System Administration Budget Plans

Committees SAC mailing list
1

So 2024 is around the corner and we need to come up with a budget.

Our 2023 budget looked like this

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Budget#2023

I think most can stay the same.
Two things I'd like to see upped are:

1) Hosting (in form of donation) for OSUOSL should go up 500 to $6500 to
account for inflation and because they have been great and it's still way
way cheaper than same deal we can get from any other hoster.
2) Sysadmin contract. I'd like to up that 6 contracts and increase the
amount $7000 per contract (again inflation) (still recommend 50 hrs)

The reason is well for me I always run out of funds at the end, as I have
already pretty much exhausted my existing contract.
We are also doing major cleanup with our ansible setup to make our infra
more straightforward and easier to manage in the future.

Also next year there will be some major work going on with osgeo6 and mail
servers. OSGeo6 (aka our list serve / mail server) needs an upgrade and
possibly a complete redo. People also want to have real mailboxes to send
osgeo corporate mail and receive, which adds quite a bit of overhead.
There is also great demand from the community to integrate discourse for
better communication with the public.

We might want to separate that out, but not sure. Part of me feels it
should just be part of a contract and that alone can easily take up 150 hrs.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks,
Regina

2

Hi all,

Thoughts at the end.

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 10:04 AM Regina Obe <lr@pcorp.us> wrote:

So 2024 is around the corner and we need to come up with a budget.

Our 2023 budget looked like this

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Budget#2023

I think most can stay the same.
Two things I’d like to see upped are:

  1. Hosting (in form of donation) for OSUOSL should go up 500 to $6500 to
    account for inflation and because they have been great and it’s still way
    way cheaper than same deal we can get from any other hoster.
  2. Sysadmin contract. I’d like to up that 6 contracts and increase the
    amount $7000 per contract (again inflation) (still recommend 50 hrs)

The reason is well for me I always run out of funds at the end, as I have
already pretty much exhausted my existing contract.
We are also doing major cleanup with our ansible setup to make our infra
more straightforward and easier to manage in the future.

I’ve been doing this, and have more than 20 hours on this task.

Also next year there will be some major work going on with osgeo6 and mail
servers. OSGeo6 (aka our list serve / mail server) needs an upgrade and
possibly a complete redo. People also want to have real mailboxes to send
osgeo corporate mail and receive, which adds quite a bit of overhead.
There is also great demand from the community to integrate discourse for
better communication with the public.

We might want to separate that out, but not sure. Part of me feels it
should just be part of a contract and that alone can easily take up 150 hrs.

I wonder if there could be some kind of specialized contract. For example:

MAIL contract hours available 150 hrs.

  • Mail, lists, mailbox servers upgrade/installation

  • Independent of a person - OSGeo contract relationship.

  • Teams of members can participate together.

If a person has a contract, and is putting hours to the MAIL, it goes to those hours available.
At the end of all the work the hours are summarized by person and payment done accordingly.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks,
Regina

3

I wonder if there could be some kind of specialized contract. For example:
MAIL contract hours available 150 hrs.
- Mail, lists, mailbox servers upgrade/installation
- Independent of a person - OSGeo contract relationship.
- Teams of members can participate together.
If a person has a contract, and is putting hours to the MAIL, it goes to those hours available.
At the end of all the work the hours are summarized by person and payment done accordingly.

I like the idea of that but I worry about the logistics of it. For example if I have a sysadmin contract for X amount,
I wouldn't want to have to keep track of if I am doing regular systems work, or contracted Mail work or discourse setup, or some emergency that comes up and then figure out how much each has taken up.

Such granularity causes added overhead of accounting which I'm not sure is worth it.

Ultimately we have X budget of sysadmin and have to figure out the best way to divide it up. In some rare occasions we might need to increase the budget midway in the year, though we try to avoid that.

The most annoying thing I find is we have fixed contract amounts e.g 2023 each contract was for ($6250 USD)

The contract amount we designate per contract, might be too much for some people for the amount they want to work, which stares them away from asking for a contract.
The contract amount per contract, might be too little. E.g. I always run out of contract money and have to constantly amend my contract which is a hassle and requires time for people to approve.

I was thinking of dispensing with set contract amounts but just say we have x dollars in our budget.
Each contractor decides themselves what they plan to work on, how much money they need to last thru the year or portion of a year (so they set the period, and the money). These all get voted on and if approved can be invoiced against.

We just need to make sure the some of the amount doesn't exceed our budget for the year.

If a person then decides, they can't use all the time they asked for in their contract, they close out the contract with their last invoice, and the remaining budgeted funds are returned to the pot for someone else to request for.

Thanks,
Regina

4

If I can get some design updates for the website via the marketting committee; there should also be some Wordpress work in 2024.

Jody

On Sat, Dec 2, 2023 at 6:54 AM Vicky Vergara <vicky@erosion.dev> wrote:

Hi all,

Thoughts at the end.

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 10:04 AM Regina Obe <lr@pcorp.us> wrote:

So 2024 is around the corner and we need to come up with a budget.

Our 2023 budget looked like this

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Budget#2023

I think most can stay the same.
Two things I’d like to see upped are:

  1. Hosting (in form of donation) for OSUOSL should go up 500 to $6500 to
    account for inflation and because they have been great and it’s still way
    way cheaper than same deal we can get from any other hoster.
  2. Sysadmin contract. I’d like to up that 6 contracts and increase the
    amount $7000 per contract (again inflation) (still recommend 50 hrs)

The reason is well for me I always run out of funds at the end, as I have
already pretty much exhausted my existing contract.
We are also doing major cleanup with our ansible setup to make our infra
more straightforward and easier to manage in the future.

I’ve been doing this, and have more than 20 hours on this task.

Also next year there will be some major work going on with osgeo6 and mail
servers. OSGeo6 (aka our list serve / mail server) needs an upgrade and
possibly a complete redo. People also want to have real mailboxes to send
osgeo corporate mail and receive, which adds quite a bit of overhead.
There is also great demand from the community to integrate discourse for
better communication with the public.

We might want to separate that out, but not sure. Part of me feels it
should just be part of a contract and that alone can easily take up 150 hrs.

I wonder if there could be some kind of specialized contract. For example:

MAIL contract hours available 150 hrs.

  • Mail, lists, mailbox servers upgrade/installation

  • Independent of a person - OSGeo contract relationship.

  • Teams of members can participate together.

If a person has a contract, and is putting hours to the MAIL, it goes to those hours available.
At the end of all the work the hours are summarized by person and payment done accordingly.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks,
Regina

5

Jody,

How many design updates did you have in mind or is marketing committee still planning that out?

I’m thinking ideally it would be great if someone in the SAC team would be contracted for that work so that we know exactly what’s been done and how to improve on it in the future.

Thanks,

Regina

From: Jody Garnett jody.garnett@gmail.com
Sent: Sunday, December 3, 2023 10:34 PM
To: Vicky Vergara vicky@erosion.dev
Cc: Regina Obe lr@pcorp.us; System Administration Committee Discussion/OSGeo sac@lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: System Administration Budget Plans

If I can get some design updates for the website via the marketting committee; there should also be some Wordpress work in 2024.

Jody

On Sat, Dec 2, 2023 at 6:54 AM Vicky Vergara <vicky@erosion.dev> wrote:

Hi all,

Thoughts at the end.

On Wed, Nov 22, 2023 at 10:04 AM Regina Obe <lr@pcorp.us> wrote:

So 2024 is around the corner and we need to come up with a budget.

Our 2023 budget looked like this

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/SAC:Budget#2023

I think most can stay the same.
Two things I’d like to see upped are:

  1. Hosting (in form of donation) for OSUOSL should go up 500 to $6500 to
    account for inflation and because they have been great and it’s still way
    way cheaper than same deal we can get from any other hoster.
  2. Sysadmin contract. I’d like to up that 6 contracts and increase the
    amount $7000 per contract (again inflation) (still recommend 50 hrs)

The reason is well for me I always run out of funds at the end, as I have
already pretty much exhausted my existing contract.
We are also doing major cleanup with our ansible setup to make our infra
more straightforward and easier to manage in the future.

I’ve been doing this, and have more than 20 hours on this task.

Also next year there will be some major work going on with osgeo6 and mail
servers. OSGeo6 (aka our list serve / mail server) needs an upgrade and
possibly a complete redo. People also want to have real mailboxes to send
osgeo corporate mail and receive, which adds quite a bit of overhead.
There is also great demand from the community to integrate discourse for
better communication with the public.

We might want to separate that out, but not sure. Part of me feels it
should just be part of a contract and that alone can easily take up 150 hrs.

I wonder if there could be some kind of specialized contract. For example:

MAIL contract hours available 150 hrs.

  • Mail, lists, mailbox servers upgrade/installation

  • Independent of a person - OSGeo contract relationship.

  • Teams of members can participate together.

If a person has a contract, and is putting hours to the MAIL, it goes to those hours available.

At the end of all the work the hours are summarized by person and payment done accordingly.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks,
Regina