Revised 22 July 2010
Dear Kevin,
Thank you for joining the ALAC Executive Committee wrap-up meeting in
Brussels. We appreciate you listening to our concerns, and we found
your insights based upon your discussions about travel support with
other SO/ACs helpful.
The current process for travel support is unwieldy and appears
expensive for ICANN. Many (or perhaps most) of the volunteer
travelers seem unhappy with the experience and results. To spend
that amount of effort without the "gold medal" performance that you
were aiming at must be disappointing.
I suspect that minor tweaks are not likely to fix the problems, so I
offer a new approach. I think that it may address the overall
concerns that ICANN has regarding fiduciary responsibility while
putting more control in the hands of the travelers.
In short, I am suggesting that you OPTIONALLY allow travelers to make
their own air travel arrangements, but subject to a number of
constraints. I am also offering one variant that will maximize the
benefit to ICANN and its constituent units of the budgeted travel funds.
I believe that you will still need an "official ICANN" travel agent,
but offered as a resource not as a requirement. I am sure that many
travelers will be happy to use them if the process were streamlined.
Moreover, they will play an essential role in ensuring that the
overall process costs are "reasonable", which should be a prime the
target. I do not know if you currently use the same travel agency for
staff travel as you do for volunteer travel, but I would suggest that
doing so maximizes the agent's desire to keep ICANN happy on all
counts, and guarantees them a substantial amount of guaranteed business.
I support the current allocation of travel by "slots" allocated per
group per meeting, but with an important variant I will discuss later
in this note.
0. In the interest of transparency, I would suggest that whatever air
travel rules are used be applied equally to Board members/liaisons as
well as other volunteer travelers.
1. Travel is based on economy or business class as per the current
rules. However, for long haul travel (flights over 6 hours or overall
travel time over 18 hours), I suggest that booking on premium economy
be allowed. Premium economy includes few of the real perks of
business class, but does afford a modest increase in passenger
comfort. Such bookings would still be subject to the price
limitations to be described.
2. Prior to starting travel for any given event, your travel agent
should compile a list of "ball-park" air fares for the list of cities
typically used by ICANN travelers. The list might include 50-60
cities but based on my personal experiences, it should not take much
time or effort to compile. I acknowledge that doing this well will
require a good travel agent who understands the issues related to
travel from and to locations that are "unusual" in the sense of
traditional business travel and understands transit visa issues for
those not from North America or western Europe. If some needed cities
are omitted, they can be added later. Estimates should be based on
fares of regularly schedules "business oriented" airlines. By that I
exclude charter airlines, fares provided by consolidators and fares
offered by airlines that focus on vacation and tour-package travelers
- all of whom tend to provide very poor service to recover from
irregular operations. The estimate should include the service fee
that would be charged by the agent if they did the booking.
3. I recommend that there still be an "exception" policy to handle
requests outside of the constraints described here, but there should
be far fewer of them. One exception that I would explicitly call out
would be travel to and from the local airport where such travel
clearly exceeds what could reasonably covered by per diem allocations.
4. Hotel nights and per diem (if used - see later) should be based on
the need to be sufficiently rested for the first scheduled meeting. I
have included details of such scheduling in previous messages, and
can do so again, but I will not clutter this note with such details.
In short, the person should be allowed to arrive early enough to get
a full night's sleep the night before their first meeting. For venues
where flights only arrive in the evening, this may mean that they be
allowed to arrive a day early.
5. Hotel nights and per diem should be based on departures that allow
the participant to attend all scheduled meetings. This should include
the ability to stay in their room until a reasonable number of hours
prior to flight time. Both this rule and the prior one are equivalent
to the "reasonable" constraint placed on staff travelers, and
volunteers should be offered no less.
6. Air travel fairs up the $300 or 10% (which ever is greater) above
the estimate should be allowed. The $300 figure is what was used for
a number of years and (as far as I understand) resulted in a higher
level of traveler satisfaction and was not an unreasonable average
burden for ICANN. I have added the 10% to accommodate similar issues
for those travelers where business class is allowed. With the ICANN
travel agent understanding this rule, many of the current exemptions
would no longer be necessary.
7. For those travelers who can provide their own air travel at
substantially below that of the estimate (perhaps the same $300 or
10%), ICANN should be willing to provide travel advances to pay for the ticket.
8. If a traveler needs to arrive early or late due to the lack of
reasonable air options, the hotel and per diem should be covered by
ICANN. There will be relatively few such cases and they can be easily
audited or verified. Any such "extensions" are subject to audit by
ICANN with the penalty being permanent withdrawal of self-reservation
privileges.
9. If there is a substantial amount to be saved on airfare by
scheduling an earlier arrival or later departure, such schedules
should be allowed with ICANN paying the additional hotel and per
diem, but only if the net savings is at least the greater of $300 or
10% of the original estimate. If making their own reservations, the
traveler must document such savings. It is possible that the traveler
may not be working for those days, but ICANN is still coming out ahead!
10. For reservations made by the traveler, unless an exemption has
been granted, ICANN will reimburse no more that the lesser of the
airfare paid, converted into US$, or the original estimate plus the
greater of $300 or 10%.
11. I suggest a variation of the strict slot principle. Specifically,
that the total airfare per group be compared to that budgeted (with
allowance for business class travel granted for medical or size
reasons), and that the group be allowed to use any significant
savings for other pre-approved travel purposes (either to allow
additional people to attend later ICANN meetings or for other events
that support the mission of the group. For Board members, this should
probably be tallied on an individual basis.
12. I would suggest a reasonable deadline for submitting travel
expenses with a commitment by ICANN to pay promptly after submission
if the deadline is met. I would be happy to comment on "reasonable".
Although not related to air travel, some people have hypothesized
that reimbursing real and reasonable expenses instead of per diems
would result in a net savings to ICANN. However, I strongly question
whether this is worth the additional staff time required to
administrate it, the volunteer time to submit claims, or the grief
that will be caused by the occasional rejection of claims.
Comments:
(Comments will be accepted in the six UN languages)
