[CRISP-TEAM] Draft response to comments to ICG-Forum on process concern

Tue Feb 3 18:29:34 CET 2015

CRISP Team,

This is a draft response to comments to ICG-Forum on process concern
expressed by 5 Guru Acharya.

I intend to send this to icg-forum, and report to IANAXFER list with a
link (like John Curran did).

I welcome your feedback on the draft below until UTC 17:30 4th Feb.

Izumi

-----
Dear ICG members,

On 22 January 2015 Guru Acharya wrote to the icg-forum list with a
number of concerns about the CRISP team process. The CRISP Team was not
able to confirm concrete evidence/facts on these concerns, as explained
below:

We also note that while present as an observer on a number of CRISP
teleconferences, we did not observe Guru Archaya raisinig any of these
concerns on ianaxfer at nro.net mailing list or on any of the regional
community lists on which the CRISP process was being discussed.

Guru Acharya writes:

> I would like to highlight the following concerns about the process
adopted
> by CRISP, which disqualify it from satisfying the criteria of following a
> bottom-up multi-stakeholder process as mandated by the NTIA.
>
> 1) Top-down composition and selection of CRISP team: The CRISP team was a
> closed group selected by the RIR executive committee by way of an
interview
> process. Interested participants were excluded from the working group if
> they did not successfully qualify for the interviews conducted by the RIR
> executive committee. The selection criteria for the candidates was
not made
> public by the RIR executive committee. This is important given that
> non-CRISP participants were excluded from the decision-making process.

Before setting up the CRISP Team, RIRs published the process for
producing a single proposal from the global IP addressing community to
the NTIA, and there was an opportunity for discussions on the public
<ianaxfer at nro.net> mailing list as below:

On 16 October the five RIRs published a process for producing a single
proposal from the global IP addressing community to the NTIA.
https://www.nro.net/news/iana-stewardship-consolidated-rir-iana-stewardship-proposal-team

According to this process the CRISP team would consist of 15 members,
two appointees from each RIR region who are not RIR staff, and one RIR
staff member from each region, who shall assist with the submission
development effort. Each RIR was to appoint their CRISP team members by
a method of its own choosing by 15 November 2014. There was some
discussion on the public <ianaxfer at nro.net> mailing list on 21 October
about standardising a CRISP team selection process across all five RIR
regions, but no broader community support was expressed for this change.
See:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2014-October/000016.html

Following this announcement each of the five RIRs announced an open call
for participants, to which any one could express their interest, as well
as the process according to which the selection of the CRISP members
would be conducted. The process and relevant announcements of each RIR
are described in the Internet Number Community Response to the ICG RFP
(sections VI.B.1-VI.B.5 on "Community Process").

In most cases the RIR executive committees made the final selection of
CRISP representatives from community volunteers. This is in line with
the roles of the RIR Executive Committees in other areas of RIR
operations. At no point in the process were any explicit objections
raised to any of the CRISP team members, nor were any appeals made by
volunteers not selected to join the CRISP team.

>
> 2) Top-down decision-making by the CRISP team: While the general
public was
> invited to provide comments for the draft proposals prepared by
CRISP, they
> were excluded from the decision-making process. Commenters were merely
> informed that their input had either been accepted or rejected by the
CRISP
> team after due consideration. Notably, non-CRISP participants were not
> allowed to contribute to CRISP's tele-conferences or CRISP's internal
> mailing list, where the actual decision-making took place. Mere
> consultation of the general public without their involvement in the
> decision-making process does not constitute a bottom-up multi-stakeholder
> process.

Each of the RIR communities had conducted discussions on the IANA
stewardship transition for the IANA Numbering Services and the role of
the CRISP Team is to consolidate it as a single global proposal.

  https://nro/net/crisp-team

The proposal to establish a CRISP team was distributed to all of the RIR
communities and the <ianaxfer at nro.net> mailing list established on 16
October 2015. The first CRISP team teleconference was held on 9 December
2015. This provided the community with nearly two months during which
they could comment on or object to any elements of the CRISP team
proposal (as noted above, there was some discussion around 21 October
relating to CRISP team selection processes, but there was not community
support for changing the proposed process).

The CRISP team members agreed with the arrangements laid out in the
proposal (while developing some additional mechanisms, including the
internal CRISP mailing list and a working definition of quorum for the
group). CRISP team members also understood a key part of their role to
be facilitating input from the regional communities, and this was
evident throughout the process - teleconference notes from the third
teleconference onwards record various CRISP team members conveying input
from their regional mailing lists.

A concrete record of all the concerns raised by the community on various
mailing lists was prepared by the CRISP team and made available at:
https://www.nro.net/crisp-iana-xfer-summary-discussion-08012015

This spreadsheet indicated the issue, the initial mail in which the
issue was raised, the CRISP team's discussion of the issue and the
current CRISP team position. This clearly demonstrates that the process
of community participation facilitated by the CRISP team worked smoothly
to address a wide range of community input throughout the process.

>
> 3) Lack of information and transparency: The CRISP team had two mailing
> lists. The mailing list used internally by the CRISP team was a closed
> mailing list that was not publicly archived till after the proposal was
> finalised. This resulted in community evaluation of the process and
> proposal in the absence of requisite information about the reasons
for any
> decisions.

As noted in the initial CRISP team proposal and charter, "The CRISP team
shall also work through a public mailing list and the archive of such
mailing list will be publicly available. The name of the mailing list
will be <ianaxfer at nro.net>.

At its initial teleconference, CRISP team members suggested that a
separate mailing list for use by CRISP team members only would be useful
in the interest of efficiency and to allow quick editing iterations on
the proposed response.
https://www.nro.net/wp-content/uploads/CRISP-December-9-meeting-DRAFT-NOTES-v2.pdf

While there was general agreement, concerns about transparency were also
noted, resulting in a commitment to publish archives of the internal
list at the time of publishing the first draft (19 December 2014). The
archive was publicly available from this point and some CRISP team
members shared a link to the archive with their communities directly. A
direct link to this mailing list archive was posted to the ianaxfer
mailing list and on the NRO CRISP webpage after 8 January 2015 due to an
oversight, while the archives were publicly made available when the
first draft of the proposal was published.

The archive of the internal mailing list is available at:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/crisp/

It is possible to confirm from our announcements that linkes to the
archives of the CRISP team mailing list was intended to be shared:

 "Details of all the CRISP team's work to date, including recordings,
  minutes and agendas of all CRISP teleconferences and a public archive
  of the internal CRISP team mailing list, are available at:
  https://nro.net/crisp-team"

https://www.nro.net/news/first-draft-proposal-of-the-internet-number-community-for-the-iana-stewardship-coordination-group

https://www.nro.net/news/internet-number-community-iana-stewardship-proposal-final-call-for-comments

>
> 4) Refusal to deal with essential aspects of the proposal: The CRISP team
> refused to deal with essential aspects of proposal such as the contract
> renewal process, contract duration, jurisdiction, arbitration process,
> review process, high level details of the contract, intellectual property
> rights, charter of the review team and service levels. The CRISP team
cited
> these essential aspects as outside the scope of the CRISP mandate. If the
> CRISP mandate is indeed so limited, then its incomplete proposal
should be
> returned to the RIR community with the suggestion of expanding the
mandate
> of the CRISP team. Note that the charter of the CRISP team, which was
> prepared by the NRO EC in a top-down manner, does not suggest that such
> essential aspects should be excluded from the proposal. This limited
> interpretation of the agenda and issues by the CRISP team is against the
> ethos of a bottom-up multi-stakeholder process.

As noted above, a concrete record of all the concerns raised by the
community on various mailing lists was prepared by the CRISP team and
made available at:
https://www.nro.net/crisp-iana-xfer-summary-discussion-08012015

This spreadsheet, the records and notes from CRISP teleconferences and
the archived mails on both the internal and public mailing lists
demonstrate that the CRISP team closely considered all issues, concerns
or suggestions raised by the community via ianaxfer at nro.net or the
regional discussion lists. Where specific suggestions were not reflected
in the proposal, detailed justification was provided to the community
via the ianaxfer mailing list.

While the CRISP team did note certain constraints on its remit, as it
understood that remit, the issues noted by Guru Acharya were addressed
specifically in the following mails to the public <ianaxfer at nro.net>
mailing list:

Contract details in general, including renewal process, duration:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000213.html
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2014-December/000135.html
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2014-December/000143.html

Jurisdiction:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000331.html

Arbitration process:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000331.html

Review process:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2014-December/000134.html
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000172.html

Intellectual property rights:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2014-December/000145.html
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2014-December/000127.html
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000342.html
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000173.html

Charter of the review team:
https://www.nro.net/pipermail/ianaxfer/2015-January/000320.html

As discussed at length in various CRISP teleconferences, it was felt
that in identifying the processes of proposal development and its
implementation, it required a solid understanding of the CRISP team's
remit and responsibility. As Guru Archaya notes, this remit was not
explicitly spelled out by the original CRISP proposal, but was
identified through CRISP discussions over the duration of the process
and incorporating community input made publicly at the time. We believe
that the proposal submitted to the ICG fulfils that remit, while not
extending into areas beyond the authority or expertise of the CRISP team.

I hope that this effectively addresses the issues raised in this email,
and I would be happy to expand further on any issues you feel could
benefit from more explanation.

Yours sincerely,
Izumi Okutani
Chair, the CRISP Team