A gap in the policy - PLC vs Conservancy

[Andrew Bartlett]

I've been thinking about some recent challenges, and just extra
round-trips seen recently in Samba, and wanted to make some suggestions.

The particular issue I have is that too many things in the policy do not
allow the PLC self-approve the travel, even with reasonable and agreed
disclosure of the expected costs.  That is, too many things need
Conservancy executive director approval, and these seem to be
sufficiently non-obvious or unexpected that I've certainly missed
them.  

For example, without specific prior authorization, flights from NZ,
except to Australia, are essentially prohibited.  Other things that in
my experience are routine, like buying a train ticket at the station in
Germany, are also prohibited.  There also isn't any margin above the GSA
rates to allow the PLC alone to approve staying at the conference hotel,
and so keeping the group together.

The problem with this is that a contributor comes to the PLC and does
the good work, provides a reasonable pre-estimate etc, and is
approved.  

Then when it comes time to pay the expense, the gap appears - the
traveller is not responsible for partitioning the Conservancy, but if
that didn't happen, what should we do?

The problem I see it is that everyone is in a bind - the Conservancy has
the un-enviable position of having to back the PLC against it's own
policy, or leaving a volunteer out of pocket.   Perhaps it would be
better if the conservancy pre-approved things?  That would create
additional work, but avoid the PLC effectively binding the conservancy.

I would appreciate some thoughts on this,

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba