[council] #43: Create the Fedora Public Budget Page

[council]

#43: Create the Fedora Public Budget Page
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 Reporter:  decause                              |       Owner:  decause
   Status:  new                                  |    Priority:  normal
Component:  General                              |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  budget, websites, FCL,               |
  transparency, community                        |
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Comment (by decause):

 Replying to [comment:2 cwickert]:
 > Thanks for taking the lead on this.  The lack of transparency wrt. the
 budget has been a problem for years.  After Max left, nobody took over and
 with the shift from CommArch to OSAS, things got worse.  Thus the last
 numbers we have in the wiki are from FY 2012 and 2013.
 >
 > Replying to [ticket:43 decause]:
 > > establishing a new page (wiki or otherwise) that will track the
 timeline and particulars of the Fedora Public Budget. It shall include:
 > >
 > > Budgetary Components, Projected and Adjusted for each fiscal year:
 > >  - Regional Budget Allocations (APAC/EMEA/LATAM/NA)
 > >  - Fedora Premier Event Budgets (FLOCK, FUDCons)
 > >  - Central Discretionary Fund (approved by Council)
 > >  - FAD specific Budgets
 >
 > I agree.  Please note that currently FADs are considered premiere events
 just like FLOCK and FUDCons. A
 [https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Premier_Fedora_Events premiere event] is
 whatever is mainly about Fedora vs. an event we simply attend.
 >
 >
 > > Budgetary Milestones and Timelines:
 > >  - August: In person meeting at FLOCK
 >
 > While meeting people in person always is a good idea, I wonder what the
 exact purpose of this meeting would be.
 >

 It is my understanding that this would be an Open discussion at FLOCK to
 allow folks in the project to discuss "high-level" budget priorities for
 the upcoming year, informed by Adjusted reports and metrics from the
 previous year.

 > It's definitely not a good idea for creating the actual budget.
 Compiling a list of events not only requires a lot of people (we usually
 have 10 - 15 at the EMEA budgeting FAD), but also a lot of time.  This
 means we would fly a lot of people to FLOCK who then hardly have time to
 do anything but the budget.
 >
 > >  - September: Proposed budget components and metrics from each region
 >
 > What kind of metrics do you have in mind?

 Transferred from this council-discuss thread:
 https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/council-
 discuss/2015-November/013845.html

 ---Snip---
 As laid out, event reporters are not (necessarily) doing the analysis,
 only the reporting. This type of reporting is mostly about reporting raw
 numbers and gathering links.

 --Snipped From Wiki--

     - Attendees contacted or reached
     - Fedora Badges issued at or as a result of the event
     - Pull requests and patches submitted as a result of event
     - Bugs reported
     - Candidates sourced (i.e. Outreachy, GSoC, and/or other FOSS
 programs)
     - Articles/Videos/Photos/Content published by or about regional team
     - Social media mentions and interactions generated by event
     - Other supporting evidence data that shows the results of your effort
     - Links to and reach of Posts on Fedora Channels

 --Snipped From Wiki--

 Most of these elements can be tracked by:

     - Keeping a Sign-in sheet at the event
     - Having a QR code for badge awarding
     - Using tags such as "python3 VFAD" to associate with an event with a
 PR/Bugzilla Report
     - Candidate sourced would join the Outreachy or Summer-Coding mail
 list, and should include which event they started at in their introduction
 email.
     - Articles/Content/Videos may be harder to find, but we want them for
 more than just reimbursement, we want to promote awesome Fedora things. By
 using a hashtag for an event, we should be able to aggregate some of that
 stuff from social media.
     - Anec-data and other personal accounts can be included as a blurb
 when sending the report.
     CommOps and Fedora Social Media Manager (via OSAS) can help promote
 these, and get metrics too.

 As far as analysis, we need to start with data and metrics, which don't
 necessarily need to be number-crunched by the ambassadors.

 >
 > >  - October: Ratification of Proposed Budget by Council
 > >  - March: Confirmation of Received budget w/ Adjustment Meeting
 > >  - Quarterly Check-ins with Regional Treasurers
 > >  - Halfly approvals of Regional Funds, pending metrics and outcomes
 reporting
 >
 > While the first two points are pretty clear, I wonder what the last two
 are supposed to be. In particular:
 > * How would the check-ins work?

 As far as I can tell, Check-ins would basically require Treasurers to
 openly communicate with the FCL and Council roughly 2 weeks before the
 quarterly deadline. This can be done via IRC, or other sync/asynchronous
 channels of communication, so long as their budgets can be updated and
 posted to the forthcoming https://budget.fedoraproject.org site, and the
 regional storyteller's event reports are syndicated to the appropriate
 Fedora Channels.

 >How can we make sure we actually have regional treasurers?  Hint: The
 more freedom and responsibility they get, the more people are willing to
 do this job.

 For starters, Regions without delegates will have a /difficult/ time
 getting allocated budget. That isn't our intention of requiring delegates,
 we want to have dedicated folks to help ensure the process is followed,
 rather than having it be nebulous. Second, we have proposed that delegates
 receive special recognition (in the form of Fedora Badges) as well as
 possible travel funding/support to their Regional Fedora Premier Event.



 > * What exactly needs to be approved and when?  We currently have a very
 fine-grained approval process that takes into account the regional
 differences. A lot of experiaince and work has been put into it, so I
 suggest to not change the approval process until we are sure we have
 something that works better.

 It is our intention to do just that, and keep the regional policies that
 FAMSCo worked hard to put in place in tact. The approval process for
 anything below $2K will remain a regional decision, and the only change
 for approvals of expenditures above $2K will be that they are now approved
 by the Council, rather than FAMSCo.

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