[arin-ppml] Notes on the current ARIN Policy Development Process

[John Curran]

On Feb 1, 2010, at 4:03 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>>        The AC was elected to help develop good, technically sound
>> policy.
> 
> Owen,
> 
> The AC was elected first and foremost to be shepherds of the bottom-up
> public-originated policy development process. Advising whether a
> particular proposal is "good, technically sound policy" is supposed to
> be the very last step, not the first. Moving it to the front violates,
> disrupts and eventually destroys the bottom-up character of the
> process.

At the end of 2008, the ARIN Board of Trustees adopted an updated 
Policy Development Process (PDP) which gave ARIN Advisory Council 
more freedom in handling policy proposals. The revision to the PDP 
was made after presentation of the proposed changes in the Denver 
Public Policy Meeting in April 2008, and then after a public call 
for comments. You can view the full explanation of the changes here:
<http://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-announce/2008-April/000715.html>

The revised PDP places policy proposals and draft policies under the 
purview of the AC as opposed to the proposal submitter, and made clear 
that the AC has the authority edit/merge/abandon policy proposals as 
needed to come up with draft policies which fair and technically sound. 
The result of the AC's work then goes to the PPML and the Public Policy 
Meeting for consideration by the community (full process is available
here: <https://www.arin.net/policy/pdp.html>)

This change was made to insure that draft policies are technically
sound, not duplicative, and consistent with the policy framework.  
It is hoped that the AC output will be Draft Policies which are 
strong candidates for adoption and will gain community support as 
a result during the PPML and Public Policy Meeting discussion.

It was recognized that this revision to the PDP places significant
control in the hands of the ARIN AC, and hence the petition process
was made prominent in the revised PDP to allow any AC action to be
petitioned via only 10 members of the community.  This is a very
low threshold intentionally, so that community could readily bring 
a matter to the PPML and next Public Policy Meeting.  It does not
indicate that the AC failed in any manner, but only that an action
taken by the AC may warrant further consideration.  As this is the
first time we're exercising this process, we also taking notes as
to the process itself in addition to the results.

The Policy Development process is not static, and there's already
some thought that we should look at another update based on the
experiences and lessons learned with the new PDP to date.  If 
there are specific suggestions that people have which they have
not already posted, you may send them to me directly at any time.
Of course, there will also be a similar community presentation
of any revised PDP and that will also offer another opportunity
to provide feedback in a public manner.

I post this message to PPML in order to make sure that everyone
is aware of these changes, and encourage folks to continue with 
the important discussions of the policy proposals and drafts 
which are before us.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN