[AFRINIC-rpd] AfriNIC and SLA's

Tue Jan 15 20:47:30 UTC 2013

Hi Sunday,

I am not sure I agree with that at all.

We all saw what happened at the last board elections for one thing.  For
another, silence from the community is *NOT* indicative of a lack of
agreement.  If the community disagree with my positions and believe the
service currently being delivered is adequate, and believe there is no need
for the reporting mechanisms and SLA's, then I am quite prepared to hear
such disagreement.  However, at the moment as it stands, I see Owen saying
he does not disagree with the proposal, merely that it is not a policy
issue.  I see Gift who seems to be advocating for an expansion of this.
Beyond this, I see silence, which is something that directly contradicts
what I see in direct messages to myself from various members of the
community.

I might remind you that in Tanzania, both yourself, myself and Nii Quaynor
all attempted to take the AfriNIC board to task over corporate governance
issues, along with a fairly long line at the microphone.  I also point to
the fact that in Gambia, when issues surrounding even the voting procedures
were raised from the floor, there was a deliberate attempt to silence them,
no one will forget the "Oh great, another one here to waste our time"
remark.

I do not see the harm in opening the discussions on this list about
introducing accountability to the membership base, in the form of SLA's or
other such mechanisms, and since AfriNIC has NOT provided us another forum
beyond this list to introduce such ideas, this is all we have.  Let the
community voice be heard, and if they disagree with me, let it be said and I
will happily accept it (just as I happily withdrew my proposal in Tanzania
that the community rejected).  But as I said then, when I withdrew it,
silence is not a voice, it does not indicate agreement or disagreement, and
in fact, can be attributed to one of two things, either people simply don't
care enough to comment (which I pray is not the case, because that would
indicate an even greater problem considering the criticality of AfriNIC to
all of our business), or people are reluctant to have their voices heard for
some other reason (and I would love to know that reason).

Andrew

From: Sunday Folayan [mailto:sfolayan at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 10:38 PM
To: Andrew Alston
Cc: 'Owen DeLong'; rpd at afrinic.net
Subject: Re: [AFRINIC-rpd] AfriNIC and SLA's

Andrew,

I agree that it is not a policy issue. The Board should have Key Performance
Indicators for management. 

My position is that it is the community that elects the Board, which in turn
hires management. So ... It is the community that calls the shots. 

If the community is pleased with the performance of the Board, then you are
a lone ranger. If on the other hand, in line with your clamour, the
community is not pleased with the Board, it will express it by voting them
out. 

The secret to being heard in democratic settings is to use your vote (or
influence) wisely. Any other attempt to enforce a change is often viewed as
subversive.

Sunday.

On 15/01/2013 20:24, Andrew Alston wrote:

Hi Owen,

I actually completely agree that this is not necessarily a policy issue,
unfortunately, I also believe that the demand for this type of information
and the reference group that establishes the parameters that govern the
targets etc should be community driven.  Since AfriNIC has no other forum
beyond this list in which to engage as a community to come to a sensible
solution to formulate the request to the AfriNIC, I chose to use this list
for this purpose.

Andrew

From: Owen DeLong [mailto:owen at delong.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2013 8:51 PM
To: Andrew Alston
Cc: rpd at afrinic.net
Subject: Re: [AFRINIC-rpd] AfriNIC and SLA's

I like the proposed idea.

However, it has no business as policy. It is an operational manner which
should be suggested to the AfriNIC staff and/or board.

Owen

On Jan 15, 2013, at 7:03 AM, Andrew Alston <alston.networks at gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi Guys,

So I've been thinking, and before I attempt to push this into policy form, I
want some community input and opinion.

It is my belief that AfriNIC is at its heart, a service organization, they
provide services to a community of members, which is represented on this
list.

Now, as with many service organizations, I believe that such organizations
should be bound by service level agreements.  I am not referring here to a
penalty based approach, I am talking about a fixed reporting mechanism by
which the community of members can evaluate the performance of their
registry, and can then push for improvement where it is seen to be needed.
(Penalty based SLA's are proven ineffective and in any case there is no real
way to apply them to an organization such as this one).

Therefore, what I would like to see is as follows:

A monthly reporting mechanism from AfriNIC that details the following:

a.)    How many tickets were logged with AfriNIC in the previous 30 days

b.)    What the average turnaround time was for aforementioned tickets

c.)     Where the tickets involved the allocation of new resources, what the
turnaround time for allocation of v4, v6 and ASN resources were (broken down
into these three categories)

d.)    What the total IPv4 and IPv6 space allocated was during this period

e.)    If there was any space redeemed or returned to the registry, how much
space was it

f.)     Any other issues of pertinence to service delivery to the community.

Then, I would like to see AfriNIC give us target service levels,
particularly in regards to (b) and (c), and if they fail to meet these
targets, explain to us on a monthly basis why the targets were not met, and
what is being done to improve the service levels.

At a previous organization for which I worked, we had a mechanism loosely
called the SLARG (SLA Reference Group), that defined the actual terms of
reference, and I would encourage the formation of something similar within
AfriNIC, with members of the community involved to formulate the targets. 

The only way to improve the efficiency and performance of our registry to be
able to, as a community, evaluate if the allocation of resources, which is
their primary function, is happening in an efficient manner.  So, let's
start talking SLA's.

Thoughts?

Andrew

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