[ppml] Proposed Changes to ARIN Policy Proposal Process

[Owen DeLong]

OK... I think William must have attended a different live meeting than I
did, because he came away with a _VERY_ different impression.

1.	All policies currently are made as recommendations by the AC,
	then last call at meeting and to mailing list for community
	yeah/nea vote.  Then, that result is forwarded to ARIN board
	and board decides whether or not to adopt policy.

2.	The proposed changes DO NOT CHANGE THIS PART OF THE PROCESS.

3.	The proposed changes do create a situation where the AC can
	consolidate similar policies.  This is a GOOD thing.

4.	The proposed changes do create the ability to get your proposal
	past the AC if you feel strongly and can get N (where N appears
	to currently be 4) other people to agree with you.  This prevents
	the AC from being a roadblock to the community while allowing
	it to at least be a filter.

5.	The proposed changes do NOT as far as I could tell shift any focus
	to/from mailing list vs. meeting.  In fact, both are currently
	basically equal as far as I can tell, and, both should continue
	to be about equal.  I can say that the mailing list definitely
	does not have priority over the meeting in the current environment.

Just my impressions.  YMMV.

Owen


--On Wednesday, April 9, 2003 8:39 -0700 william at elan.net wrote:

> I'd like people on this mailing to pay take very good look at what is
> being proposed at http://www.arin.net/policy/process_changes/, this is
> very serious revision of the process in my view both good and bad.
>
> First few slides about "Submitting a Policy Proposal" and "AC role" seems
> quite good, its good to have AC comment on proposals and make sure they
> are well written - I would like however this to be more public on this
> mailing list, rather then in private to authors, but either one is
> acceptable as long as authors are accomodated. Timing seems very similar
> to what we have right now, so I have no comment there.
>
> What I do have major comment are last slide as well as what was said on
> the live meeting. Basicly the ideas is that proposals will in general be
> brought in by AC (AC creates proposals out of ideas that they think are
> good and would be accepted) and be discussed and accepted by consensus on
> live public policy meeting that the DECISIVE role will be left to the
> meeting and NOT TO MAILING LIST as is done currently. This means that few
> companies on the meeting with help from AC and BoT will dominate the
> decisions (and as I have already commented many times and which is not
> disputed is that 50% of meeting attendies are from large ISPs, while
> these companies make only 5% of ARIN membership and far far less as far
> as general ARIN community) - seems like we're abandoning idea of internet
> democracy and rather would like to institute "Corporate Democracy" or
> Roman Senate like situation as far as decision making process. I'm very
> very concerned about this and while its probably a futile cause to change
> this general direction, I'd like people and primarily small companies
> that make majority of ARIN to seriously consider if this is what they
> want from ARIN.
>
> On Wed, 9 Apr 2003, Member Services wrote:
>
>>
>> The ARIN Board of Trustees is considering making
>> changes to the ARIN Internet Resource Policy
>> Evaluation Process. These changes were discussed at
>> the ARIN XI meeting in Memphis, on April 7, 2003.
>>
>> The presentation slides are located at:
>>
>> http://www.arin.net/policy/process_changes/
>>
>> Comments are welcome and encouraged and should be
>> sent to the Public Policy Mailing List (ppml at arin.net).
>>
>>
>> Member Services
>> American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
>