Section 5.3 of PDP (was: [AfriNIC-rpd] Updated Version of the "IPv4 Soft Landing Policy" now Available Online)

[sm+afrinic at elandsys.com]

Hi Andrew,
At 06:42 03-05-2011, Andrew Alston wrote:
>I have a question about this policy development process.

I'll comment as an individual.

>As per section 5.3:
>
>A final review of the draft policy is initiated by the Working Group
>Chair(s) by sending an announcement to the Resource Policy Discussion
>mailing list. The Last Call period shall be at least two weeks. The Working
>Group Chair(s) shall evaluate the feedback received during the Public Policy
>Meeting and during this period and decide whether consensus has been
>achieved.
>
>If consensus is NOT achieved under last call, the current PDP does not
>explicitly state what occurs.  I would assume that it gets referred back to
>another public meeting and the process begins again, am I incorrect in
>assumption?

In another Internet community, someone will say:

   "We have discussed this before; nothing has changed since then.  Why do
    you think that the outcome will be different this time?"

The current PDP does not state what occurs.  I'll mention two 
reasons.  From Section 5.1:

   "A draft policy expires after one calendar year unless it is
    approved by the AfriNIC Board of Directors as a policy."

   "A draft policy can be withdrawn by the author(s) by sending a
    notification to the Resource Policy Discussion mailing list."

The last sentence can be used to describe a face-saving device or to 
avoid wasting time discussing a proposal when we can guess what the 
outcome will be.

If the author of a proposal believes that it is worthwhile to put 
back a proposal in the loop, I am fine with that.  That is however 
not going to happen by default.  I will ask the author of the 
proposal to explicitly state his preference.

>(In fact the current PDP by my reading not only excludes an explicit
>statement of what happens if something doesn't pass last call, it is
>completely silent on the matter)

It is not a good idea to regulate some practices because you end up 
with rules that do not fit the circumstances.  The PDP is mainly 
about three principles, openness, transparency and fairness.  Section 
6 of the PDP provides you with the means of redress if you believe 
that the Chairs reached the wrong decision.

>If I am correct in this assumption and it is determined that consensus has
>NOT been reached in last call, can this be moved back into the agenda for
>Dar Es Salaam.  I ask this because time is running short, IP space is being
>depleted and if this IS going to go back to a public meeting, then it would
>make sense for it to do so in Dar Es Salaam, before we end up in a situation
>WITHOUT the policy because of lack of consensus under last call and lack of
>it being on the Tanzanian agenda.

If you want to out this proposal on the agenda for Dar Es Salaam, I 
am fine with that.

This proposal was first submitted in January 2009.  There has been a 
few revolutions since then, (IANA) IPv4 exhaustion and a Royal wedding.

Regards,
S. Moonesamy