LACNIC’s Dynamic and Participatory Online Public Policy Forum

More than 200 persons participated in LACNIC’s first online Public Policy Forum, where three policy proposals were discussed and analyzed.

The new format allowed for more agile and dynamic discussions at the Forum, which was co-chaired by Tomas Lynch and Ariel Weher and had the special participation of Carlos Martínez, LACNIC CTO, who was responsible for managing and reading the questions submitted by participants through the Zoom platform.

During his opening remarks, Weher reminded the community that “the discussion at the Forum —which today we will be holding online— is just as important for deciding consensus on the proposals as the discussion held on the Policy mailing list.”

In turn, Lynch reminded everyone that a proposal is considered to have reached consensus when it is supported by meaningful opinions, after broad discussion, and when no irrefutable objections remain. “We don’t count the number of votes or measure how many people are for or against a proposal; what we look for is support, that all proposals be discussed broadly, and that there are no technically valid objections,” Lynch said.

The Forum then proceeded to analyze three proposals. First on the list was the policy proposal promoted by Jordi Palet which proposes changes to the procedure followed for electing the PDP chairs. Among other things, it proposes establishing the incompatibility of the role with other positions that are directly involved in the flow of the policy development process and that both chairs cannot be from the same country; it adds the possibility of a one-time re-election, and it suggests issuing the call for candidates in the month of February. Once the proposal had been presented, there was an interesting debate with the members of the community, the room temperature was assessed (a non-defining measurement) and then the chairs informed participants that this policy proposal is still in its discussion stage, which will conclude on May 28. Two weeks after this date, the chairs will notify whether the proposal has reached consensus.

The second proposal analyzed at the Forum was the one presented by Edmundo Cazarez López regarding the elimination of the ASN requirement for end users. This initiative seeks to eliminate the requirement that states that end users must have an AS to make use of the addresses they are assigned. “We have two weeks to communicate whether the proposal reaches consensus,” Lynch observed.

The last proposal to be discussed was the one promoted by Ricardo Patara on RPKI ROAs with Origin  ASN 0. The policy proposal recommends that LACNIC should issue RPKI ROAs with ASN 0 for the address blocks that have not yet been allocated or assigned as a way of specifying that the announcements of networks with these addresses should not be accepted by networks using RPKI origin validation.

After assessing the room temperature through a poll via the Zoom platform, the chairs noted that they have two weeks to notify whether the proposal reaches consensus.

Before closing the Forum, Ariel Weher’s reelection as Forum co-chair was ratified.

You can watch a recording of the forum at this link. You can also subscribe to the Policy list here and join the discussion.