Proposed APNIC By-law Reform 2025

Consultation 1 – April 2025

The EC held a community consultation on the Proposed Reforms from 7 to 18 April 2025.

Below is a sample of the feedback and questions received in the online community consultation session held on Monday, 7 April 2025 at 14:00 (UTC +10). The recording and full transcript of the consultation is available.

Feedback and questions on the proposals

Feedback summary

There was general support for the proposals from those who provided feedback during the online consultation
session.

One community member noted that the community is already quite familiar with the current mechanism and that this
proposal makes simple things even more complicated.

The EC were also asked by a community member to provide their comments on the proposals. Kenny Huang, Roopinder
Singh Perhar, and Achie Atienza spoke in favour of the proposals.

Question: Can EC members be re-elected after three terms?
Secretariat answer: The proposal is presented as an absolute limit of three terms, meaning an EC member
could not be re-elected after serving three terms. We encourage the community to provide feedback on this.

Question: How will the reforms apply to the current EC members?
Secretariat answer: This has not been determined yet. How they will be implemented will be considered
after receiving the community’s feedback.

We note that the change in term lengths will require a transitional period.

We encourage you to provide your feedback on how the reforms might be applied to the current EC members.
Community feedback:

• The EC Members should move to three-year terms if they are re-elected, provided they haven’t been in the
  seat for something close to nine-years.
• If the candidate has been an EC member for 10 years (five terms), then they should not be allowed to
  renominate. If they have been on the EC for less time, they can be re-elected for three years, but we
  will need to decide how we count the number of terms, or if it’s per year or per term.
• One approach is to look at the existing amount of years that each EC member has currently served for and
  use that as a way to determine whether or not they stand for re-election, to align with nine years.

Question: LACNIC and RIPE NCC do not have term limits. Is there a reason for this different structure?
Secretariat answer: The Secretariat advised that they were not aware of the reasons why LACNIC or RIPE
NCC do not have term limits, or if it has previously been considered by their communities.

Following the consultation session, it has been confirmed that to the best of our knowledge the LACNIC and RIPE
NCC Members have not formally considered term limits for their respective board members.

Question: What is the consultation and reform process?
Secretariat answer: The process will involve:

1. Community consultation on the high-level proposals, via feedback during this webinar and on the
   APNIC-Talk mailing list by 18 April 2025
2. EC review of feedback and development of final proposals
3. Information sessions on final proposals
4. Member vote

Community feedback:

• I’d like to see separately to this a framework in place as to how we get new involvement in the
  community. I think there is a lot of appetite for there to be kind of a navigable structure. I’ve seen
  in the community several people commenting about getting lost within the kind of APNIC Framework and how
  to participate.

Question: What is the status of the suggested reform to introduce appointed independent directors?

Secretariat answer: The EC discussed this suggestion from Jonathan Brewer and responded to him, which can
be found on the EC correspondence and feedback page on the APNIC website. The EC advised that further
consideration was needed, especially with regard to the potential impact on the EC’s structure and processes if
independent directors were introduced.

The EC has committed to continuing to consider the proposal.

Community feedback:

• As a community member, we definitely think that the APNIC EC Board does need a bit of diversity. I know
  that everyone wants it to be diverse, but we are not seeing that much diversity.

Consultation 2 – Sep 2025

The EC held a community consultation at APNIC 60 and via APNIC talk on the proposal to introduce term limits of three terms for EC members. Below is a sample of the feedback received from the consultation. The recording and transcript from APNIC 60 and comments on APNIC-talk are available on the APNIC 60 website.

Structure of term limits

There was general support from those who provided feedback during the session for giving EC members the opportunity to seek re-election at the end of their three terms after a cooling off period of one year.

One community member considered that if terms are to be extended from two to three years, that a hard limit would be appropriate and was not in support of a cooling-off period. They noted that there are enough capable people in the APNIC community to perform the role of EC member and that APNIC should take a different approach to ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers) as, unlike ARIN, APNIC has National Internet Registries (NIRs), and some EC members are employed by NIRs.

There was also general support from those who provided feedback during the session for staggered exits of EC members from the EC.

Application to current and former EC members

There was support from some community members for a phased approach involving a grace period of one additional term for existing EC members, or for existing EC members at or nearing the end of their term limit.

Some delegates from an organization in the community, as well as a community member commenting on APNIC-talk, supported the application of term limits only to terms served after the adoption of the new rules.

Two community members considered that waiting another nine years before the term limit applied to the existing EC members would push renewal too far into the future. There was also concern it would result in the loss of too much knowledge at the same time if all members stayed their entire term.

A community member expressed the view that it is difficult to find candidates with technical and service knowledge as well as sufficient institutional governance experience and that losing two or three EC members at the end their nine-year terms may have a significant impact on the organization.

ARIN’s experience

Bill Sandiford, Chair of the ARIN Board of Trustees, outlined ARIN’s recent experience of introducing term limits of three years for members of the ARIN Board of Trustees (Trustees) with a two-year cooling off period before they can stand for re-election. He noted that existing Trustees at the time of the introduction of the reforms could seek one further term if they were otherwise at or near their term limit. He sought to reassure the APNIC community that the ARIN Board has had time to prepare for similar reforms to those contemplated by APNIC as, although it has been four years since ARIN introduced the term limits, ARIN was only now experiencing the loss of its first board member due to the limits.

Bill Sandiford expressed the view that ARIN’s reforms are expected to work as planned to bring renewal to its Board and allow existing directors to stand for re-election while making it clear that he did not have a view on APNIC’s By-law reforms.

Other feedback

A few community members considered that there should be more female participation and participation from small economies on the EC. The establishment of a nomination committee and perhaps an increase in EC numbers to assist with this was also suggested.

One community member suggested increased diversity should encompass broad diversity of thought and asked those in the community to encourage others to participate in meetings and become known by the community so they can be considered as future EC members.

In relation to the loss of former EC members’ knowledge and experience, it was mentioned that the EC can encourage them to share their knowledge with the EC after they have left the role.

It was also suggested that a program for potential future candidates to learn more about the expectations of the ECs role would be helpful.