System Administration Budget Plans

[Regina Obe]

> 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