[nc-budget] Trying to understand and clarify the situation

[Dany Vandromme <vandrome@renater.fr>]

Allow me a kind of naive approach, but I am getting confused by the
various discussion and objectives of this sub-group, therefore I prefer to
start with a simple analysis, truing to include views of participants
(please complete if I missed something)

Secretary tasks have been performed till now by EP, on a voluntary basis,
to make the DNSO to run. This represents a fair amount of work and
probably also a huge amount of everyday availability.

At some point, Elisabeth realized that this work could not be done that
way (personal investment as a volunteer) on long term, and that it should
be supported as a true value work by DNSO. Therefore a budget was
presented for the DNSO secretary, based on estimated costs for the
secretary staff and adminsitration cost (telcon, webcast etc...). I guess
that the estimate for that was in the range of $200k/year.

From that, it was decided by the DNSO (I would rather say by the NC),
instead of accepting EP proposal as it is, to go through a job definition
and a widely distributed call for candidates, to take over the secretary
tasks, with guaranteed professional skills.

I agree perfectly on the principle of the call for candidatures, provided
the open search will not produce a less efficient situation than the
existing one with extra cost.

A first draft of the job definition has been proposed (by Chuck if I
remember right) and partly discussed at the last two conf call of the
NC-budget group.

Now I have a couple of question, both about budget itself and about job
definition

1) Is the job definition easier to do from the existing one (EP
activities) or from scratch? In the first case, are the group members
aware of what is really done already (in terms of availability, technical
skills, etc...). From the existing situation, then we should be able to
identify properly what is missing and include it in the job description.

2) In both cases, we should also pay attention to the cost. 
Everyone could agree on the principle that we need a new car. Then
everyone will contribute to describe what will that car be used for. Then
consensus will be on a set of features, which will be fulfilled only by
the nicest Daimler or Rolls-Royce. That would be fine if we can afford to
buy it! But, if the budget will allows finally to buy a small Subaru or
Seat, it may be not worth to discuss so long about the prestigious cars
features (sorry about the analogy, Elisabeth!).

3) Concerning budget apects (which are more important that the secretary
problem after it was agreed that the DNSO need and will have a secretary),
the figures I have in mind (revenues) to cover $200k are $100k to be equal
contributions of the constituencies, to be completed by a matching
contribution of NSI. It seems to-day that the constituency contributions
are even not guaranteed at all (I am personally working within the NCC to
solve that problem) for some constituencies. As long as these figures are
not guaranteed, it is no point to scan advertisements for Rolls-Royce or
Daimler.


4) Sponsoring bodies. I perfectly agree that we should consider not to
have the DNSO secretary in US, not because the required skills will not be
meet there, but to bring into the ICANN game a bit more of non US-centric
character or geographical diversity, for sponsor search purpose and for
visibility as well. 

5) In term of recovering sponsor contributions, besides the NSI matching
fund, it is not clear also that the money would have to go directly to
DNSO level, rather than through ICANN or through the constituencies
themselves. Depending the choice, the work load could be also
significantly affected. Furthermore, another possible idea to explore, was
to propose secretary work to thoses constituencies needing some, in
exchange of a financial contribution. That could also contribute to the
job description.

In any case, We should really consider the fact that
there is already an operational secretary at work and check (provided it
satisfy the agreed requirements in term of professional skills) that just
maintain it would not correspond to a drastic cost reduction with regards
to creating a new one anywhere else. 

6) As Erika is in charge of leading a subgroup to propose the selection
procedure and criteria, it is most propable that some of my questions
could be answered by Erika's subgroup work, but certainly not all. The
matching between budget and skill requirements will not be answered by
that sub-group, at least. But so far, I did not receive anything from
Erika about that.

That's all for my naive questions, just to warm you up. Next I will try to
make much shorter and concise contributions to the debate.

best regards

Dany 
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