Summary

  • APNIC’s Stage 1 leadership consultation records participants’ difficulty sustaining community work without employer support or dedicated time during the working day. The report explicitly says its voluntary findings are not representative of the wider community.
  • Published EC guidance provides no financial remuneration and permits certain expense claims, with reimbursement subject to constraints. Available time is a different cost. Employer support may widen access, but individual service must not become instructed representation.

A reimbursed plane ticket does not make Tuesday available. Someone still has to cover the network shift, finish the day job or accept that the meeting will use private time. That is an economic distinction, not an account of any particular APNIC member’s circumstances.

It is also the useful starting point for APNIC’s current discussion of leadership diversity. Before a person appears on a ballot, the person must be able to contemplate doing the work. Better candidate information and fair election rules matter. They cannot, by themselves, release an employee from a shift.

APNIC’s 4 September announcement identifies time and support among the themes emerging from the first consultation stage. It describes community leadership as a significant commitment, dependent in part on professional, personal and employer support. That is not a claim that every employer obstructs participation. It is a reason to ask which costs a proposed remedy actually changes.

The consultation is a signal, not a census

The Stage 1 report is more specific about the mechanism. Participants described volunteer leadership as difficult to balance with their jobs when employers do not actively support it. Dedicated time within the workday was one example of the support they meant. Some said employers did not recognize the value of the roles.

The report also states the limitation that must travel with those observations: participation was voluntary, the findings are not statistically representative of the wider APNIC community, and public sessions may have influenced what people felt comfortable sharing.

The evidence therefore supports a practical problem to examine. It does not establish its prevalence, the number of otherwise capable candidates excluded, or the financing arrangements of today’s Council. It does not demonstrate employer capture. Those are different claims requiring different evidence.

This matters because a plausible barrier need not be converted into a population estimate before an institution can clarify its expectations. Publishing what a role requires is useful even when nobody can yet count all the people deterred by it.

A cost can exist without an invoice

APNIC’s published EC roles and obligations say members receive no financial remuneration from APNIC. They may claim expenses, including certain personal costs of discharging duties and travel to face-to-face meetings. The guidance lists four regular face-to-face meetings a year and allows extraordinary meetings.

The about-EC guidance adds an important qualification: actual meeting expenses may be reimbursed where possible, within budget and cash-flow constraints; not all expenses may be covered. These are published descriptions of the arrangement, not an audit of every current claim or payment.

Neither description makes meeting preparation costless. Nor does a regular-meeting count establish annual hours. A person’s income foregone, an employer’s replacement capacity, uncertainty about the calendar and time taken from private life are different economic burdens. They need not produce receipts payable to APNIC.

Consider two possible arrangements, without treating either as an observed case. An employer gives one candidate protected time and covers the absent employee’s duties. Another candidate can participate only after paid work is finished. Both may meet identical formal eligibility rules. Their ability to sustain the role may still differ.

Travel reimbursement narrows one difference. It need not narrow the other. Remote participation can avoid a journey while leaving a daytime obligation intact. A training course can improve confidence while adding another demand on the same scarce hours.

The point is not that these measures are useless. It is that their benefits should not be substituted for one another.

The strongest case for unpaid office

There is a serious argument for voluntary leadership. It keeps the role connected to service rather than to a salaried career. People can bring current operational experience, while the institution avoids creating a new compensation system whose incentives and fairness would themselves require oversight.

Employer support also has a respectable case. Internet institutions benefit from knowledgeable participation, and participating organizations can benefit from employees who understand shared governance. Protected time can acknowledge that common benefit rather than being a favour purchased for a particular vote.

These arguments should be confronted on their merits. An unpaid role is not automatically captured; a paid role is not automatically accessible. Compensation could attract applicants without removing replacement-capacity or family constraints. Conversely, predictable calendars and modest support might make a material difference without creating salaried offices.

The available sources do not settle which remedy is best. They do make “voluntary” an incomplete description of who bears the cost.

Support must not become representation

APNIC’s transparency guidance describes EC members as individuals serving for APNIC’s benefit. This is the boundary that any support arrangement should preserve.

An employer can release an employee without acquiring the employee’s judgment. Reimbursement can support service without rewarding an election result. These distinctions need to be clear before a funding arrangement is treated as a solution.

Theo March’s practical recommendation is therefore narrower than a demand for salaries. Describe the duties and predictable peaks of work; state which costs are reimbursable and how certain reimbursement is; make scheduling and remote access usable; and, if support is considered, separate its administration from preferences about candidates or decisions.

The consultation’s announced next steps involve combining the two stages and an end-year EC review. The frozen sources do not announce an adopted salary, protected-time scheme or new support entitlement. Such choices remain choices.

The question before the ballot is not merely who is willing to serve. It is who can obtain the time, on what terms, and whether those terms leave the person free to serve the institution rather than the funder.