On 3/5/2013 2:52 PM, Henning Schulzrinne wrote:
While the IETF is unique in many ways, the staff-volunteer issue
isn't all that unique. Many organizations face this. As one example,
organizations like IEEE and ACM struggle with this. (For example,
they have, over the years, delegated many functions in conference
management that used to be done by volunteers to paid staff.) Even
government regulatory bodies operate with a mixture of volunteer
labor (advisory councils) and paid staff. The solution space seems
rather constrained:
...
(2) Pay the person a salary while on leave from their home
institution/employer. As an example, NSF and DARPA do this for their
program managers. The employer still takes a hit and there's some risk
to the person that they won't get their job back, but it allows a larger
number of individuals to participate.
In the US government version of this (IPA), the person remains
officially an employee of their home institution; it's a grant/contract
to the home institution.
So I would break this into two sub-categories:
a) pay the person while "on leave"
b) pay the home institution for the person's work as a
contract/grant
(this is closer to how the NSF, DARPA, and other
US govt visiting positions work)
They work out quite differently; the latter means you're paying
overhead, and can be quite costly but might be more attractive.
Joe
