[CCWG-ACCT] Board comment on recommendation 12

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Jordan,

>>  Can you tease out for us, or could other Board members, a little more detail on the fifth point - the budget process.

>>  I accept and believe that we can and should make efforts to be economical with this work, and in particular to make use of professional assistance in a reasonable and well-planned way that minimises costs.

>>  I also think a project budget, reasonably constructed, would be good to do, in collaboration with the CCWG. 

>>  If more resources were found to be needed, it would make sense for instance to have a request for such validated by the chartering organisations.

>>  In other words, a pretty normal project finance structure that provides some constraints.

Yes - that is what we had in mind.

We work on a 1 July to 30 June financial year.   So there are two periods to consider really.

(1) I have asked staff to work with the CCWG co-chairs and chartering organizations to get  a forecast for the remainder of this financial year- ie until 30 June 2016.   My understanding is that we are over the budget we had originally approved, so we will need to approve changes for the remainder of this year - as the amounts are significant.  We have a Board meeting in the first week of Feb 2016 - so would be good to at least have something by then.

(2) For the next financial year - we would like to get a budget as part of our 1 Jul 2016 to 30 Jun 2017 budgeting process that would include estimates for external legal fees, face-to-face meeting costs etc.   I would expect this would form part of the budget requests that we get from the SO and ACs.   This presumably may involve the CCWG developing a budget and sending to SOs/ACs for review before it is sent into the budget process.    

Part (2) would form part of the new budget approval process - ie the final total ICANN budget would be reviewed by the SOs and ACs to get their feedback, so we avoid having to invoke the new community powers.   i.e.  if the SOs and ACs feel they need to invoke the community powers over the budget  then that is a failure of the budget process in my view.

Even if we haven't formalized the new budget process in the bylaws - I think we should operate as though it exists for the purpose of reviewing the next budget.

Once the budget is approved, a significant change to the budget for the work would then likely wise go through a process where the cross-community working group (or groups) would go to their SOs and ACs and get their endorsement for a request to the Board for a change in budget.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin