This
is to confirm that the Names Council Budget Committee will conduct a
teleconference at 8:00 AM EST on Thursday, 7 December. The agenda
consists of two principal items. The AFNIC statement and the 2001
budget. We need to address the AFNIC statement first because, as was
pointed out at the last meeting, we have no idea of the amount of a surplus of
funds being carried over from 2000 to 2001 until we address the question of
funds due to AFNIC.
Once
we have addressed the AFNIC statement, we will then know how much of the DNSO
funds can be carried over and applied to 2001 expenses and accordingly we can
address the 2001 expense budget.
We
have recently discussed a third item, which I would propose to defer tomorrow,
and take up at our very next meeting. Earlier, Mike Roberts had sent the
Names Council a note offering three options on how the DNSO accounts could be
managed in the future and the Budget Committee had expressed an interest in
the third of these three (establishing an independent account for the
mandatory dues of the DNSO.) The DNSO's pursuit of this option would
most likely require some formal incorporation of the DNSO, which has led to a
discussion of options for incorporation of the DNSO. ICANN
management would like to revisit this topic with the Budget Committee and
discuss some options which might not have been considered thus far. To
permit a full discussion of this, I'd like to suggest that we devote a
separate meeting to long term management of the mandatory fees and invite
ICANN management to give us a presentation of their views.
While this statement does not exactly indicate that
it is an invoice to the DNSO, we requested that AFNIC provide us with a
statement of what they believe are the expenses for which they should be
reimbursed and this is their response. Accordingly, unless advised
otherwise, I believe that we should treat it as an invoice. Since the
table is labeled as covering FY 2000 (Fiscal Year 2000), and since our Fiscal
year is a calendar year, I believe we should interpret it as covering the
period January-December 2000.
The
total identified in this AFNIC statement is US $59,400. This compares
with a current balance (at 18 October) of DNSO funds held for us by
ICANN management of around US $72,000 and unpaid receivables for the DNSO from
DNSO Constituencies of around US $52,000 (As of 18 October, the full $13,642
had not been paid by the ccTLD, ISP, and Non-Commercial Constituencies
and US $10,642 had not been paid by the Registrars Constituency.)
If no other funds are collected by the DNSO for FY 2000, and $59, 400 is
paid to AFNIC, the carry over amount from 2000 to 2001 would be around
$13,000. If all DNSO receivables are collected, and $59,400 paid to
AFNIC, then the balance carried over would be around
$65,000.
2)
Development of a 2001 DNSO Expense Budget
At
our last meeting, we developed, but did not finally agree to, an expense
budget that presumed that expenses associated with professional support would
be funded by the new voluntary fund. We identified a target of a minimum
of $120,000 for the voluntary fund, which would cover DNSO professional
support. As a result, the DNSO expense budget that would be funded by
mandatory dues from the Constituencies was developed independent of
professional support.
The
DNSO expense budget for 2001 that we developed was at a high level of
categories, and amounted to US $198,000, broken down as
follows:
Administrative (includes supplies, any relevant rent,
etc.)
$25,000
Telephone (includes teleconferences,
etc.)
$25,000
Travel (primarily for professional support or Council
members) $25,000
Web
and Listserv
maintenance $50,000
Web
casting (of NC, GA and other
meetings) $30,000
Language translations (documents,
etc.) $10,000
Accounting/Audit (mandatory dues account, voluntary
account) $10,000
Legal services (set up of legal structure for
mandatory funds
account) $5,000
Contingency (at 10% of the
above) $18,000
If
$13,000 in DNSO funds were carried over from 2000 to 2001, and we remained
with a $198,000 expense budget, then the amount that would have to be raised
from Constituency dues in 2001 (assuming 7 Constituencies) would be $185,000
or $26,000 per constituency. To whatever extent less
than $59,400 is paid to AFNIC or additional 2000 DNSO dues payments are
received, these amounts would decline.
I
believe that we need to conclude our recommendations to the Names
Council for a 2001 DNSO expense budget at this meeting in order to permit
the Council to finalize the budget in time for Constituencies to plan for, and
raise their dues payments.