#434 Split treasurer and CC holder roles - APAC
Opened 6 years ago by robyduck. Modified 6 years ago

We have an actual situation where treasurers and CC card holders are the same person and this is blocking reimbursements from time to time.
See: https://pagure.io/ambassadors-apac/issue/276

While I mostly agree with the actual advice and how the situation is being handled, I would like to discuss this further and make this impossible to happen again.
Example: what if this person asks for funding? There is high conflict of interests around the corner we should at least try to avoid.


Metadata Update from @robyduck:
- Issue tagged with: budget, policy

6 years ago

Please be aware that NA also has a single treasurer/card holder.

We were only 3 members today, but we agreed this should become a rule and would like to advice the Council to proceed making this official. For the specific issue in APAC, FAmSCo also confirms @bex's handling by asking the actual treasurer which role he wants to keep, and then look for another person who can do the other role.
As we should do that soon, I am calling for lazy consensus until monday 13th. With 3 +1's and no -1 it will be approved.

+1 from my side.

@robyduck Can you link to the meeting logs?

As I said even during the meeting +1 from me

+1 also from me.

Gabri

Adding one more idea: the positions should have terms. I suggest 2 years (but we can say 4 releases to make calendaring easy). The goal isn't to force a change. Instead we want to make it easy for people to step back when they are busy or done. It is hard for people to announce they are leaving but easy to choose not to be selected again.

@bex

Adding one more idea: the positions should have terms. I suggest 2 years (but we can say 4 releases to make calendaring easy). The goal isn't to force a change. Instead we want to make it easy for people to step back when they are busy or done. It is hard for people to announce they are leaving but easy to choose not to be selected again.

Which position? Treasurer o CC holder?

I think your idea is good but only in the case of the treasurer. Giving a CC each 2 year (for each holder) can be complex IMO.

Thanks.

Gabri

@bex

Adding one more idea: the positions should have terms. I suggest 2 years (but we can say 4 releases to make calendaring easy). The goal isn't to force a change. Instead we want to make it easy for people to step back when they are busy or done. It is hard for people to announce they are leaving but easy to choose not to be selected again.

@mailga
Which position? Treasurer o CC holder?
I think your idea is good but only in the case of the treasurer. Giving a CC each 2 year (for each holder) can be complex IMO.

I think we can make both work. I'd prefer to determine what is best for the project and then adapt from that instead of setting an arbitrary lesser position and then adapting. I don't see switching CC holders as a problem. This is partly because all of the CC holders (5 of us) back each other up.

@bex
I think we can make both work. I'd prefer to determine what is best for the project and then adapt from that instead of setting an arbitrary lesser position and then adapting. I don't see switching CC holders as a problem. This is partly because all of the CC holders (5 of us) back each other up.

"best for the project" might be a good approach, but if we know upfront that the reality will not keep up with our wishes, we should include that in the discussion/decission - and we know that things work slow on some instance around this topic ;)

I have/had the role as cc holder for over 7 years and also drafted the initial processes for all the reimbursements together with Max 8 years ago. Personally i think that a mandatory change after 2 years can reduce the potential of nepotism that comes with having the same role over years.
On the other hand there is no denial that it takes a while for the bureaucratic act and getting a regular routine.

The community cards given out at the moment are valid for 3 years ... at least my always were - if you want to change this to a shorter range of two years with terminating the account in favour of another person, please consider this in the future card holder agreements.

Not being a Red Hatter myself, i had to go through several compliance instances at Red Hat - legal, finance etc. - this took around 4-6 months, so please consider that this effort would come up more often with every new holder. I also have the impression that it may even will take longer in the future. Reason, while the last card change worked seamlessly for me, i still have not heared back what happened with my card expiration - communication and transparency is not optimal in this regards.

I agree with having terms only for treasurers and storytellers, CC card holders is really another chapter and I am witness of some situations happened in the last years. This starts from APAC (@tuanta mentioned it) over an EMEA card until NA, apparently. The issues are more or less always the same, but we can't do much to solve them. We can just try to get into this difficult process as less as possible and not forcing us to go through it every two years.

Now is the time for us to define what we want as a project. Red Hat is making some changes to how these kinds of credit cards are handled internally so we should ask for what we want up front. The biggest challenge isn't change, it is asking after things are "baked."

Now is the time for us to define what we want as a project. Red Hat is making some changes to how these kinds of credit cards are handled internally so we should ask for what we want up front. The biggest challenge isn't change, it is asking after things are "baked."

To add to this, swapping CC holders hasn't been a point of conversation, but I am led to believe that infrequent swaps on a 2-3 year cycle would be fine. Emergency changes would also be allowed ...

During today's meeting we discussed this a bit, but not all of us are of the same opinion.
@nb said he would like to let Regions decide if they accept having the same person for those roles, on the other side he also confirms our concerns about having CC holders time limited.

We will need to discuss this again, although overall we are more for having those roles split, but not time limited.

To clarify my comment about time-limits. My goal is not to force a change of people at the end of the time limit. The goal is to let those people have an easy way out if they are done serving. In communities like ours people often feel compelled to keep doing work they are burned out on. This basically puts the question to the person and the community about whether this continues to be a good fit.

Ok so here is a possible text for the Council. Please add your comment and eventually missing points.

Giving the actual situation in APAC, where the community's activity gets blocked from time to time due to the treasurer's/CC holder's unavailability, and considering also comments from NA, where these roles also are held by the same person, FAmSCo discussed the proposal to split the two roles and came up with the following:

  • FAmSCo agrees that ideally the roles of the treasurer and the CC holder should be held by different persons. However, if a contributor has the full support of his region and has enough time to do both, we should not set a strict rule to avoid that.
    Note: Mindshare will add more responsibilities to the treasurer role, this should be kept in mind when choosing to work both as treasurer and as CC holder.
  • FAmSCo also welcomes a two years cycle, which means that people will be asked if they want to step down and leave the job to another contributor/ambassador. Specially the CC holder job is time affording and can easily burn you out. This does not oblige the region to select a new person, but they can also keep the same for other 2 years.
  • The process for issuing new community cards should be much faster and easier. FAmSco is not aware of the details of this process, but CC holders could give valid feedbacks in order to improve issuing credit cards. Therefore it woud be probably the best to involve the actual CC holders while RedHat is going to change the process.

Ok so here is a possible text for the Council. Please add your comment and eventually missing points.
Giving the actual situation in APAC, where the community's activity gets blocked from time to time due to the treasurer's/CC holder's unavailability, and considering also comments from NA, where these roles also are held by the same person, FAmSCo discussed the proposal to split the two roles and came up with the following:

FAmSCo agrees that ideally the roles of the treasurer and the CC holder should be held by different persons. However, if a contributor has the full support of his region and has enough time to do both, we should not set a strict rule to avoid that.
Note: Mindshare will add more responsibilities to the treasurer role, this should be kept in mind when choosing to work both as treasurer and as CC holder.
FAmSCo also welcomes a two years cycle, which means that people will be asked if they want to step down and leave the job to another contributor/ambassador. Specially the CC holder job is time affording and can easily burn you out. This does not oblige the region to select a new person, but they can also keep the same for other 2 years.
The process for issuing new community cards should be much faster and easier. FAmSco is not aware of the details of this process, but CC holders could give valid feedbacks in order to improve issuing credit cards. Therefore it woud be probably the best to involve the actual CC holders while RedHat is going to change the process.

+1 from my part, totally agree to this proposal because it allows even emergency changes and doesn't make the changing process very difficult for CC holders.

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