending on our individual standards). I think it would also be good to recognise that we are in a very unique community and environment where effective moderation is not just by skills alone but also by Grace ;-)

- inability of co-chairs to determine consensus encouraging abuse of the process with some people persistently opposing proposals and stalling progress with insubstantial arguments causing unnecessary delay and frustration

SO: I am not sure what the above means but I believe "draft policies" always have a consensus status declared at the end of the PPM. Though yes i understand the frustration it could cause if the expectation is different from what the co-chairs declared. That said, I believe that is why we have section 7 of the PDP which can be used to resolve these issues when they arise.

The policy discussions at AFRINIC-24 is a perfect illustration.  Another easy example is that since AFRINIC-24, there has been little discussion on proposals which were sent back on mailing list for further discussions as per meeting minutes (http://www.afrinic.net/en/library/policies/archive/ppm-minutes/1847-afrinic-24-pdwgpdp-minutes) and no action from the working group co-chairs.

SO: The current PDP "DOES NOT"  permit the co-chairs to discard a proposed policy within 12months of the proposal/edits of such policy, irrespective of whether there is comment or not. However Co-Chairs makes effort to encourage the author(s) to voluntarily withdraw their proposals having observed the community's stand/direction about it.

Regards
1. http://www.afrinic.net/en/community/elections/pdwg-election?start=3
2. http://www.afrinic.net/en/about/bylaws?start=8
3. http://www.afrinic.net/en/about/bylaws?start=9

**Some questions for the community and co-chairs**

- How do we fix issues #3 and #4?

- Will the proposals returned to the list be presented in AFRINIC-25? if yes, what will be the discussion points be and for which expected outcomes?

-Omo

<http:///>

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Seun Ojedeji,
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