It is unfortunate that Prof. Schulzrinne sent the reply below before I had
finished writing my follow-up message, about comparing conference costs,
which was inspired by his previous comments. Perhaps he would have
addressed that issue in his reply. Anyhow, the standard "reasonable and
customary" to determine what is appropriate to charge to a funding agency
does seem correct. The issue is then, how to determine whether a specific
charge satisfy that definition.
A reasonable "test" seems to be the "fair market value": Does anyone else
-- within applicable time/space constraints -- offer a similar product or
service for significantly less money? If the answer is no, then the charge
would seem to be reasonable. Otherwise, reasonability would seem to fail.
In the specific case of major conferences organised by major, reputable US
societies in the US, the preliminary and imperfect "market data" provided
separately would seem to indicate that IEEE/ComSoc registration fees fail
the "reasonability" test.
Now on a somewhat related note, as I was searching for the endowment value
of the Stevens Inst., I got several "hits" similar to:
"N.J. Attorney General accuses Stevens Institute officials of". I
immediately clicked on one of them and realised that very recently, in mid
September, a major case in NJ had erupted.
The issues involve:
1) A government agency suing senior officers of a private reputable
nonprofit New Jersey engineering corporation, and
2) an allegation that someone has overcharged an institution (among other
things)
One of the most interesting aspects is that the allegedly over-charging
party is the President of the institute, and the allegedly over-charged
party is the Institute itself (too high compensation).
The case is complex and every accused must be presumed innocent until a
verdict is reached. The fact that the NJ state AG has taken these actions
seems relevant to the subject line of this thread. A significant
difference is that the alleged over-charges do not seem to directly
involve public money. However, if public funds had been directly involved,
the NJ AG would seem to have had even stronger reasons to take actions.
All parties to this discussion may want to attentively follow the case:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125322955414021243.html
Virgilio
> I'm not a project grant officer, but the basic funding model for
> conferences has not changed in at least twenty years. Also, conference
> travel reimbursements seem to be handled similarly by US and non-US grant
> agencies (and universities), including agencies much closer to your home
> institution, such as the DFG and EU. Given that the basic model is not
> secret, the likelihood that there is some unexplored territory yielding a
> possibility of a "refund" is, to put it mildly and charitably, remote. The
> basic model is "reasonable and customary", rather than a specific cost
> model. After all, grant agencies routinely pay for computing systems
> provided, at a tidy profit, by commercial entities, or travel on
> commercial air carriers. They do not request "refunds" from Lufthansa,
> Dell or Apple for such services. Whether the entity is for-profit or not
> seems entirely irrelevant, except to the tax entity that governs the
> not-for-profit entity. (For what it's worth, it's IEEE and ACM that
> prohibit for-profit conferences under their sponsorship; as far as I can
> tell, there is no prohibition against a grant-funded scholar attending a
> for-profit event, as long as the event has the appropriate scholarly
> function and other normal travel guidelines are observed.)
>
> Thus, respectfully, this is a non-productive inquiry. This is thus my last
> note on this particular topic.
>
> Henning
>
> On Dec 16, 2009, at 9:24 PM, Virgilio wrote:
>
>> Dear Prof. Schulzrinne:
>> While I believe that some aspects of your comments unfairly characterise
>> mine, I do agree with other aspects. I will focus on potential common
>> ground. Some of your comments/suggestions have prompted me to perform
>> some
>> basic inquiries, and obtain some potentially useful information and
>> ideas,
>> which I intend to share with you.
>>
>>> Just to add a few points to this discussion:
>>>
>>> First, I think it's fine to say "IEEE should run a leaner ship" - as
>>> long
>>> as the suggestions are concrete and realistic, rather than vague
>>> generalities
>>
>> I very much agree with you. It is always easy to criticise in the
>> abstract, but proposing specifics and showing why they may help is quite
>> another matter.
>>
>> On the other hand, it is difficult to make concrete proposals "blindly".
>> In particular, as others have pointed out, itemised statements of
>> revenues
>> and expenses for conferences are not being made public. Since you are in
>> touch with the IEEE president, could you kindly suggest to make possible
>> the release of this information at least for a representative sub-set of
>> recent major events? Then we could all study the information, and
>> perhaps
>> make specific suggestions. If confidenciallity agreements prevent
>> certain
>> information from being released, then specific items may be removed,
>> with
>> an explanation. Still the rest could be analised.
>> Another reason to release such information is that, since a very large
>> number of conference attendees are funded by public agencies, it seems
>> that the general public (represented by the funding agencies) does have
>> a
>> legitimate interest in ascertaining that their funds are appropriately
>> utilised.
>>
>> Anyhow, I understand that this information is not presently available
>> and
>> may take some time before it is. What to do in the mean time? I am
>> separately making some suggestions.
>>
>>>
>>> Those dissatisfied with the current society sponsorship model (as
>>> opposed
>>> to simply wanting to improve it) are also welcome to organize their own
>>> events, and to make it more reputable and cheaper than the existing
>>> alternatives.
>>> One can think of this as somewhat related to franchise models,
>>> such as Hyatt hotels or Starbucks. In franchises, the franchisee pays
>>> for
>>> the privilege of using the brand name, typically as a fraction of
>>> revenue.
>>
>> Electoral action sounds reasonable, but it is complicated especially
>> when
>> the voting population is relatively large, and heterogeneous. For
>> instance, many IEEE members are practicing engineers who may not share
>> the
>> concerns and goals of academic research engineers (see migratory
>> labor-force issues, for example)... nothing inherently wrong with
>> that...
>> it just complicates matters.
>>
>> I do agree with the basic model you propose, though: franchising.
>> Business-owners do change ocassionally from a franchise firm to another
>> (BK<-->McDonald, etc) and possibly to a new firm. Your suggestion is
>> useful and deserves separate exploration.
>>
>>> I think the discussion will be more productive if
>>> such accusations, implied or stated, are avoided - or, if you truly
>>> believe in this, you should contact the NSF Inspector General, the
>>> entity
>>> within the NSF responsible for such issues.
>>
>> I don't know which are the accusations you refer to. A lot of people
>> have
>> said or implied that IEEE (ComSoc) conferences are over-priced, for a
>> variety of reasons (see record). I simply asked whether that could be
>> ground for a funding agency (particularly the NSF, which had just been
>> mentioned by Joe) to demand a refund from IEEE. I still believe that the
>> basic question is legitimate and important, even if the wording may have
>> been non-ideal, and that it deserves a definite conclusive answer. I
>> understand that certain grant contracts from certain agencies indeed do
>> have some language involving refunds.
>> In any case, I respectfully suggest that it may be better that the IEEE
>> itself request a legally binding opinion from the officer that you
>> mention. If favourable, everyone would feel better (at least concerning
>> that agency). If unfavourable, corrective measures could be implemented,
>> including refunds if any. Often, self-reporting is viewed as a sign of
>> good faith, and normally leads to lesser sanctions when applicable.
>>
>>
>>> Finally, reserves and endowments are common ways that not-for-profits
>>> smooth income and expenses, as well as leverage interest/investment
>>> income
>>> to provide additional operating revenues.
>>
>> I basically agree with you. The issue is simply whether a contribution
>> to
>> IEEE endowment by paying some type of (alleged) "mark-up" over
>> fair-market
>> value for certain conference services is a legitimate use of research
>> public funds(from any funding agency including foreign ones). The use
>> may
>> sound reasonable in principle. But it may not be consistent with the
>> applicable regulations.
>>
>> Additionally, do consider that there may be other worthy endowments to
>> contribute to. As an example, the endowments of the following respected
>> institutions near IEEE (according to Internet sources) are/were:
>> NJIT 70M and Stevens 115M, both appreciable lower than IEEE's.
>> Brooklyn Poly (now part of NYU) had 173M, about same as IEEE's, and
>> Illinois Tech 258M. But these are institutional endowments for an entire
>> campus. The IEEE should probably be compared to the endowment's share of
>> the correponding ECE department. Then the IEEE endowment starts looking
>> a
>> lot bigger.
>>
>> In any case, a reasonable person may argue that any public money that
>> could somehow be transferred to the IEEE endowment (one way or another)
>> should instead be transferred to some of the institutions mentioned (or
>> many other worthy causes).
>>
>> With my best regards,
>>
>> Virgilio
>>
>>
>
>
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