The budget serves the community, not the other way around. If it's
failing in some way, I think it it should be fixed.
FWIW I was chair of the IAOC fiance committee that put together the 2019
budget before it was handed off to the LLC. Over the last few years of
the IAOC we made an effort to have meeting related costs moved out from
under non-meeting related activities. As part of this, the meeting
related part of the IRTF budget was moved under meeting expenses and the
non-meeting related part was renamed ANRW Support (Although I frankly
don't recall the discussion around this change and would need to search
my notes for details.) There were additional breakdowns of the
IRTF-specific meeting expenses included in the 2019 budget prep in
addition to F&B/Costs, e.g., speaker/student comps and other items to
be spent under the direction of the IRTF chair. I'd be surprised if
this money isn't still available to the IRTF or that this information
isn't part of the passed LLC budget.
Lou
On 1/6/2019 1:18 PM, Aaron Falk wrote:
As a former IRTF Chair and assuming the F&B categorization restricts
how the funds can be used, I would agree with Lars.
—aaron
On Sun, Jan 6, 2019 at 12:52 Lars Eggert <lars@xxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:lars@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi,
thank you for the explanation!
On 2019-1-4, at 22:31, Portia Wenze-Danley <pwdanley@xxxxxxxx
<mailto:pwdanley@xxxxxxxx>> wrote:
During the budgeting process, and with input from the IRTF Chair,
we determined that the IRTF discretionary budget line was used
for the IRTF dinners only at meetings and it made sense to
include them in the meeting expenses section to provide the true
cost of meetings.
I feel pretty strongly that converting the IRTF Chair's
discretionary budget to purely an F&B line item is something that
should be reverted.
When I was serving in that role, I attempted to use the budget for
comp'ed registrations for researchers (beyond what the Day Pass
program provided at the time), to cover unexpected costs related
to the ANRW, etc. In each case that I remember, Ray ended up
covering those expenses via ISOC, which muddled the distinction
between ISOC and the IRTF and was part of the reason why I think
the IASA 2.0 effort was long overdue.
Also, we are looking for a new IRTF Chair at the moment, and
several candidates have university affiliations. While many seem
to regularly be able to fund their IETF meeting attendance, the
effectiveness of the role is increased if additional travel is
possible, not all of which might be coverable in the same way as
IETF meeting attendance (e.g., invitations to consult and
influence EU, NSF, DOE and other funding organization agendas, or
the IAB retreat.) I believe that it should be possible for the
IRTF Chair to fund their attendance to such meetings out of the
discretionary budget, if no alternative funding is available and
the person decides that it is necessary..
Converting the line item to an F&B expense eliminates such
freedoms and reduces the effectiveness of the IRTF Chair.
Lars
--
-- aaron Sent from Gmail Mobile
