Re: [rpd] Afrinic policy proposal—Afrinic Service guild lines

[David Conrad]

Karmann,

Some personal opinions:

On Oct 26, 2014, at 9:26 AM, Karmann Olumomo <karmann.olumomo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 1) Summary of the Problem Being Addressed by this Policy Proposal
> 
> Some member are experiencing extreme long wait for their additional allocation request to get passed, some members are experiencing none technical information requested from Afrinic(customer data, marketing channel etc), in order to improve overall service quality of Afrinic, here is the policy.
> 
> 2) Summary of How this Proposal Addresses the Problem
> 
> To improve overall service quality and transparency of Afrinic’s number resource services by documenting roles and responsibilities of AFRINIC. 
> 3) Proposal
> 
> 1.Afrinic should make decision on subsequent allocation requests based on Afrinic   policy, and conclude a request no longer than the 20% of the total period AFRNIC approves the resources for. (E.g. If Afrinic is issuing resources to its member to meet its 12 months needs, the longest waiting time for Afrinic allocation process should not be longer than 20%*12month, to cope with 80% utilization requirement for additional allocation). If Afrinic was not able to make decision on a certain request within this period, for each additional month beyond this period, the requesting member should receive percentage of the requested period of the total request until such decision has been made, in order to protect member from smooth running of its business.

Having once worked at an RIR, I can say that trying to put processing time limits is fine as long as there are sufficient resources to permit the processing. However, if the request load is outstripping the ability for staff to process that load, adding processing time limits will make things worse.

I would recommend asking staff for more information regarding processing times of all additional allocation requests (I'd actually recommend a public dashboard-style website showing aggregate request processing time statistics) and, if there appear to be consistent delays, asking staff for a root cause analysis and a mitigation plan.

Note that I suspect if request processing time is being impacted by load, this will only get worse as the additional policy requirements the community is putting (or is proposing to put) on staff implies increased work in reviewing requests.

>  2.Afrinic should publish standardized base information request for each typical type of resource allocation.

I disagree.

AfriNIC staff are being placed in a position of being investigators, trying to discover if a requester is lying to them about their need, where they are located, what they intend to do with the address space, etc.  While a base set of information requesters can be expected to provide would be useful, if the community expects AfriNIC staff to do the investigations policy demands, I believe staff are going to need to be able to ask whatever questions they feel are necessary.

> 3.Afrinic should not store, request any marketing or business related none-technical information from its member, for example, customer data, marketing channel, and marketing budget.

I disagree.

One of the ways in which you catch folks lying is because it is actually hard to be consistent when lying.  If AfriNIC staff is going to be in the investigatory business, they need to look at what a requester told them in the past and compare it to what they're telling them now and ask questions when there is significant deviation.

> 4.Afrinic allocations should be solely made based on current policy, no other factor other than policy should infer with afrinic’s decision on processing allocation requests.

Agreed.

> 5.Unless otherwise appealed, Afrinic board should not be directly involved in IP allocation process.

Agreed, although I do not think the board should be involved in appeals.

It used to be that in at least two other RIRs that I'm familiar with (APNIC and ARIN), the board would _never_ be directly involved in the IP allocation process.  The role of the boards of those two RIRs was to ensure the policy development process was followed correctly and to be ultimately responsible for the operation of the organization. I don't know if that's still the case.

> 6.For the interest of overall policy development process, other RIR staff as well as it's governing body personnel(advisor or board member, for example) should not be involve in Afrinic policy development process.

I believe the role of staff in a PDP is to facilitate and provide unbiased, neutral, and data-backed information. This can be seen as being involved in the PDP.

In the case of board members, if they are NOT involved in the IP allocation process (including appeals), then I believe it is acceptable to provide their opinions during a PDP since, after all, they are presumably quite knowledgeable about IP addressing policy (or they wouldn't be on the board).  However, if they _are_ involved in the IP allocation process, then their involvement should be the same as staff, that is, providing unbiased, neutral, and data-backed information.

> 7.Afrinic policy working group chair election should be conducted independent from Afrinic board nomination committee, candidates should be free of any requirement. 

I agree, however I believe the board should be ultimately responsible to ensure the policies developed by the policy working group meet the interests of AfriNIC and the AfriNIC community.

Regards,
-drc
(ICANN CTO but speaking only for myself)
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