[rpd] Report of the Soft Landing isuue

[Alan Barrett]

> On 5 Apr 2017, at 10:34, abel ELITCHA <kmw.elitcha at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Greetings Alan,
> See few comments in-line.
> 
> 2017-04-04 21:28 GMT+00:00 Alan Barrett <alan.barrett at afrinic.net>:
> 
> Nothing in the AFRINIC policy development process prevents Board members from participating in the process. 
> 
> True, and nothing prevents co-chairs

That’s also true.  There’s nothing specific in the process to prevent co-chairs from participating.  However, the conflict of interest for co-chairs is obvious, while claims that there’s a conflict of interest for Director are a bit of a stretch given the Baord’s limited role in the policy development process.

> The Board does have a role in ratifying policy proposals, but that occurs only after the community has reached rough consensus as determined by the PDWG co-chairs.  The Board’s role there is to check that the process was followed, and that there are no legal or other important barriers to implementation of the policy.
> 
> Actually, that's fully the board's role to ratify policies that have reached rough consensus. It's not the board role to check if there are no legal/implementation barriers, PDP provide with "Legal & Staff assessment" which are open for the community to comment. Of course, Board can double check this.

If the legal analysis says “Passing this proposal would be dangerous to the organisation”, but the community passes it anyway, then I believe that the Board would have to seriously consider whether or not to ratify the proposal.
 
> When/if the proposal gets to the point of ratification by the Board, any Board member with a conflict of interest would have to recuse themselves from voting.
> 
> And what happens when 3/5 board members (or all) have been active during a policy proposal discussion taking clearly & openly a position/side? What will be the quorum to the vote participation?

They would have to recuse themselves only if they had a conflict.  Merely participating in a discussion does not (usually) create a conflict.

Alan Barrett