FINANCIAL PLAN for CONSTRUCTION and EXPLOITATION PHASE

Transcription

1 FINANCIAL PLAN for CONSTRUCTION and EXPLOITATION PHASE Deliverable 8S-2.2 June 2011 Editors: Bente Maegaard, Steven Krauwer Contributor: Peter Wittenburg All rights reserved by UCPH on behalf of CLARIN

2 The ultimate objective of CLARIN is to create a European federation of existing digital repositories that include language-based data, to provide uniform access to the data, wherever it is, and to provide existing language and speech technology tools as web services to retrieve, manipulate, enhance, explore and exploit the data. The primary target audience is researchers in the humanities and social sciences and the aim is to cover all languages relevant for the user community. The objective of the current CLARIN Preparatory Phase Project ( ) is to lay the technical, linguistic and organisational foundations, to provide and validate specifications for all aspects of the infrastructure (including standards, usage, IPR) and to secure sustainable support from the funding bodies in the (now 23) participating countries for the subsequent construction and exploitation phases beyond CLARIN 8S-2.2 2

3 CLARIN 8S-2.2 3

4 Financial Plan for Construction and Exploitation Phase CLARIN EC FP7 project no Deliverable 8S-2.2 Responsible: Bente Maegaard Contributors: Bente Maegaard, Steven Krauwer, Peter Wittenburg CLARIN 8S-2.2 4

5 Table of contents The purpose of this document 6 1. The three CLARIN layers The governance and coordination layer Costs Income The layer coordinated by the CLARIN ERIC Costs Income The layer coordinated at the national level Annual contributions Principles for the calculation of the annual contribution...11 CLARIN 8S-2.2 5

6 The purpose of this document This document constitutes two deliverables 8S-2.1 and 8S-2.2. It has been decided to merge these two deliverables together as this is more adequate for the project and the process towards an ERIC. The document builds on documents made for the preparation of the ERIC. The purpose of the document is to give a short presentation of the costs involved in the construction and exploitation phase of CLARIN ERIC, as well as to give the background for calculating the fees of the countries and institutions who will become members of CLARIN ERIC. If we consider the costs for constructing and operating CLARIN ERIC, we can distinguish two layers of costs, at the ERIC level and at the national level. If we consider the way CLARIN ERIC will be organized, however, it is more adequate to consider three functional layers; therefore we describe three functional layers below, but the last two both concern expenses at the national level. 1. The three CLARIN layers In CLARIN we distinguish the following three functional layers. (a) The overall governance and coordination layer (ERIC layer). This will take the form of an ERIC, with a General Assembly as the main decision taking body, a Board of Directors responsible for the execution of the strategies, policies and work programme decided by the General Assembly, supported by a secretariat and a small coordination and support team. (b) The layer coordinated by the CLARIN ERIC. This layer has two subcomponents: 1. The technical infrastructure layer: This will take the form of a number of CLARIN data and service centres that together constitute the CLARIN technical infrastructure. 2. The knowledge sharing infrastructure layer: this will take the form of a number of CLARIN competence centres operating at the European level (virtual or physical) that together constitute the CLARIN knowledge sharing infrastructure Each of the centres will be part of a national consortium and work under the responsibility of the national coordinator. (c) The layer coordinated at the national level. This will take the form of a number of institutions that together constitute the national consortia. They work under the responsibility of the national coordinator and create content and disseminate knowledge at the national level according to the national policies and priorities determined by the national consortia. For each of the three layers we present estimates of the costs and the way they should be covered. 2. The governance and coordination layer This is the layer of the CLARIN ERIC. The budget of CLARIN ERIC will cover the costs related to the general and overall coordination and governance of the CLARIN infrastructure. This will include both the costs of the General Assembly, the Board of Directors, administrative support and general tasks related to the coordination of education and dissemination, but not to the implementation of these tasks, as these will be carried out at the level of the national consortia, as part of their in kind contributions. These costs will be covered by financial contributions from the members of the ERIC. CLARIN 8S-2.2 6

7 Great care has been taken to keep this level as lean and light as possible, and to minimize the volume of operational tasks. The main role of the Board of Directors is therefore to focus on what can only be done at the overall governance and coordination level: to ensure the overall consistency and coherence of the work carried out at the infrastructure and national levels in all participating countries, to ensure coherence, consistency and synergies with neighbouring infrastructures, and to prepare policies and strategies for the future. Given the number of players in CLARIN and the wide range of activities it will undertake this task should be entrusted to a small group of visionary experts. The calculation of the contributions is based on an initial overall annual budget of 1,000,000, with a contribution of 250,000 by the hosting country, and a contribution based on the economic size of the participating countries for the remaining 750,000 (see annex). In the rest of this document we will go through the various cost items, present the budget and show globally what the financial consequences would be for countries of different sizes. We have chosen for a lean ERIC model, where the cost of the operations at this level is kept as low as possible. This will also minimize the cross-border flow of money. The budget of the ERIC does not include the costs of the operation of the infrastructure itself (e.g. data and service centres, centres of expertise), as they will be borne through the contributions in kind from the members to the infrastructure. Neither does it include the costs of the creation or conversion of digital material, tools or other content that is to populate the infrastructure. These activities will be the responsibility of the participating countries and other partners according to their own priorities and procedures Costs The budget items The main budget items are the following: Cost related to governance, board of directors and secretariat: (a) The cost of the General Assembly (GA): This covers the cost of travel for two participants (the representative and an expert) per member to the annual meeting of the GA. This cost is dependent on the number of members. (b) The cost of the Board of Directors: This will cover the salaries of the Executive Director (fulltime, based at the headquarters, employed on the basis of a 5-year renewable contract) and 3-4 Co-directors (each contracted on a FTE 1 basis from their home institutes, with 3-year renewable contracts). This will also cover their travel. This cost is not directly related to the number of members although we expect that the number of co-directors may go up as the ERIC grows. (c) The cost of an annual meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board (d) The cost of the Secretariat of the ERIC, including support staff, travel, office rent, equipment, consumables. 1 Full Time Equivalent CLARIN 8S-2.2 7

8 The cost of coordination and support activities at the general level: (a) Support for an annual conference, workshops, seminars, other events and travel grants (b) Coordination of education, training, dissemination and awareness at the general level. This includes support for (but not the implementation of) summer schools, workshops, training courses, the CLARIN website, a newsletter and other activities aimed at reaching out to the user community. (c) Access to legal expertise, both in relation to contractual issues at the ERIC level and in connection with IPR and related issues. (d) The cost of international outreach. This includes the cost of meetings, workshops and other events aimed at initiating or strengthening collaboration with third countries. The budget The table below reflects the expected annual expenditure at the CLARIN ERIC level. Activity Labour Travel Events Other Total Governance and secretariat General Assembly Director Co-directors International Scientific Advisory Board Secretariat Coordination Dissemination, training Technical workshops and seminars Website & newsletter Annual conference Legal expertise International contacts Contingency Total annual central budget CLARIN ERIC Income The expenditure is covered by annual fees from the members. The distribution is as follows: The host country contribution will be 250,000 The other members will cover the remaining 750,000 For each country the share of the contribution will be calculated on the basis of economic size. The method of calculation and the resulting contributions per country can be found in the Annex to this document. For observers and for members other than countries the share will be determined during the accession negotiations between the ERIC and the entity. CLARIN 8S-2.2 8

9 If the ERIC agrees to fund other activities than governance and coordination (e.g. supporting specific infrastructure services, research projects, digitization programmes or similar) the distribution of the cost of such operations will be have to be agreed upon by the General Assembly. Possible distribution models are distribution over all members, using the same key, or participation on a voluntary basis, where countries decide for themselves whether they want to participate and how much they would want to contribute. 3. The layer coordinated by the CLARIN ERIC This is the layer of the national centres constituting the technical infrastructure and the knowledge sharing infrastructure at the European level and the coordination of these centres at the national level Costs Document D2R-9a (Cost Estimates - v1) gives an analysis of the cost of the construction and operation of the technical infrastructure and its components. The cost of the technical infrastructure is higher than the cost of the knowledge sharing infrastructure (e.g. centres of expertise), as the latter does not require 24/7 services or significant investments in technical equipment. We will use the term technical centres to refer to centres that deliver services that are part of the technical infrastructure. Here we summarize the main findings of D2R-9a. We start with two important observations: - The cost estimates document is based on annual salary costs per FTE of 60 k. This is an average, as many countries have significantly higher or lower salary rates. - The cost estimates are based on setting up the services in accordance with the CLARIN requirements from scratch. As nearly all prospective centres are based on existing centres, many of which are already up to (or close to) CLARIN standards the actual additional cost of building and operating a CLARIN centre may be considerably lower that the estimates given here. Realistic cost estimations can therefore only be made at the national level, for individual centres, taking into account actual salary levels and the number of centres a country is willing to host. CLARIN ERIC will not impose any number of centres on a country, and countries can also decide to jointly operate centres in order to make their own resources and tools available to the CLARIN community at large (which is a CLARIN requirement). Contrary to the contributions at the governance and coordination level of CLARIN ERIC there is no link between a country s GDP and its contribution to the infrastructure level of CLARIN. country size and no of centres large country (6 centres) medium size country (3 centres) small country (1 centre) with technical centres annual cost in M, based on 60 k per FTE per year construction phase exploitation phase without technical with technical centres centres without technical centres CLARIN 8S-2.2 9

10 3.2. Income During the construction and exploitation phase the costs of the centres will in each country be covered by the funding agencies and/or by the centres themselves, as part of the agreed upon CLARIN Membership Agreement. No central contribution via the ERIC or from the EC is foreseen. Three comments should be added here: 1. When the number of participating countries grows, the CLARIN ERIC General Assembly may decide to shift the cost of certain generic infrastructure services that are shared by all to the CLARIN ERIC level, to be covered from the national fees to the ERIC. 2. According to messages from the EC there are plans to make provisions in the 8 th Framework Programme that would allow Research Infrastructures to receive contributions from the EC of up to 20% of the operational costs. If this is implemented through Calls for Proposals the CLARIN ERIC would be eligible to submit such a proposal and could channel the money to the centres that constitute the infrastructure. 3. In addition the ERIC could submit proposals in response to other EC Calls and use the funds to support new or ongoing CLARIN activities. 4. The layer coordinated at the national level This is by far the most important layer, because this is where the infrastructure will be populated with data (by integration of legacy data or creation of new data) and tools and services (legacy or new), and where new knowledge will be generated and shared. CLARIN ERIC will not impose any other obligations on the members than that they commit themselves to the creation of new data and tools, both connected to their own language(s) and to the languages that are relevant for their research communities; the generation of new knowledge (i.e. conducting research) related to CLARIN and its user community the dissemination of knowledge and expertise within the CLARIN community and to its potential user community (awareness, training, education) The reason why this is left to the discretion of the members is that the creation, use and dissemination of language resources and tools cannot be seen as a stand-alone activity, and should always serve national or European RTD programmes, which follow their own priorities. CLARIN ERIC will ask every member to specify at the beginning of each year what plans they have for the creation, exploitation and dissemination of content, and it will also offer its members opportunities to embark on joint content creation projects. Models such as the ESF a la carte will be a good instrument to initiate and fund joint projects. Members plans for the coming year will be presented to the GA for approval and for insertion into the membership agreement. CLARIN ERIC will also be in a position to submit proposals to EC programmes for projects aimed at the creation of content or tools. 5. Annual contributions The income in CLARIN ERIC will basically be the annual financial contributions made by the members. There may be a very small income originating from participant fees for workshops etc, but CLARIN 8S

11 as this is very minor and is anyway counter-balanced by expenses to organise the workshops, this is not considered here. 5.1 Principles for the calculation of the annual contribution For the initial five year period the principles as described below will be used to calculate the annual cash contributions by the members, observers and individual institutions in non-member countries that want to join CLARIN ERIC. The General Assembly can also make special collaboration agreements with third parties. Before the end of the initial five year period it will decide about the calculation method for subsequent periods. The principles are: (a) the initial target budget is per year, based on an estimated participation by 2/3 of the 26 countries represented in the CLARIN Preparatory Phase consortium. If more members join the General Assembly can decide to lower the contributions or to increase the level of activity; (b) the contribution for year 1 by The Netherlands, as the host country, is ; (c) the maximal contribution by other members for year 1 is ; (d) the minimal contribution by members for year 1 is ; (e) the contribution for each member will be fixed for five years, with an annual increase of 2% in order to compensate for inflation and increase of costs. The exact amount for each member is laid down in the table below; (f) members joining in later years will pay the indexed contribution fixed for that year; (g) observers pay the minimal indexed membership contribution as specified in the table below; (h) individual institutions pay the minimal indexed contribution specified for their country in the table below; (i) the contribution by the Dutch Language Union is , which is based on the Flemish share in the EU GDP (resulting in ), plus an additional amount of 5 000, as the specific contribution by the Dutch Language Union (as an international organisation) itself; (j) The contribution for entities joining in the course of a year will be proportional to the number of remaining months in that year, starting on the first day of the month of joining. (k) contributions will be based on the country s GDP in 2010 as a percentage of the EU GDP in that year (based on EUROSTAT), according to the following formula: The % of EU GDP is rounded to the next integer (UP if less than 5, DOWN otherwise) and multiplied by the minimal contribution, as is shown in the following table: % of EU GDP rounded contribution <= >1 and <= >2 and <= >3 and <= >4 and < >=6 and < Etc.. >=16 and < >=17 n/a CLARIN 8S

12 The annual fee for members not initially committing for five years will be raised by 25%, as long as the commitment for the remaining period has not been made. If a commitment for the remaining part of the five years is made or if the member stays for five years, arrangements will be made to ensure that the member will not pay more in total than the normal fees for those five years. The table below and its totals include 33 potential European members. Resulting figures for members committing themselves for five years (potential) %GDP base with annual increase of 2% sum member EU 2010 contribution y2012 y2013 y2014 y2015 y2016 y Iceland Cyprus Estonia Malta Latvia Lithuania Bulgaria Luxembourg Slovenia Croatia Slovakia Hungary Romania Czech Republic Ireland Portugal Finland DLU/Flanders Denmark Greece Austria Norway Belgium Sweden Poland Switzerland Turkey Netherlands Spain Italy United Kingdom France Germany TOTAL CLARIN 8S