[AfriNIC-rpd] Proposal for Policy Development Process in the AfriNIC service region

[Douglas Onyango]

>The PDP is a Working Group meeting.  The group of people attending the meeting, either in person or remotely, pick up a Chair at the beginning of the session.  It is not practical to do that through the mailing list as the communication is not in real-time.
> 
Then it should be spelt out explicitly in the policy.

>The reason for an agenda is to give people notice of what will be discussed.
>

As i understand it, the chair is not even in charge of making the meeting agenda, so asking him to post it for me is an overkill, what we should require rather is that he publish the list of Policies to be discussed, because this is within his purview....Meeting agenda cuts across the board and comes off as a guidline, Policy's up for discussion on the other hand, are only limited to the PDP stuff which is reasonable to expect from the chair....don't know if i am getting my point across

>I am not using IETF style requirements.  The "may" also requires an explanation.  I get your point.  The problem is that if you cannot say that the Board must approve as the Board is not "governed" by the PDP.  You could discuss this point on the list so that we get some answers. :-)
>

It's not about you using IETF style requirement as it is about you leaving a crack on the house.....We shall have a discussion and then at the end, we have a situation where there lingers some objections and the policy should be sent back to be list for further discussion, but i as aurthor stand up and challenge the chair with this clause...."The draft policy may be sent back to the Policy Development Process mailing list for discussion if there are  objections to the proposal" in my understanding, this means 50/50 on sending it back and not doing so (sending it up the PDP ladder.)...........eliminate this possibility, but say shall, so that in the event that there is any plausible object on a policy, it cannot by any means go up the PDP ladder...

Regards,
Douglas Onyango +256(0712)981329

Life is the educators practical joke in which you spend the first half learning, and the second half learning that everything you learned was wrong.

--- On Wed, 12/9/09, SM <sm+afrinic at elandsys.com> wrote:

From: SM <sm+afrinic at elandsys.com>
Subject: Re: [AfriNIC-rpd] Proposal for Policy Development Process in  the AfriNIC service region
To: "Douglas Onyango" <ondouglas at yahoo.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 9:37 PM

Hi Douglas,
At 08:02 09-12-2009, Douglas Onyango wrote:
> We already have atleast two chairs according you previous paragraph, why would this be necessary? wouldn't it be better to have a chair and an assistant who will be automatically become full chair in the event that the chair cannot operation for any reason?

If a chair resigns, you end up with one chair only.  If that person resigns, you do not have any chair.  Having two chairs mean that the two persons have to work together instead of one having to defer to the other.

> How? Internet....Mailing list? at the Public policy meeting before the discussions begin?

The PDP is a Working Group meeting.  The group of people attending the meeting, either in person or remotely, pick up a Chair at the beginning of the session.  It is not practical to do that through the mailing list as the communication is not in real-time.

> I like the part where Afrinic provides analysis, but the punctuation could really use a fix, analysis, technical......................analysis look like an item yet in my view, technical and financial........are types of analysis..........................no?

The punctuation is intentional as there is "other" in there.

> In as much as i find this point very compelling, i find the fact that we are spelling out meeting guidelines here not a great idea.......i remember the board elections we had in Cairo.........guidelines spelled out in different documents were contradicting......redundancy in systems is great - in policy, they only come back to bit you.....sorry us in the butt.

The reason for an agenda is to give people notice of what will be discussed.  This is not for redundancy.  If the agenda is not published, you cannot tell whether your proposal will be discussed or not.  The sentence is not a guideline; it is a requirement to make sure that the Chairs stick to the intent of the process.

> I think a "Shall" i just what we need....................otherwise we shall have raw policies passed and great policies returned to the list because of a "may"............if there are any serious objections, a policy should not be passed - although this leaves the onus of defining serious and who decides on the seriousness.........but i believe you get my point here.

I am not using IETF style requirements.  The "may" also requires an explanation.  I get your point.  The problem is that if you cannot say that the Board must approve as the Board is not "governed" by the PDP.  You could discuss this point on the list so that we get some answers. :-)

> Also, could you drop in something to ensure the versions of the document on the Afrinic site are current.....like "The Working Group Chair(s) shall cause the......................" This is very important as sometimes just prior to a Policy meeting, the version of documents are actually not the most current and members are actually reading them in preparation for the meeting. This should change.

That's already in the principles (Section 3.2) and in Section 5.1.  The agenda requirement is also to ensure that the members can be prepared.  There is a lot in the draft policy if you read it carefully. :-)

If you need any other clarification, please feel free to ask.

Best regards,
-sm 



      
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