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

["Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@netsol.com>]

Let me add just one comment regarding the issue of having physical DNSO
offices.  In our meeting in Yokohama, I recall us agreeing that hiring a
consultant who provided his/her own office space and equipment was a much
more cost-efficient way to go.  So I think we should be talking about the
location of a consultant, not the location of an office.

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: Elisabeth Porteneuve [mailto:Elisabeth.Porteneuve@cetp.ipsl.fr]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 6:25 PM
To: cgomes@netsol.com; nc-budget@dnso.org; pdeblanc@usvi.net;
vandrome@renater.fr
Subject: RE: [nc-budget] Trying to understand and clarify the situation



Hello,

Whereas the Tuesday telecon was in a small committee (Philip, Dany,
Elisabeth, Roger, and Chuck for few minutes in the end), I believe
some important issues were looked in.
Let me summarize. It completes Dany's, Peter and Chuck comments below.

   ICANN survival and strenghts depends on its internationalisation.
   Both legitimacy and financial aspects are concerned.
   - It is hard to have non-US sponsors for offices and staff in LA
   - It is hard to convince that ICANN is international when
     any other region work may get wipped out and moved back to LA
   - It is hard to make any substantial progress on ccTLDs (all the World),
     and convince them to participate financially to 35% of ICANN
     budget without any reciprocity and anything "politicaly correct";
     the similar applies to other group of interests
   None of this should be seen as against US, but towards US and ICANN,
   a collective effort.

   Whereas it seems costly to have offices in 2 or 3 places in
   the world, it is only first glimpse appearance. The non-US sponsors
   are ready. The ICANN staff can hardly work with, for exemple,
   244 ccTLDs just sitting in California. Human contacts are necessary,
   dedicated staff, like for Registrars.
   The cost of 3 staff offices has been estimanted by many,
   it is approx $US 300,000 per annum (to be compared to ICANN expense
   of $US 110,000 in July 2000, one month for Jones-Day law firm).

   The recognition of work and efforts done in regions, the clear 
   acceptance to have offices in 2 or 3 places, in various
   languages areas, seems a necessary step. The DNSO Secretariat
   is an European effort, up and running since September 1998.
   More efforts are needed to have the DNSO and NC efficient,
   lets tackle to that.

Elisabeth

-----Original Message-----
From: "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@netsol.com>
To: "'Peter de Blanc'" <pdeblanc@usvi.net>,
        "'Dany Vandromme'"
	 <vandrome@renater.fr>, nc-budget@dnso.org
Cc: "'VANDROMME Dany (RENATER)'" <Dany.Vandromme@renater.fr>
Subject: RE: [nc-budget] Trying to understand and clarify the situation
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 09:06:03 -0400 

One important item to keep in mind is that we as a budget committee pretty
much unanimously agreed that objective # 4 in the detailed job description
was the highest priority.  We acknowledged that the other objectives are
also important and will have to be done and in some cases even before
objective # 4.  But in my opinion, if we do not succeed at making
significant process with objective # 4 in the next six months, the DNSO's
chance of success and therefore ICANN's chance of success will be severely
limited.  We can have the smoothest running operation possible, but if we
are not able to improve the consensus building process, we will fail.

I say this not to minimize the importance of operational tasks, but rather
to make sure that we don't neglect what I strongly believe is the most
critical task in front of us.  It is crucial that we are able to achieve
operational and process objectives.  One without the other will result in
failure.

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter de Blanc [mailto:pdeblanc@usvi.net]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 8:42 AM
To: 'Dany Vandromme'; nc-budget@dnso.org
Cc: 'VANDROMME Dany (RENATER)'
Subject: RE: [nc-budget] Trying to understand and clarify the situation


Greetings:

There are certainly a lot of substantive points here. Within them there
seems to be one consistent thread:

EP, and her organization have been doing this work.

EP is probably in the best position to write an "Operations Manual" for the
secretariat, because she knows more about what she, and her support staff
are doing.

Since I joined this list late, I probably missed something- however, has
anyone considered asking (asked)  EP if she is interested in continuing this
work under some more formal (paid) arrangement?

Also, if the exercise of writing the operations manual should occur, that
work should be paid for. Regardless of the willingness of AFNIC to subsidize
and absorb costs, at least we should ask AFNIC if, in the event of DNSO
getting an increased level of funding, AFNIC would like to see some cost
recovery.

WRT the funding- there is a lot of competition for funds. Within the ccTLD
constituency, I am working on methods of securing direct sponsorships
related to meetings- the funds would be paid directly to the ccTLD
secretariat. Of course this must be done in a way that assures neutrality.

When ICANN (corporate) gets MCI to sponsor, like the Santiago meeting, MCI
probably thinks (corporately) that ICANN will disburse those funds where
they are most needed. Possibly to cover meeting costs, and there may or may
not be a surplus. It is unlikely that any formula of sponsorship fund
distribution will ever happen. (Like, out of every US$ coming in, DSNO gets
$0.10)

So, my suggestion is to have any funds we (ncBudget) are able to obtain be
paid directly into an account for the benefit of the DNSO

peter




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nc-budget@dnso.org [mailto:owner-nc-budget@dnso.org]On
Behalf Of Dany Vandromme
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2000 8:08 AM
To: nc-budget@dnso.org
Cc: VANDROMME Dany (RENATER)
Subject: [nc-budget] Trying to understand and clarify the situation



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
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Dany VANDROMME                    |  Directeur du GIP RENATER

                Reseau National de Telecommunications
         pour la Technologie, l'Enseignement et la Recherche

                                  |  ENSAM
Tel   :  +33 (0)1 53 94 20 30     |  151 Boulevard de l'Hopital
Fax   :  +33 (0)1 53 94 20 31     |  75013 Paris
E-mail: Dany.Vandromme@renater.fr |  FRANCE
--------------------------------------------------------------------