[Community-Discuss] Future of AfriNIC Discussed at IWEEK 2018

Wed Sep 26 20:55:32 UTC 2018

Dear Dewole,

Thanks for your quick response.

I find it bizarre that you did not report or bring to the attention of this community on what happen  during the session on AFRINIC future at WEEK 2018, session  you attended and  which  raised some questions in your mind, but was prompt to jump in with "your answers" when a request was sent to AFRINIC officials to inform the community as the topic is delicate.

Marcus
________________________________
From: Adewole Ajao <dewole at tinitop.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2018 3:07 AM
To: Marcus K. G. Adomey
Cc: General Discussions of AFRINIC
Subject: Re: [Community-Discuss] Future of AfriNIC Discussed at IWEEK 2018

Hi Marcus,

I happened to be attending AfPIF and like most AFRINIC community members was curious about the session so I attended. I believe any AFRINIC staff that attended also did so primarily as curious community members; It appeared they were not invited in any official capacity (but I may be wrong). I did not take any notes but if memory serves me correctly, I can summarize as follows:

The presenter expressed concerns about the current state of AFRINIC's board of Directors and the fact that a quorum of elected directors is required to convene an AGM, conduct elections, etc etc. He expressed concerns about some of his questions not being answered by the board, about slow processing of requests by AFRINIC staff, large IT department, travel budgets being expended, the PDP, and other issues he has raised in the past. He charged the ISPA members to be more active since they make up a large percentage of AFRINIC's revenue base. Others spoke of low technical proficiency of AFRINIC staff when evaluating requests for additional resources (in their own view) and requests for paperwork to justify resource requests. There was also talk of calling for an SGMM to deal with the governance(?) issues raised.

In response, some members present declared that a better solution would be to assist the technical staff and help them understand their network designs, encourage more qualified people to run for board positions rather than criticize from afar, etc etc.

I would say it was an interesting show and would encourage that more AFRINIC members gather in their local regions to discuss the improvement of the RIR and the services being offered to them. The session could have had a different outcome but because several people were passionate enough to speak their minds openly and challenge what they did not think was accurate, I think it was productive. I also believe that by now, the AFRINIC staff would already be applying the feedback received to improve existing processes.

Something that makes me curious however is this: Do members in other regions not request resources from AFRINIC? Are others not suffering poor services or do they just keep quiet about it?

I know the response to my next question will be that some of the stats are available at https://www.afrinic.net/en/services/statistics using data from ftp://ftp.afrinic.net/pub/stats/afrinic but I think it would be useful for those of us with limited technical capacity if the AFRINIC IT team could provide a web page that shows:

Political map of Africa and Indian Ocean region with
- Number of new member allocation/assignment requests this month
- Number of additional resource requests this month
- Number of technical support tickets created this month
- Number of technical support tickets resolved this month
- Any other visualizations that we think could be useful to make those statistics more useful to the rest of us. Not bar graphs and line charts, please!

Ideally, a visitor should be able to change the timeframe to reflect a specific day, week, month, year, etc. We could even throw in a heat map for existing membership numbers and resource allocation/assignments. The intention is not to polarize the community further but to help everyone (regardless of their technical capability and where they are) appreciate the services being offered by the RIR.

Okay it's time for you all to go to my paypal donate link for the iWeek reporting service I just offered :-p

Have a productive week ahead!

Regards,
Dewole.

On Sat, Sep 22, 2018 at 6:15 PM Marcus K. G. Adomey <madomey at hotmail.com<mailto:madomey at hotmail.com>> wrote:
Hello,

There was a session at IWEEK 2018 on AFRINiC future. A session requested by ISPA members to discuss AFRINIC future [1]

Can AFRINIC officials who attended the session tell us what transpired from the session?

Why is AFRINIC future so important for ISPA members to demand a session on the topic at IWEEK?

Thanks

Marcus

[1] https<https://iweek.org.za/session/the-future-of-afrinic/>://<https://iweek.org.za/session/the-future-of-afrinic/>iweek.org.za<https://iweek.org.za/session/the-future-of-afrinic/>/session/<https://iweek.org.za/session/the-future-of-afrinic/>the-future-of-afrinic<https://iweek.org.za/session/the-future-of-afrinic/>/<https://iweek.org.za/session/the-future-of-afrinic/>

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