[rpd] Clarifying a few points

[JORDI PALET MARTINEZ]

Responding below, in-line.
 

El 15/12/20 15:46, "S. Moonesamy" <sm+af at afrinic.net> escribió:

    Dear Jordi,
    At 01:17 AM 15-12-2020, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD wrote:
    >[Jordi] I'm happy if you want to organize a conference call to 
    >clarify everything.

    I'll contact you off-list.

    I'll respond to some of points from another email.  Please ignore the 
    first link.   There were recurring comments about "ICP-2".  That 
    document details criteria for the creation of new RIRs.  There is 
    some confusion about how the Internet Numbers Registry System 
    works.  The third link was a reference to the text which I refer to 
    one in a while.

[Jordi] I'm very clear about how the RIRs were created. I've been there specially during the discussions/creation of LACNIC and AFRINIC, so in my own case, I'm not confused at all. What it is clear is that the only valid document related to the constitution of new RIRs is not the one you mention (which is more about global policies) and points to https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/new-rirs-criteria-2012-02-25-en, and the relevant point is "3) Bottom-up self-governance structure for setting local policies". Note the "self-governance". If the Board is imposing "documents" (such as the ToR) that amend the PDP and aren't adopted by bottom-up consensus (by the PDP itself), then this is broken.


    I assumed that there might be some problem when I read your complaint 
    about Section 5.  I did not identify it on a first pass.  I'll have 
    to analyze the text again again to be able to comment about the mistake.

[Jordi] There are many, I've explained some of them many times. The major one, ToR is just trying to specify (again I'm sure in good faith), how to submit an appeal, but the PDP is self-contained. If the PDP is not clear, if there are several possible interpretations of that part of the text, it needs to be amended *following the PDP*. The ToR section 5 contradicts the PDP.

[Jordi] However, as I said many many many times, the ToR was *just an example* (the one that allowed to discover this problem). What is inconsistent is that the by-laws allow the Board to make new policies and the PDP doesn't allow that! I fully agree that the Board needs to protect the membership and *the resources* and I agree (with some corrections to minor typos) that the bylaws are just right (and difficult to change), and as a consequence the PDP must explicitly allow what the bylaws are allowing. The bylaws are governing the AFRINIC as an organization, but the bylaws *can't* and *must not* be on top of the overall community. I'm sure we all agree on that. So again, the right way to resolve that is to have the PDP *allowing that*.

[Jordi] Not correcting that is against ICP-2. Not correcting that means that the Board in the future, could write a ToR (call it whatever you want), to change something else in the PDP or the CPM and bypass the PDP bottom-up consensus based process.

    >[Jordi] That's doesn't matter. We continuously make mistakes, that 
    >are only discovered after a while. This is the reason we update 
    >laws, change procedures, amend protocols, etc., etc. As I've 
    >repeatedly said, I'm sure that the board that wrote and adopted the 
    >ToR did that in good faith, but they missed the point that there are 
    >sections of the ToR that are re-interpreting the PDP and that means 
    >that you need to update the PDP, via the PDP itself, not publish 
    >additional documents.

    I don't remember who wrote the document.

[Jordi] Some previous "Board" I guess, but it doesn't matter, it just need to be corrected once it has been discovered.

    >[Jordi] It is not a matter of usual practice. I understand that some 
    >parts of the ToR are "internal" because they are under the mandate 
    >of the PDP to the board to create the Appeal Committee and no 
    >further details on that. So, I'm personally fine (in principle) with 
    >section 2, 3 and 4 (1 is just an intro), but section 5 is 
    >*interpreting* the PDP in a different way as I can read it (and I'm 
    >not alone on this). Section 5 is asking for additional details and 
    >imposing additional restrictions to the text of the PDP. That means 
    >the PDP is being, in fact, modified, without using the PDP, which is 
    >the only *valid* way to do that.

    The document is scheduled for discussion around February 2021.

[Jordi] We like it or not, the document is invalid. The document is a criminal attack to the PDP and the full community and has *never* followed the PDP process, which has a single way to modify the PDP: the PDP itself. Again, I fully understand that nobody did that in bad faith, but nobody understood the consequences of bypassing the PDP.

    >[Jordi] I fail to understand the relation of that email with this 
    >topic. Just in case I can guess what you mean, have you read my 
    >response to the Legal Counsel? 
    >https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/2020/012123.html The Board 
    >has many choices, for example, delay the ratification of the policy 
    >until the appeals are completed, withdraw the section 5 of the ToR 
    >(this will not affect any existing or future appeal), if they 
    >believe 5 is right, then send a policy proposal for that, etc., 
    >etc.. You can do this in many combinations, any of those will work.

    I did not mean that Section 5 falls under "General business practices 
    ..."  It may be better to determine what is in scope, what is out of 
    scope for policy development, and the reasoning for that decision.

[Jordi] For me is very clear: Anything related to the PDP itself and resource policies "bottom-up self-governance for setting local policies". There is not discussion on that. The community is able to decide up to what point they want to provide operational guidance to AFRINIC. I'm, in general, in favor of not going too far in the operational details within the policies. However sometimes you need to, because: a) if you don't go into the details, consensus can't be reached, b) if the RIR is not doing correctly the work, the only way the community can resolve that is by means of policy setting.

Let's have an example: We discovered a couple of years ago, that the staff was not providing timely impact analysis. We asked the staff to voluntary adhere to some timeframes for that. They were not doing it, so we proposed a policy for fixing that. It seems that this policy proposal is no longer needed or at least could be relaxed, so we let the policy proposal to expire. However, if the staff doesn't improve the impact analysis timing, the community can, at any time, propose that policy again.

The Board could setup an internal procedure for the timing of the impact analysis. However, if the community still believes that this is not good enough, the community can decide on a policy proposal for that. If the board doesn't ratify that policy, unless a very good justification for the non-ratification is provided (example, the community irrationally decides to provide 1 weeks for the impact analysis), the RIR is in breach of the ICP-2 and acting against the community.

I hope you agree on all this rational.

Note that I'm not asking for the board to ratify a policy for "provide 1 IPv4 address for each citizen in the region" or anything like that. This is clear against the membership and the stewardship of the resources. I'm also not asking for a policy setting up the membership fees or the salaries of the staff, etc., this is "general business practices".

    >By the way there is a very important typo there: It is not the same 
    >Internet as internet. In this case it is clear that it should be 
    >Internet, as we are talking about "public" resources, not the 
    >"private" parts of the networks.

    There was some discussion of the above outside this service region.

[Jordi] No need for a discussion is just gramar!

    At 01:40 AM 15-12-2020, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD wrote:
    >[Jordi] Do you mean that the chairs haven't requested the Board to 
    >ratify the policies?

    Yes.

    >Is that when the chairs declared consensus, after the last call, 
    >they have sent it to the board, I guess via the policy officer, etc. 
    >Can you clarify if that didn't happen? Is this a chairs lack of 
    >action or staff mistake or delay in some way?

    The Board did not receive any email requesting it to ratify a policy 
    proposal.  I don't know what could have happened.

[Jordi] This is a big issue: either the chairs are not doing the complete work, or nobody explained them and they missed it, but somehow, the staff responsibility is to tell them: "after you've declared consensus - which they did according the list archive, etc. - you need to tell the board". My guess is that they told the staff, because that actually meant the CEO to ask the Legal Counsel about that, etc., so maybe there is some "incomplete" internal process between the staff and the board?

[Jordi] However, that doesn't excuse the Board - clearly the Board members, at least some of them, are in the RPD list, so they also followed the discussions and *must have noticed* that policies that reached consensus and are to be ratified by them, didn't completed all the steps of that "internal" process.

    Regards,
    S. Moonesamy

    Board Chair, AFRINIC  




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