2nd April 25

Attendees:

Kevin Hammond - TSC Chair

Adam Dean - TSC Co-Chair

Nicholas Clarke - TSC Voting Member

Neil Davies - TSC Voting Member

Benjamin Hart - TSC Voting Member

Markus Gufler - TSC Voting Member

Jonathan Kelly - TSC Voting Member

Duncan Soutar - TSC Secretary

Jack Briggs - Intersect Exec Team

Nick Cook - Intersect Exec Team

Nikhil Joshi - Intersect Board

Gerard Moroney - Intersect Board

Adam Rusch - Intersect Board

Kavinda Kariyapperuma - Intersect Board

Terence McCutcheon - OSC Secretary

Ricky Rand - IOE General Manager

Simo Simovic - ISC Secretary

Minutes:

1. Ger opening address:

• Thanking TSC for opportunity to address TSC

• Action: Looking to come back with a short term tactical plan at end of this week having listened to opinion of Committees throughout the week

• NJ & AR: Endorsing Ger’s statement

• Issues raised and put forward to board Summarised by Neil Davies.

1. TSC Opening Address:

• JK: Principle of building in public with community before submitting an info action. However, public release of drafts did not happen as it should have. Feeling that this is what has led to the pivot.

• NC: Particularly concerned about point d in list of issues raised to board. Need to have a process in place that considers core development as a whole and not as individual items due to technical interactions and how they will work together. Concern that if being voted on and built independently then it could cause a fork in the chain upon implementation. Feels that some sort of centralising body is needed to help coordinate this.

• JK: Concern that needs are being defined by proposal applications rather than being established against needs of roadmap.

• BH: Concern that these actions significantly devalue Intersect membership. Feels that interaction with DReps earlier than it occurred would have been preferable. Need to have a process that is independent from proposers for evaluation of delivery.

• ND: Seeing gaps between maintenance work which needs to happen in maintenance and core development and what is currently being proposed.

• JK: Looking at list of proposals that have been submitted. Previous model would have had Working Groups help in the prioritisation. Now DReps are responsible for all DReps similar to catalyst 2. Large overhead on DReps and concern over capacity of the DReps to do this.

• MG: Todays view on gov.tools looks very much like Catalyst. “Just a loose list of items” rather than a coherent programme

• RR: Challenges that there are maintenance items not covered in IOG call off agreement.

• ND: Highlights that during negotiations IOG declined to do in negotiations. This is a systemic issue that established need is not set out before proposals have been submitted. [eg: Network Monitoring or Tier 1 & 2 support]

1. Main problems with the revised process:

GM: Raised concerns about lack of communication across Intersect. Commitment to working closer with TSC to help with budget process.

ND: Raised concerns over prominent external stakeholders influencing the board and impacting decision making.

Issue 1: These proposals do not show how they will deal with public money effectively:

Issues raised are as follows:

• 1. Potentially, proposals don’t address genuine community need

• 2. The benefits in the proposal may be overstated

• 3. the costs may be inflated or may not cover other costs such as integration

• 4. ensuring the right people are in place

• 5. that audit can be performed.

• 6. That the proposals are technically feasible

• GM: Expects TSC to:

1. Provide technical scrutiny of proposals

2. Facilitate contract creation

3. Oversee and sign delivery of milestones for supplier payment

TSC Discussion Points on Issue 1:

• KH: Raises that technical scrutiny needs to happen before the budget is constructed

• ND: Need to be able to communicate knock on impacts and effects of development proposals to the wider communities. Eg potential impact on SPOs with implementation of Peras

• AD: 1. Did not join the TSC to be a nit picking project manager on a volunteer basis

• 2. Who and how are our "Cardano Core" maintainers who are being paid for "integration" being directed which and what "new features" should/may/must be integrated?

• 3. Multi-year projects will likely need a public champion in order to maintain funding, particularly if it is something worth funding, but the outputs are not immediately visible

• MG: Concern that under this system, there is a slant toward proposals of things that suppliers would like to do, rather than things that need to be done. TSC needs to point out gaps of where things need to be done.

• ND: Also need a facility to be able to prove things that might not work early.

• AR: Pivot was partially down to the fact that in a number of budgets there were placeholder costs for projects that were to be determined later which was seen as an overreach in Intersect by some in the community.

• AR: Described process of building collaboratively with community similar to that of original process but with greater DRep involvement earlier in the process.

• DS: Points out that the process of collaborative budget creation described by AR was the previous process but acknowledges that DReps should have been involved earlier than they were.

• KH: TSC were following process laid out by Intersect.

• RR: Feels that there is nothing that can’t be fixed by the contracts between Intersect and the vendor. Contracts can put in specific milestones, dependencies etc

• ND: Can only create a contract with work items that are executable.

• NC: How do the TSC resolve conflict, or if several pieces of work conflict with a Hard Limit in the protocol. How does this get resolved? It could be seen as TSC subverting the community or having to wind back on if this is post vote.

• JB: The TSC should have the right to reject items, as does Intersect when we consider AML/KYB for example.

• JK: Board have said that TSC can veto suggestions. This invalidated DReps as choosers.

Action: Agreement to follow up meeting. Ger to provide a series of slots to Kevin.