Tech:SRE 2021 Restructure/Approvals Policy

= Old version =

''Reminder for all: you are working with donor money. Any purchase not for the sake of improving the Miraheze services does not fall under this policy. Misuse of funds is a gross offense.''

The Technical Team, also known as Site Reliability Engineering, is responsible for hosting the sites and managing the IT services used by Miraheze, has a budget allocated bi-yearly by the Board. A budget period covers Jan 1 – Jun 30 or Jul 1 – Dec 31. This approvals policy should ensure consensus on spending and transparency about Miraheze’s expenses within the Technical Team.

Assignment of roles: (ad-interim) budget holder Lewis
 * Budget holder: Ferran Tufan (as appointed by the Board)
 * Senior Site Reliability Engineers: John Lewis
 * Site Reliability Engineers: anyone in the ‘ops’ group, sans Senior Site Reliability Engineers and
 * (Ad-interim) budget holder, in case of long-term absence (unless otherwise overridden): John

Personal budget
Site Reliability Engineers must adhere strict standards before they are appointed, and they might need to purchase test servers for experiments. Every Site Reliability Engineer gets a $25.00 fixed budget, for Senior Site Reliability Engineers this is $40.00. This may be retrieved out of the bank account directly (by buying the server in the control panel, if applicable) or will be reimbursed upon request. In the current situation, this amount is $0.

Regular requests
Use significant figures for calculation. If the purchase cannot be covered by personal budget, the policy below must be applied. Up to 15.00% per budget period: sign-off from budget holder. 15.00% - 30.00%: sign-off from budget holder, one Senior Site Reliability Engineer (if applicable), and: 30.00% or greater: sign-off from budget holder, one Senior Site Reliability Engineer (if applicable), and:
 * at least one, or 25%3 of Site Reliability Engineers (rounded up to above), whichever is higher.
 * at least two, or 50%3 of Site Reliability Engineers (rounded up to above), whichever is higher.

Emergencies
When purchases must be made to reduce the impact of an emergency (e.g. keeping critical data intact), a Senior Site Reliability Engineer may decide to make purchases without prior approval by the budget holder, even if the purchase exceeds their (total/combined) personal budget. They must inform the budget holder as soon as possible. The consequences of misuse of funds are up to the discretion of the budget holder.

Objections
Any (Senior) Site Reliability Engineer can raise objections against a decision of the budget holder. They should try to resolve the dispute with the budget holder, however; if that is not possible, they can notify the Board of the objection. In said case the Board may decide to pass a resolution to agree/revert the decision of the budget holder. The Board has the final say in any dispute.

Out of budget
If the budget has been exceeded (due to regular requests or emergencies), the budget holder will have to testify to the Board. If the Board determines the budget holder has acted irresponsibly, they may appoint a new (temporarily) budget holder. Other consequences are also up to the Board.

Ad-hoc
In the event a situation is not covered by this policy, a decision has to be approved by the Board. Any change made to this policy must go through the resolution process of the Board.