[rpd] AFRINIC Policy Development Process Bis Proposal: the way forward

[abel ELITCHA]

Dear All,

Thank you for your contributions and we look forward to more of them.

This thread is not supposed to be a dialogue between initiators and the
community about the chairmanship model of the PDWG, But we sense, looking
at the various replies, that providing more clarifications may help.

AFRINIC PDP has been organized since the beginning around a Working Group
and this has been re-introduced in the current PDP adopted in 2010. A
definition of PDWG can be found in section 3.3 of  both current PDP manual
and PDP-bis proposal.

PDP-bis current proposal for chairmanship is about “chair and vice-chair”.
Both are  elected  by the Working Group and responsible for the
administration of the Working Group. There is just an hierarchy in the
roles and responsibilities. The Chair is the  primary contact for the
working group and work with the vice-chair to whom he may delegate some of
his responsibilities and powers. The Chair is the sole responsible in case
of appeal. This model can also be renamed as “Chair and Co-chair”.

Current PDP is not explicit  about the  administrative functions  performed
by the  co-chairs and does not provide them with appropriate mechanisms to
manage the PDWG and the policy proposals works, efficiently.

 The only place one can see co-chairs roles and responsibilities
 description is at
https://www.afrinic.net/en/community/policy-development/pdwg :


• Determining whether there is consensus during public policy discussions.
• Publishing minutes of the proceedings of public policy meetings.
• Initiation and termination of final review of proposals (Last Call).
• Sending a report of the outcomes of policy discussions at public policy
meetings to the Board of Directors.

As you can see, Co-chairs have no role in Working group discussions
moderation and policy proposal except at PPM. Thus we cannot currently see
inefficiency and conflict in their moderation style as they are barely
moderating / engaging in discussions at all on rpd at afrinic dot net
mailing list.

Co-chairs decisions at PPM about consensus have always been problematic.
Listen to participants at mic and count show of hands (always claimed to
not be a voting), discuss and decide on the fly. We have seen tension among
co-chairs and out-of-band discussions where co-chair expressed objections
to some of the decisions taken during PPM by the team.


We were not looking for support (or objections) with our initial post.
Initiators believe that the current policy development process should be
improved to match best current practices.

chairmanship model is just ONE area of improvements that is discussed in
the proposal. We invite participants to read the full text of the
proposal(1) and have a look at the presentation(2) made during the PPM
(Explaining the goal of our post, and  stop "i oppose" session).

Thanks.

[1]
https://afrinic.net/fr/community/policy-development/policy-proposals/2083-afrinic-policy-development-process-bis
[2]
http://www.trstech.net/alain/public/AFRINIC-Policy-development-process-Bis-AIS17.pdf

http://www.trstech.net/alain/public/pdp-process-bis-chart-AIS17.pdf
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