[rpd] Decisions and summary on policy proposals discussed during the online Policy meeting (AFRINIC 32)

[Ekaterina Kalugina]

Dear Fernando, dear all,
The section 3.4.3 clearly states that:
"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"

The process of evaluation involves carefully analyzing all the data and
drawing the conclusions. This is exactly what the chairs did. They analyzed
the data collected from both the mailing  list and the PPM and drew their
conclusions :on some policies rough consensus have been achieved provided
that some minor objections are addressed. As a part of this process they
also made the recommendations on how to address this objections.

They did not force of coerce anyone to do anything. They simply stated that
if these objections were to be addressed, rough consensus could be
achieved. However, this also means that if these are not addressed by the
authors, then there is no rough consensus. It is as simple as that.

Also, in no part of the CPM it says that the Chairs are not allowed suggest
changes to the proposal in the process of determining whether rough
consensus has been achieved. I think the Chairs have done their roles
within the purviews of the relevant regulations and I don’t think they’re
obliged to answer our inquiries. They just merely consider them. So let us
wait and see.

Finally, considering the fact that the AFRINIC resource pool is quickly
diminishing, not passing a Inter RIR transfer policy that is compatible
with ARIN could be detrimental to the economic future of the region. So
there is a certain sense of urgency that is impossible to deny.

Thus, I believe we all should put aside our bitterness and ask ourselves
what is actually the best for the AFRINIC community. In my view, since time
is running out, we must ensure that AFRINIC has an established way to
receive resources before  the local pool is completely exhausted.

What do you think?

Best wishes,

Kay

On Fri, 25 Sep 2020, 16:21 Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com> wrote:


> In no part of the CPM says that Chairs' role is to suggest changes in the

> proposals, but to determine rough consensus has been achieved or not.

>

> It was mentioned all they did was in good faith and I am not seeming

> people disputing that. However even considering they did in good faith if

> they committed a mistake they must repair that by taking some of the

> proposals out of last call and brig back to discussion.

> I am hoping they are carefully evaluating all the recent comments and can

> take the right decision in the benefit of the region by the due date.

>

> As I have been saying, more important than get a supposedly needed policy

> as soon as possible is to get it right.

>

> Regards

> Fernando

> On 24/09/2020 20:38, lucilla fornaro wrote:

>

> Hello Jordi and everyone,

>

> I have to disagree with pretty much every point, in particular, for what

> concerns points 1 and 2.

> First of all, the use of words should be highly pondered. Coercion is a

> serious business and it is a tactic that violates the principles of

> AFRINIC. You seem to say that Co-chairs used coercion as a threat of

> penalty to induce authors to agree to avoid unpleasant outcomes. This is

> completely wrong!

>

> Chairs job is to address major objections and suggest changes which is

> part of their administrative work and Co-chairs did a very good job in that

> sense. Furthermore, it is not forbidden and they did it in good faith. I

> see no force and no coercion in any of their suggestions.

>

> regards,

> Lucilla

>

>

>

> Il giorno gio 24 set 2020 alle ore 01:06 JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD <

> rpd at afrinic.net> ha scritto:

>

>> HI AK, all,

>>

>>

>>

>> I’ve confronted feelings myself. Somehow, I will like to support how you

>> tried to take decisions (pending on a concrete analysis for each proposal,

>> that I’ve not got the time to do yet) and the way you declared consensus,

>> so we can make some progress, especially for finally resolving the

>> Inter-RIR issue which I think it is extremely urgent for AFRINIC assuming

>> that it is implementable and functional, otherwise, it is just a waste of

>> time.

>>

>>

>>

>> However, there are several points that are clearly violations of the PDP.

>> And I’m saying this even it is clearly against one of my own proposal which

>> reached consensus (based on your decision), but as community, we must be

>> clear and honest regardless of being against us as authors.

>>

>>

>>

>> Let me try to explain every point, following the PDP in our CPM:

>>

>>    1. Section 3.3. As it has been said earlier the chairs are there to

>>    perform administrative functions (manage the meeting, the list, determine

>>    consensus). There is no authorization in the PDP to allow you to “force

>>    authors” to “change this or that” if you want your proposal to reach

>>    consensus.

>>    2. I fully understand the goal and I applaud it, but then it must be

>>    given **the same opportunity** to all the proposals, otherwise you’re

>>    acting in a discriminatory way towards different proposals. At the end even

>>    in the extreme case, if all the proposal reach consensus, it is not really

>>    relevant because if authors agree or not to do changes that still don’t

>>    like to the community, they will fail in the last call. So, it is fine that

>>    you suggest to authors what do you believe are “nits” to avoid failure in

>>    the last call, but not actually coercing them to apply specific changes. In

>>    the meeting, during the open mic, you were suggesting that the “simple PDP

>>    update” can also reach consensus if I agree to some changes. I was not

>>    capturing your point until I saw the video a day after. Even in the video

>>    you can see that some audio/video is missing, and the actual audio that I

>>    was getting during the video was not good at that time. It is not a

>>    complain about that specific proposal, just an example. So, do you think

>>    that’s fair? If you really want to give the authors a chance during the

>>    last call, the way to do it is **before** the open mic, talking to

>>    them. In fact, as we discussed a few days ago, you didn’t have to declare

>>    consensus in the open mic, as Alain suggested, it can be done a couple of

>>    days after, so you’ve time to coordinate with the authors, they can already

>>    send a revised version, etc.

>>    3. This PDP (3.4.3) doesn’t allow changes for the last call or right

>>    before it. In other PDP of other RIRs there is an explicit “editorial

>>    changes are allowed”. We don’t have that. Even if we have that, what is an

>>    editorial change? We have actually a problem with that in the last LACNIC

>>    meeting. For me an editorial change is only correcting grammar or mistakes,

>>    but not amending a full section. The practice that we followed in AFRINIC

>>    has been to accept this type of changes only (correct mistakes, remove

>>    superfluous text, clarify text) but not **change conditions in the

>>    policies**. Again, I applaud the goal, but is not right, and it is a

>>    clear matter for a valid appeal.

>>

>>

>>

>> Note something else, that I’ve said many times, in all the RIRs. I see

>> the chairs as super-heroes. I’m happy to prepare and defend other 100

>> proposals, but not to be a chair, so my sincere admiration towards you.

>> However, that doesn’t imply that, as humans, you can make mistakes and

>> that’s also why the PDP provides (3.5.1) a conflict resolution that

>> includes raising the issues with you. Otherwise, anyone in the community is

>> able to appeal, not just for any specific proposal, but for the general

>> decisions taken in the meeting. So my suggestion to avoid that is that you

>> should reconsider your decisions and clarify what is a valid-objection and

>> what is not for each proposal.

>>

>>

>>

>> In the worst case, if the community is not satisfied we can also follow

>> the recall process (3.5.3), but hopefully we don’t need to go for that and

>> repeat the full meeting, etc. It will also take time for the board to call

>> for the recall committee, etc. Let’s avoid it and that means that you react

>> to the different open questions, in general and for each proposal.

>>

>>

>>

>> That said, providing solutions, for the most urgent policy that this

>> region needs, the Inter-RIR, we can resolve the issue, if it fails the last

>> call or there is an valid appeal, using the Varying the process (3.6) PDP

>> section. This still will mean we lost 2-3 months. The other alternative is

>> what I proposed the other day. Asking the board to call for a focussed

>> meeting in December, may be just for Inter-RIR, or may be 3-4 sessions of

>> 1-2 hours for sets of proposals, grouped in similar aspects.

>>

>>

>>

>> I’m also still wainting your detailed responses, and also from the staff

>> (for some points) to my emails on the morning of 21/9/2020 regarding two of

>> my proposals. Please follow up ASAP.

>>

>>

>>

>> I will be sending, still very busy, sorry about that, specific emails for

>> each of the other policy proposals.

>>

>>

>>

>> Regards,

>>

>> Jordi

>>

>> @jordipalet

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> El 22/9/20 23:46, "ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE" <oloyede.aa at unilorin.edu.ng>

>> escribió:

>>

>>

>>

>> Dear Gregoire,

>>

>> Thank you. Your concerns are noted. We would endure that we come up with

>> the best solution for the region based on openness, transparency and

>> fairness.  We have not broken any section of the CPM rather we upheld the

>> CPM. 3.2.3 of the CPM says

>> 3.2.3 Fairness

>>

>> The policies are to ensure fair distribution of resources and

>> facilitating the operation of the Internet. Actions are taken within a

>> reasonable period of time.

>>

>> 3.4.2 .... The Chair(s) determine(s) whether rough consensus has been

>> achieved during the Public Policy Meeting.

>>

>>

>>

>> Co- Chair PDWG

>>

>>

>>

>> On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 5:30 PM Gregoire EHOUMI <gregoire.ehoumi at yahoo.fr>

>> wrote:

>>

>> Dear Co-chairs and WG

>>

>>

>> During the AFRINIC-32 PPM which was held last week, the proceedings and

>> decisions made by cochairs, raised many concerns. Below are some of them.

>> The video of the meeting is publicly available.

>>

>>

>>

>> *Concern-1  objections management ————*

>> cochairs chose some objections raised and even not-raised, did not say

>> why comments and explanations provided by authors and the participants on

>> the raised and discussed issues were unsatisfactory.

>>

>> Few examples

>>

>> ⁃ Abuse contact proposal

>>

>> The valid and unresolved objections according to co-chairs decisions were:

>> • Definition of abuse

>> • GDPR compliance

>> • Impact of legacy resources

>>

>>

>> ⁃ RPKI ROAs for Unallocated and Unassigned AFRINIC Address Spaces

>>

>> The valid and unresolved objections according to cochairs were:

>> • AS0 ROA validity

>> • Certain fear in the community that this proposal may help staff reclaim

>> resources if members failed to pay membership fees.

>> • Lack of a certain mitigation provision APNIC  has in their policy

>>

>> -WG guidelines and procedures

>>

>> The valid and unresolved objections according to cochairs were:

>>

>> • the proposed appointment of cochairs  by consensus will create more

>> problems for this community.

>> • Cochairs should not have hands in consensus

>> • also Board interference.

>>

>> ⁃ Inter-RIR transfer proposals

>>

>> On the 3 proposals being discussed

>>

>> Cochairs decided that :

>> • one is far from reaching consensus as incompatible with ARIN as per

>> staff.

>> • The other 2 are closer

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> * Concern-2 fairness in the proceeding ——————————————————*

>> • When rendering their decisions and contrary to what was announced,

>> Cochairs did not question all authors of transfer policy proposals showing

>> bias

>>

>> • Staff’s demand to the WG  to allow them to request official

>> compatibility analysis on each of the proposals from other RIRs was denied

>>

>> • Authors were not even given chance to respond to the point with ARIN

>>

>>

>>

>> *Concern-3 unilateral decisions by cochairs ————————————————————*

>> • cochairs decided that Afrinic service region need an inter-RIR transfer

>> policy as matter as urgency  and can’t wait anymore

>>

>> • Cochairs decided that among the 3 proposals, the one which aims to

>> establish an efficient and business-friendly mechanism to allow a number of

>> resources to be transferred from/to other regions, should be pushed forward

>>

>> • Cochairs refused to consider the issues and the implementation

>> challenges  raised by the staff impact assessment on proposal

>>

>> • Cochairs decided on which amendments should be made to the selected

>> proposal  for it to move forward.

>>

>> 1- Add 12 months delay for a source to be eligible to receive allocation

>> from AFRINIC

>>

>> 2- Remove clause for legacy status after transfer

>>

>> 3-Fix clarity on notifications to the other RIRs after the transfer

>>

>> It is obvious that 1) contradicts both problem statement and solution of

>> the proposal preferred by cochairs.

>>

>> Cochairs appear to be deciding and injecting new issues not previously

>> mentioned in working group. Not following due process of hearing authors

>> and the hurry to decide for working group is unacceptable. The cochairs

>> report must rather provide an open issues list of outstanding issues for

>> working group to deliberate on. There had been no attempt by cochairs to

>> gauge consensus throughout the meeting.

>>

>> In the view of all these violations of the PDP, I urge you to reconsider

>> all decisions made during the last PPM and give chance to the WG to

>> appropriately address the open issues and come to the best conclusions for

>> the region.

>>

>> --

>> Gregoire Ehoumi ( on behalf of the authors of WG guidelines and

>> procedures and AFRINIC Number Ressources transfer proposals)

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> -------- Original message --------

>>

>> From: ABDULKARIM OLOYEDE <oloyede.aa at unilorin.edu.ng>

>>

>> Date: 2020-09-20 8:06 p.m. (GMT-05:00)

>>

>> To: rpd List <rpd at afrinic.net>

>>

>> Subject: [rpd] Decisions and summary on policy proposals discussed during

>> the online Policy meeting (AFRINIC 32)

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> Dear PDWG Members,

>>

>>  Please find below a summary for each of the proposal discussed during

>> the just concluded online policy meeting of AFRINIC 32

>>

>> 1.       Simple PDP Update

>>

>> This policy defines consensus. It also proposes that a policy discussed

>> at the PPM does not need to come back for another PPM for the Co-chairs to

>> arrive at a decision. This can help in streamlining the work during the PPM

>> and encourages people to use the mailing list.

>>

>> There were lots of irrelevant objections on the mailing list such as

>> someone registering many emails. We believe that this does not matter

>> because rough consensus is not about numbers but quality objections.

>>

>> However, there is strong opposition to this policy based on the

>> following:

>>

>> a.                   Oppose the policy because of the way the consensus

>> is reached. This proposal proposes that the consensus be reached through a

>> balance of the mailing list/forum and not at the PPM. This endangers fair

>> consensus and hijacks the policymaking process. Based on experience, it is

>> during the PPM that most community members focus on policies.

>>

>> b.                  Issues around how the chairs should drop proposals.

>>

>> c.                   Trust in the mailing list: Some strongly believe

>> that anonymous contribution should be allowed while some believes it should

>> not.

>>

>> d.                  Issues around having more than 1 PPM per year and

>> Online PPM because of volunteer burnout. We are all volunteers and it’s a

>> night job for us. More PPMs mean more time to volunteer and more chances

>> for burnouts

>>

>> e.                  Some members of the Community thinks only burning or

>> polarizing issues should be brought to the PPM.

>>

>> Chairs Decision:   No Consensus

>>

>>

>>

>>

>>

>> 2.       PDP Working Group

>>

>> This proposal aims at allowing most of the decisions including chair

>> elections to be determined via consensus.  This can be reasonable when the

>> community has the same goal. However, there were a number of objections to

>> it. These are:

>>

>> a.                   Entrusting the WG to make their decisions by

>> consensus and the appointment of their co-chairs by consensus do not make

>> sense and is only utopic.

>>

>> b.                  People are not policy proposals, and thus choosing

>> by consensus is splitting hairs with the election process we already have.

>> Save the consensus for the proposals, and the election for people.

>>

>> c.                   Consensus may even take months, and this can’t fly

>> when we want to put people in the vacant roles.

>>

>> d.                  Co-chairs should not have a hand in the consensus,

>> but only sit back and let the community decide for themselves.

>> Additionally, the consensus process is not feasible with a deadline.

>>

>> e.                  Focus on polishing the current electoral process

>> instead of complicating other untested forms of “election”.

>>

>> f.                    The current status quo’s election should be the

>> only option in choosing for the roles, and not through less transparent

>> means.

>>

>> g.                   Board would be interfering too much on issues that

>> deal with PDP

>>

>> Chairs Decision:    No Consensus

>>

>>

>>

>> 3.       Chairs Election Process

>>

>> This proposal aims at introducing an online voting system for the

>> Co-Chairs election. The following are the opposition to this proposal.

>>

>> a.                   This policy reduces participation. Equal

>> representation is violated because the board has unprecedented power.

>>

>> b.                  There is also not enough information on the

>> logistics of the vote (e-voting).

>>

>> c.                   There is a contradiction on when the term ends

>> during the meeting. “The term ends during the first PPM corresponding to

>> the end of the term for which they were appointed” is not clear enough, and

>> “A term may begin or end no sooner than the first day of the PPM and no

>> later than the last day of the PPM as determined by mutual agreement of the

>> current Chair and the new Chair” contradicts each other.

>>

>> d.                  Gender restriction on 3.3.1.3 , some community

>> members argue it is impractical and maybe even unfair if we force both

>> chairs to have different genders.

>>

>> e.                  Issues around which voter's register should be

>> adopted

>>

>> Chairs Decision: No Consensus

>>

>>

>>

>> 4.       Board Prerogatives

>>

>> This proposal aims at clarifying how the board and the PDWG  works.

>> However, there were a few oppositions to this proposal except for a

>> specific section.

>>

>> a.                   It seems like a piecemeal approach to dealing with

>> issues.

>>

>> b.                  Opposition to the section below

>>

>> *“As an exception of the preceding paragraph, in the absence of elections

>> processes for aspects related to the PDP (co-chairs, appeal committee),

>> those aspects will be still handled by the board in consultation with the

>> community. However, this is also a temporary measure and also specific

>> draft policy proposals should be introduced for that*”. The authors

>> agreed to remove the above section hence

>>

>> Chairs Decision: Consensus provided the above section is removed

>>

>>

>>

>> 5.       Policy Compliance Dashboard

>>

>> The policy proposal seeks to provide a framework or a policy compliance

>> dashboard be developed by AFRINIC and incorporated in myAFRINIC (and future

>> member’s communication platforms).  It will allow a periodic review of the

>> policy compliance status of each member. It will also enable members to

>> receive automated notifications for any issue. Staff will receive repeated

>> warnings of lack of compliance or severe violations enshrined in the CPM.

>> However, there are several oppositions to this proposal, such as:

>>

>> a.                   This policy seems to be redundant of the status quo

>> as violations are already checked and processed by the human staff.

>>

>> b.                  There is already an existing system of guidelines on

>> keeping track of the violations of members.

>>

>> c.                   The policy is not binding and does not enforce

>> members actually to follow the rules and not violate policies.

>>

>> d.                  Ignorance could be a convenient excuse for

>> violations because one could claim that they never got notified about their

>> violations.

>>

>> e.                  There is no comprehensive system on how the board

>> should take proper actions once members violate policies, nor does it give

>> guidelines based on the severity of the violations.

>>

>> f.                    This policy takes away resources that could be

>> used for more beneficial pursuits to AFRINIC for something existing in the

>> system.

>>

>> g.                   It an administrative  process, and this should be

>> left to staff

>>

>> Chairs Decision:  NO rough Consensus

>>

>>

>>

>> 6.       Abuse Contact Update

>>

>> The proposal makes it mandatory for AFRINIC to include in each resource

>> registration, a contact where network abuse from users of those resources

>> will be reported.  The proposal whois DB attribute (abuse-c) to be used to

>> publish abuse public contact information. There’s also a process to ensure

>> that the recipient must receive abuse report and that contacts are

>> validated by AFRINIC regularly. However, there some opposition to the

>> proposal there are:

>>

>> a.                   Staff analysis on how it affects legacy holder not

>> conclusive  (not sure why this should affect legacy holders)

>>

>> b.                  The proposal doesn’t state what will be the

>> consequences of one member fails to comply. Why are we creating the abuse

>> contact when there is no consequence for not providing the abuse contact

>>

>> c.                   Abuse contact email and issues with GDPR concerning

>> the whois database

>>

>> d.                  No proper definition of the term Abuse

>>

>> e.                  To force members to reply to their abuse email is

>> not in the scope of AFRINIC.

>>

>> Chairs Decision: No rough consensus

>>

>>

>>

>> 7.       RPKI ROAs for Unallocated and Unassigned AFRINIC Address Space

>>

>> The proposal instructs AFRINIC to create ROAs for all unallocated and

>> unassigned address space under its control. This will enable networks

>> performing RPKI-based BGP Origin Validation to easily reject all the bogon

>> announcements covering resources managed by AFRINIC. However, there are

>> many oppositions such as:

>>

>> a.                   Allowing resource holders to create AS0/ ROA will

>> lead to an increase of even more invalid

>>

>>

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