[Chapter-delegates] IMPORTANT: vote from Chapter Advisory Council - please make sure you vote!

[Andrew Sullivan]

Dear colleagues,

I wanted to post some small clarifications, since in his enthusiasm for the cause Olivier may have left some people with an understanding not entirely consistent with the way I see things.

On Mon, Jun 24, 2024 at 09:43:37PM +0100, Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond via Chapter-delegates wrote:

>As you know from some of the updated emails which Joly has sent to the 
>Chapter Delegates mailing list, his service costs in the region of $64 
>000 per annum

Certainly, what Joly was billing the Internet Society was in this region.  This does not, of course, reflect the costs on the Internet Society staff side of this matter, but I agree that if we only consider the dollar cost it is indeed low for the service in question.

>what will happen. It is therefore very important that we, as Chapters, 
>ask for the Internet Society Board of Trustees to bring back the 
>funding for this

It is not exactly true that the vote is for chapters to ask the board to restore the funding, because that is not how things actually work.

What a vote in favour of this would do is vote to provide advice from the ChAC to the bord that the board should allocate funding for this activity.  The board is not the management of the organization, and they do not directly operate any of the funding mechanisms of the organization.  So, if the ChAC were to provide this advice, and if the board were to accept such advice and act according to it, then the board would need to pass a resolution changing the budget allocations for 2024, and would also need to pass a resolution directing the staff via the CEO (i.e. me until the end of August) to fund this activity.  I wish to be perfectly clear that I will certainly not reinstate any contract without direct instruction from the board on this management activity.  I think it would be exceptionally bad practice to operate such that the board is interfering in operational decisions made by management.  If the community really wants to go in that direction, I will say that I, at least, have no intention of so acting without making the board show what it is doing via board resolutions.  When your board starts acting as management, your organization is in trouble.

The staff analysis has been and remains that there is insufficient return on investment from the activity to justify the expense in money and time.  We did propose to Joly several modifications to the service in an effort to adjust it to what we believed to be our needs, and Joly declined every suggestion we made.  Accordingly, we were driven to this conclusion.  (I am not prepared to debate in public the nature or details of the contractual relationship between the Internet Society and one of its suppliers, but as Joly appears to be selectively releasing information about the relationship I do not believe it is appropriate for me to stand mute.)  Unless the board explicitly directs the selection of a particular supplier (and I really, really hope that we are not heading in the direction where the Internet Society board decides to start managing the corporation that way), this service would need a tight definition of its scope and would need to be put to tender the way every other service the Internet Society provides is awarded.  

So, the choice for the community is not between "fund this service" or "do not fund this service", because the community is not in a position to give the board advice on specific operational decisions of the organization.  It is rather between giving advice about the community funding priorities or not giving such advice.

>The discussion is 
>not about "live" and "recorded" or whatever ISOC is trying to make you 
>believe.

It is, though.  What we ended was support for the livestreaming service, because there is little evidence that people are using the livestreaming service.  There has been no intention to remove archives and so forth, and indeed management just today approved awarding a contract for ensuring archives remain available.  It is true that Joly packages several different services together and so it is not always clear what is being supported and what is not.

>A bargain at $64K all included. But you might ask - "I thought ISOC 
>does not have the money?"

This expense is unfunded, yes.  It is not in the budget.  If the board decides it is to be funded, that money will come from something else or else it will come from reserves.  That something else may or may not be funds that would otherwise be spent on chapters -- I have no idea at the moment.

It is not possible to make the Internet Society budget by having everyone plead special handling for their favoured project, and that is essentially what Olivier is arguing above: _surely_ this little thing can be afforded.  But if everyone does that, soon we are bankrupt.  This is why we have professional staff managing these matters under oversight of the board.  I am aware that some people (clearly, Olivier included) are not happy with this decision, but I stand by it.

Best regards,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Sullivan, President & CEO, Internet Society
e:sullivan at isoc.org m:+1 416 731 1261
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