Dear RIPE NCC members, The RIPE NCC Activity Plan and Budget 2019 is now available. This definitive document has been approved by the RIPE NCC Executive Board with input from the RIPE NCC membership. It outlines the work we will undertake in the coming year and the associated costs for each activity. The document is available at: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-711 An overview of the main points from this year's Activity Plan and Budget are: - The RIPE NCC’s Budget will increase by 17% (largely due to activities in IT and Information Security, DNS and K-root operations, Training Services credentialing initiatives and abuse-c validation) - There is a forecast revenue increase of 24% in 2019 due to the increasing membership - The RIPE NCC plans to increase its FTE count by 6% in 2019 (from 155 to 165) - The membership fee will remain at EUR 1,400 - There is an anticipated surplus of EUR 9.7 million to be redistributed to the membership - The cost per LIR is expected to be EUR 1,367, down from EUR 1,435 in the 2018 Budget Based on developments over the past few months, feedback the Executive Board received from the membership at the General Meeting (GM) and through other feedback mechanisms, changes were made since the draft Activity Plan and Budget was introduced in September. These changes are all outlined in the appendix that can be found at the end of the document. As noted in the appendix, there will a 395 kEUR increase in expenditure for consultancy. While this is in part aimed at enhancing our information security processes, the majority of this increase (300 kEUR) will be used to carry out changes to our organisational structure, as detailed in section 4.3 of the document on Management and HR. Kind regards, Axel Pawlik Managing Director RIPE NCC