[arin-ppml] AC candidates

[Amy Potter]

Hi all,

Having spent a substantial amount of time over the past decade thinking
about how to manage this exact conflict, I figured I weigh in. I am
currently serving out the remainder of my final year on the AC, so I really
don't have a stake here in terms of trying to get re-elected, but I think
the insights I have to offer are relevant. I was an IP address broker from
2012-2019, and was first elected to the AC in 2015. I was neither a member
nor a resource holder for the first several years I served on the AC. I
believe there is absolutely a conflict that exists for those currently
working as an IP address broker (or any other form of financial
intermediary), and that this conflict is of a slightly different nature
than the conflicts other members of the AC may have based on working for
companies that are impacted by ARIN policies. Previous affiliation with a
broker is only a conflict in my opinion if they continue to receive some
sort of payments based on IP address sales. Nonetheless I think this
conflict can be managed by 1) the structural safeguards already in place,
and 2) the AC member understanding the conflict and having a plan in place
to deal with it. I'll get into the details of how this plays out below, but
the TLDR of it is that I think the safeguards in place and the current
culture of the AC provides quite a bit of protection; that a broker
behaving ethically can provide substantial relevant insight and value to
the AC under the right set of circumstances; and that successfully managing
the conflict comes down to full transparency and recusing oneself at the
appropriate times.

There are a number of safeguards already built into the system during the
election process and through the AC's own processes. Candidates running for
the AC provide bios which include a section where they are asked about
conflicts. They also provide details about prior work history. So long as
these sections are answered honestly I think this provides the community
itself with notice of potential conflicts so that members may vote in an
informed manner, or seek additional feedback from the candidate if they
have any questions. There are also options available to ARIN and the nomcom
to deal with potentially false responses.

As for the way the AC itself operates, at the annual face to face meeting
each January members of the AC disclose their current employer, role, and
potential conflicts to one another. At the end of each monthly meeting,
there is an opportunity for AC members to disclose any changes in
employment or affiliation so that other AC members are able to evaluate the
things each AC member says and does in light of their affiliations and
sources of compensation. Throughout my time on the AC, the culture of the
group has taken this obligation very seriously, and members have taken
affiliations and conflicts into account when evaluating the contributions
of others and decisions on how to vote.  AC members also must update their
bios that are published on ARIN's website to accurately reflect their
employment and affiliation, in order to provide continued transparency to
the community.

It's also important to remember the role of the AC in facilitating the
policy development process, and the actual opportunities to advance ones
own position (which do exist, but there are limits to that). When a new
policy proposal comes in the Chair of the AC assigns shepherds to work with
the author. If a proposal is authored by a member of the AC, that person
cannot be a shepherd of the proposal. The chair also considers who to
assign each proposal to, taking into account potential conflicts.Shepherds
work with the author to ensure ensure the proposal 1) has a clear problem
statement, 2) proposes changes to the text of NRPM, and 3) falls within the
scope of ARIN policy. Once the shepherds are satisfied the proposal meets
these requirements they bring it to the AC to vote on whether those three
criteria are satisfied, and if it passes, the proposal comes onto the
docket as a draft policy. At that point, yes, the "power of the pen"
(ability to edit) shifts from the author to the shepherds. The shepherds
make edits based on community feedback (mainly from  ppml and public policy
consultations), however there is quite a bit of discretion in language
choice--often times there's quite a bit of wordsmithing that goes on to try
to ensure that the proposed change to the language of NRPM actually
achieves the thing it's trying to achieve. Members of the AC often
collaborate with one another on this wordsmithing, and this is where
industry expertise is extremely helpful. As a broker I provided quite a bit
of feedback to my peers about language choices based on my experience of
how they would likely be applied, what potential opportunities for
loopholes this left, etc. If a broker can fulfill this function ethically
it can be very very useful. One of the most difficult parts of being on the
AC is trying to make sure the language you're working on actually achieves
what you want it to, and there is often a huge difference between what I
actually see happen in the IP address market and what those not involved in
the market think happens.

The next stages of voting are where I believe the need to recuse oneself
comes in. When the AC is voting to advance a draft to a recommended draft,
move a recommended draft to last call, or recommend for board adoption the
AC votes on whether it is 1) technically sound, 2) fair and impartial, and
3) supported by the community. I believe there is an opportunity for bias
to creep in in evaluating the amount of community support that exists, so I
frequently recused myself from voting on policies in these stages while I
was a broker, even after having contributed to wordsmithing. While members
of the AC make decisions for themselves about whether or not to recuse
themselves, the culture of the AC plays a strong role here in setting
expectations of behavior. If a member of the AC was voting in situations
other members felt they should have recused themselves in, it's likely any
attempts to influence the direction of future policies would be received
with far more scrutiny in the future by other AC members. Since there are
15 members of the AC, it would be extremely difficult for one member to
effectively influence the course of policy development after having lost
the trust of the other members. If a perceived conflict became too strong,
there are potential avenues for removal of an AC member as well.

Ultimately I think the question for the community comes down to whether you
feel you can trust a candidate to manage any conflict ethically. Personally
I wouldn't fret too hard about that given the faith I have in the
constraints and culture that exists at this time, however it may be worth
reconsidering in the future if the makeup of the AC starts to shift. Also
it's worth pointing out again that previous affiliations or prior roles
that would have created a conflict in the past do not mean that conflict
still exists today. Based on the bios I'm guessing that might be where some
of this concern is coming from, but unless there is some form of continued
compensation still occurring I don't see it as an issue personally, and the
fact it was disclosed in the bios is itself a level of transparency.

Hope that helps,

Amy





On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 1:18 PM Owen DeLong via ARIN-PPML <
arin-ppml at arin.net> wrote:

>
>
> > On Oct 26, 2023, at 09:44, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 9:42 AM John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> >>> On Oct 26, 2023, at 12:20 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> >>> It plummeted after the Board changed the AC's role from shepherding
> >>> policy proposals to developing policy proposals.
> >>
> >> There is no material change in the role of the ARIN AC in this regard –
> >> although I do agree that the role of the ARIN AC in shepherding policies
> >> has been made clearer with subsequent updates to the ARIN Policy
> >> Development Process (PDP).
> >
> > Hi John,
> >
> > That's just not accurate. I forget the name of the process that
> > preceded the PDP, but the introduction of the PDP fundamentally and
> > IMO destructively changed the AC's role.
>
> I think you’re referring to the Internet Resources Policy Evaluation
> Process (IRPEP).
>
> However, I think you are misremembering things rather substantially… Under
> the IRPEP,
> the AC had a relatively free hand to reject proposals in their infancy and
> there was
> considerably less protection available to the proposal author or the
> community.
>
> This carried over into the first version of the PDP, and the AC’s
> escalating use of
> that ability was significantly reigned in in the next version of the PDP
> as a result.
>
> Under the current PDP (and at least 2 previous versions), the AC can only
> reject
> a proposal prior to making it a draft policy if it is out of scope of the
> PDP or lacks
> a clear problem statement. Even in those cases, the AC is required to make
> a good
> faith effort to wrork with the author(s) to resolve those defects.
>
> Once a policy is a draft policy, it’s published and open for community
> discussion.
> The AC cannot abandon it without a substantial majority vote (IIRC it
> takes at
> least 8 members of the AC voting in favor of abandonment, regardless of the
> number of AC members present in the meeting). The AC must further provide
> a reason for such abandonment to the community.
>
> As John stated, if the community has any level of disagreement with the
> AC’s
> actions in such a case, the petition process is quite easy to exercise.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, only a handful of abandoned proposals or
> draft policies have ever been successfully petitioned and of those, I don’t
> recall a single example which went on to become policy.
>
> I know taking pot shots at the PDP and the AC is one of your favorite
> hobbies, but I think you’re a bit off base on this one.
>
> Owen
>
>
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