Support Team 2014 Work plan and Budget

PROPOSED

The Support, Infrastructure and Data Sovereignty (Support Team) team is responsible for ensuring that our members have access to a reliable technology infrastructure that is designed and implemented based on the values of freedom, transparency and democracy.

Goal for the Year

In addition to our on-going goal of ensuring the data sovereignty of our organization and members, this year we are focusing in particular on member communication: we have lots of great tools that nobody knows about. We want to improve our communication to our members of what we have and how to use them. The benefit to our membership is not only knowledge and ability to use these tools, but also a strengthened sense of their membership in our organization and what that membership means. By communicating what we have, we also have the opportunity to communicate who we are and why we exist.

Outreach

We have a special opportunity this year since Ross, one of the critical members of our team, is moving to Mexico City. We plan to take advantage of this move to help build the support team in Mexico City. By the end of the year, we would like to have an established core team in Mexico City, meeting monthly.

Ongoing Tasks

The Support Team team performs many on-going tasks, which include:

• Answering support tickets
• Performing routine maintenance, backups and software upgrades
• Documenting features and support tips
• Meeting once a month, face-to-face in NY and Mexico, connected by a conference call to:
  • Welcome new volunteers
  • Have a two hour meeting to discuss progress and methods for implementing our work, that includes at least one topic that relates to a political issue facing another work team, with a summary of the discussion reported in the following coordinators meeting
  • Have a multi-hour (sometimes late into the night) work session

Special Projects for 2014

In 2014, the Support Team team will work on our on-going tasks as well as many other tasks that will come up over the course of the year.

In addition to these tasks, we will make a special commitment to completing the following tasks in 2014.

First half of year

• WordPress auto installer via the control panel. Ticket: #1608
• Collaborate with Membership team to heavily promote ​https://share.mayfirst.org/, our file sharing site and make improvements to integrate it with our other services (#8374)
• Shared Styles across mayfirst.org domains: #8373
• Upgrade all servers to Debian Wheezy. Wiki page: squeeze wheezy MOSH upgrade.
• Organize Association for Progressive Communications members in an international meeting on fighting Denial of Service attacks and legal threats to our members. ​Planning Page.
• Upgrade https://mayfirst.org/ web site to Drupal 7, collaborate with other teams on re-design. Ticket: #8171
• Collaborate with Membership team on installing CiviCRM (and sync'ing with our control panel) to improve membership communications): #8341 and #8357
• Purchase and install one new physical server: #8375
• Establish two new on-going sub-teams:
  • Infrastructure Audit team: to pro-actively analyze our services to ensure they are deployed in ways consistent with our data sovereignty goals (dkg, steve, kendra)
  • Comms team: ensure we maintain consistant communications about our services with our broader membership (kendra, jamie, dana, thiago)
• Collaborate with membership team to recruit more women and people of color through targeted outreach to our membership
• Based on our experiences with the Techie of Color training program, develop and pilot a free software systems administrator training curriculum geared toward addressing racism and sexism (and other forms of oppression) as they operate specifically in the tech world, that can be used in both the US and Mexico (this item has a $3,000 additional budget line attached to it)
• Together with Membership and Outreach teams, develop a "harm reduction" approach to the use of corporate social media, that both firmly addresses the security and other risks of using these services, while also providing an inviting path for joining May First/People Link.

Second half of the year

• Purchase and install one new physical server (dkg)
• Participate in at least 3 People Links sessions, organized by the Membership team, that are specifically about learning how to us MF/PL technology (Comms team)
• Launch a Tor node (exit node or relay node?) (gdl)
• Automatic https-enabled web sites for all members. Currently, all of our members have easy access to http (non-encrypted nor authenticated) web sites. Every member can add an https (encrypted and authenticated) web site, however, it requires many cumbersome steps. By the end of 2014, we would like to streamline this process so that all members automatically have an https site that is signed with an MF/PL certificate and can easily be modified to be signed with a corporate provided certificate. Ticket: #407.
• Begin developing relationships with hardware specialists to explore our vulnerabilities from using potentially compromised hardware (specifically to address the revelations that the Snowden NSA leaks suggest that the US government may be intercepting hardware shipments and changing out shipped components with compromised ones)
• Begin participating, as MF/PL, in more mainstream technical bodies (like standards bodies) that are often dominated by corporations, in order to ensure our political vision is heard
• research sustainable computing options such as servers, other rack hardware, even green rack spaces.
• supporting the forensics assessment of the riseup server previously seized by the FBI.

Paid Staff

The Support Team team has two paid staff people. Each started at $1,000/month and have received 5% raises after every year they have worked.

• Ross Glover
  • Began: October 2011
  • Job: Performs day-to-day server administration tasks
  • Political Bio:
• Dana Skallman
  • Began: January 2013
  • Job: Responds to all support requests, ensures each requests is answered or assigned to a support team member
  • Political Bio: Prior to becoming part of the support team, Dana has freelanced with a variety of organizations. Her work has been geared towards making technology more accessible to a variety communities and individuals, through two distinct focuses: organizing data, and software training. This work affords Dana opportunities to teach about the politics of proprietary versus non-proprietary software. Dana has also taught folks with little or no computer literacy, which includes people who are homeless or formerly homeless, senior citizens and kids as young as three. Most recently, Dana has participated in the Occupy Tech teams. There she works on developing and supporting free/open tools to meet activists and organizers' needs, as well as providing guidance on use of software to organizers involved in Occupy Wall Street. During Occupy Sandy, Dana managed CiviCRM for relief efforts. Lastly Dana has been intentional about working in collective structures, with horizontal decision-making processes. She is a founding member of Tadpole Collective, and Glocal, a techie/organizer collective born of Occupy

Budget

• Note: 2013 items are not for the full year nor are the fully reconciled
• Hosting charges:
  • Highwinds: $2000/month (includes overage)
  • Telehouse + Hurricane Electric: $2000/month (includes overage)
  • Extra (chun and front-line servers): $300/month
  • High speed Internet via our Elisa location in Mexico City ($1200)
• Servers: 2 servers at $4500 each (not including hard drives)
• Hard drives: 8 hard drives (for the new servers) + 4 spares
• Travel and lodging: We will have the costs covered for one team member to attend the APC gathering in Spain. I think we should budget for a second person to go as well.
• Payroll-related: I'm trying to estimate our costs at 3/4 of the total for last year (since in 2013 we paid Ross and Dana about $1,000/month and Hilary was paid about $650).
• For salaries - I'm calculating based on 5% raise (Ross: two years, $1,102.50/month, Dana: one yar, $1,050/month)

Revenue

Item	2012	2013
Donations	247	495
AMC Donations	2736	0
Grants	4500	0
AMC Grants	1600	0
POC Grants	4000	0
Infrastructure Income	4911	3418
Interest Income	14	16
Membership Dues	126797	122497
Program Related Income	1123	0
POC Training Program	11190	6667
Total Revenue	157119	133093

Expenses

Item	2012	2013	2014	For
Bad Debts Expense	0	6600		member
Bank Service Charge	2086	2003		member
General Conference Registration	250	210		outreach
AMC Conference	700	210		outreach
Depreciation	0	0		support team
Dues and Subscriptions	500	500		internat
Equipment Rental	0	100		member
Event/Meeting Space Rental	150	970		out/mem
AMC Fundraiser	360	0		all
POC Space Rental	530	0		special
Food and Entertainment	913	674		o/m/s
AMC Food	827	0		outreach
LC Food	0	364		member
POC Food	800	1499		special
Hosting Expenses	0	0		support team
Colocation Fees	55611	47474	52800	support team
Domain Name Registration	640	363	500	support team
TLS Certificates	519	506	500	support team
Disability Benefits Insurance	60	149	100	support team/mem
Workers Compensation	677	325	500	support team/mem
Miscellaneous	1038	550		special
POC Miscellaneous	0	45		special
Postage and Delivery	615	319		member
Printing and Reproduction	296	0		out/mem
AMC Printing	54	0		outreach
POC Printing	0	0		special
POC Trainer Consultants	7200	0	3000	special
Rent and Utilities	4200	4150		special
Repairs	0	0		support team
Computer Repairs	0	0		support team
Equipment Repairs	0	0		support team
Supplies	0	0		support team
Hard Drives	2382	392	2400	support team
Misc. Computer Hardware	7767	3524	500	support team
Office Supplies	94	469		member
POC Books	166	0		special
POC Hardware	2100	0		special
POC Misc Supplies	0	0		special
Servers	0	1600	9000	support team
Telephone and Fax	300	127		all
Transportation	0	0		all
AMC Lodging	1714	0		outreach
AMC Out of Town Travel	3186	0		outreach
Car Rental	436	0		outreach
Fees	11	0		outreach
Gas	50	34		outreach
LC Local Travel	0	127		member
LC Out of Town Travel	408	2701		member
Local Travel	128	0		member
Lodging	381	181		outreach
Out Of Town Travel	5379	843		outreach
Parking	0	163		outreach
POC Local Travel	293	142		special
POC Lodging	857	316		special
POC Out of Town Travel	3530	5094		special
Travel Meals	0	0		outreach
Travel Misc.	120	0		outrach
Payroll	0	0
Payroll Taxes	2275	3527	2500	support team/mem
Salaries	21909	30375	25830.50	support team/mem
Total Expenses	131510	116627	97430.50