Re: [admin-discuss] IETF Administration LLC 2024 Draft Budget

[Jay Daley <[e-mail]>]

Hi Abdussalam

Thank you for your comments, some responses inline below:

> On 6 Dec 2023, at 21:37, Abdussalam Baryun <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Thanks for this draft and I don't say I am familiar with all of it, but I know that you done a big effort for all the best of LLC and I hope this feedback can help me and all of us for better understanding or better future IETF.
> 
> Two questions and one comment or suggestion and some reasoning below,
> 
> 1)  I am not sure why we have this capitalization adjustment of USD 1,015,942, why is it reducing our net income lower than the previous year? are we buying some tools that are an asset for the LLC IETF.

US accounting rules (as with most countries) specify what work should be capitalised and software development is broadly covered in that (there is a lot of detail I am skipping over).  We are following those rules.

> 2) Staff cost of tools, is getting increased very high within the budget but not understood why, or what is really meant by (migrating IT Infrastructure,,,,) ?

Yes we are investing very heavily in tools in order to bring them up to the standard needed.  The IT infrastructure migration is a new project for 2023/2024 that follows on from a new infrastructure strategy that was thoroughly discussed on the tools-discuss list.  The latest update on this project was the other day:

	https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/tools-discuss/jrM7qJhvPQHUgX1LGbWgHBBI2qU/

> 
> 3)  Also I expect that the tools 2024_budget_draft to be around USD 1,377,000 but shows in table as USD 1,577,962 (why increase to be higher than 200,000)

I do not understand that comment, can you please explain more?

> and better close to the community leadership budget, so it will be more important to increase support for commun_leadership than to increase tools by USD 475,000. I suggest that the increase to be splitted between them both so becoming as follows:
> 
> community leadership: USD 1,102,829
> tools: USD 1,377,962
> 
> Reasons:
> 1) The increase in leadership within budget draft goes only to the secretary but the higher level is same, so it is needed to be increased as well, the increase only is about USD 100,000 and goes only to the secretary.

Our budget, like all good budgets, is built from a bottom-up analysis of our needs and historic spending.  For the last couple of years, the community leadership portion has been underspent and so no increase is needed in most of the line items.  The cost increase for the Secretariat is due to a cost increase in the contract. 

> 2) any big/small/medium increase in budget needs to have a supported goal/transformation for LLC IETF, so I was not able to see that while checking the budget. However, it is important that increases in all table fields need to reasonable for the purpose and for all bodies to work more efficient, but if no increase in support that can mean that there were no need for increase related to information that is not understood by the reader but understood by the writer of budget.

I agree.  When constructing a budget and a strategic plan, there is a trade-off between how much detail to put into linking it to strategy and how much flexibility is needed to respond to uncertain or changing circumstances.  

> 3) The non-meeting revenue was decreased so that we should not increase staff cost and should not increase operation cost.

We are not a commercial organisation with a very direct linkage between income and staffing.  We are a much longer-term focused public charity with a mission and that means we sometimes need to invest counter-cyclically.

> Furthermore, the meeting revenue value has increased so it is most better not to reduce meeting expenses average (2024 does have less average meeting expenses than 2023).

I don’t understand - overall meetings expenses have risen slightly.

> 4) The meeting expenses within Vancouver IETF120 shows USD 1,487,893, which it is high by looking into the city way of life or by looking into F&B which looks higher than the other F&B of meeting IETF119 and IETF121.

IETF 120 Vancouver was booked some year ago and rescheduled due to COVID and so benefits from a lower cost than can currently be achieved as venues aim to recoup income lost over the COVID period.  Each venue structures their costs differently, with some such the Vancouver venue, providing the meeting space for free if a certain  F&B spend and room occupancy is agreed to.

kind regards
Jay

> 
> Best Regards
> AB
> 
> 
> On Wed, Dec 6, 2023 at 6:14 PM IETF Executive Director <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The IETF Administration LLC has prepared its draft budget for 2024:
> 
>         https://www.ietf.org/blog/ietf-administration-llc-2024-draft-budget/
> 
> Community feedback on the budget is welcome and should be made either directly to the IETF Executive Director at [e-mail], who can also answer any questions, or to the public list [e-mail].  Please provide any feedback before December 30th 2023.
> 
> -- 
> Jay Daley
> IETF Executive Director
> [e-mail]
> 
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Jay Daley
IETF Executive Director
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