Minutes of meeting in Athens on Friday 31st March 2017 [as reported to MSJ on 4th April 2017] Present: WMB (Warwick), DA (Edumotiva), MW (Comenius), HM (Edinburgh) This meeting was convened as part of C16 in order to discuss budget issues and plans of the conference. The agenda had three items: a. reviewing the current status of the budget b. discussing the problematic status of funds that were as yet unspent c. reviewing the plans for the CONSTRUIT 2017 conference. WMB was standing in for the project coordinator MSJ where the management aspects of the project were concerned. There was some interaction between items a, b and c. a. Reviewing the current status of the budget Budget statements had been requested from each of the partners prior to the meeting. MW on behalf of Comenius explained that their secretary was off for a month, but reported as follows: "My personal ledger says That we have spent till now 15420 Eur and we will spend something now for Athens and Joensuu and Warwick in July plus roughly 5000 for management. We received cca 38000 Eur. So if my calculations are ok, we will return cca 16000 Eur." HM had brought along a statement of project costs from Edinburgh. The itemised costs related specifically to the Learning and Teaching activities (LTAs) aspect of the project. These indicated that the travel and subsistence costs to date had been £3508.74 + £282.26 = £3791 against a budget allocation of £11530. One explanation for this shortfall was that Jen Ross (who had been intended to attend several LTAs) had been largely committed to another project. Payment in relation to IOs had reflected the time spent in participating in the meetings. Edumotiva and Warwick indicated that their budgets on LTAs were in line with their expenses. There were no budget statements from UEF or Helix5. We discussed the status of the Mobility Tool entry, and WMB reported that our administrative assistent Lynn McLean was in the process of gathering the required data. This included: details of who had represented partners at LTAs, the duration of their stay, and their expenses. We noted the urgency of gathering this information in a timely way, so that the documentation could be reviewed and finalised at the July conference. The budget review, and the supplementary evidence offered by the Interim Review financial statement, suggested that the expenditure on the project had been within the limits of the budget for all partners. It also pointed clearly to the likelihood of their being significant sums of money that had not been spent. This was the topic for the agenda item b. Before minuting the next part of the discussion, some context is helpful. There was a marked cultural difference between the views of the budget from the perspectives of DA and MW and those of HM and WMB. This seemed to stem from the perception that the National Agencies in Greece and Slovakia would implement an EU project in a different way from the British Council. Both DA and MW were concerned to be reassured that the BC's policies were those to be observed. For instance: - DA suggested that the funding for TPMs that were collocated with LTAs could not be legitimately used, as this would be abusing the travel budget. - MW indicated that if the expenses for an LTA were within the overall budget, the residue would have to be returned to the EU, in line with the policy of the national agency in Slovakia. He also highlighted the fact that (in Slovakia) there was a threshold above which EU projects were certain to be audited, and it seemed to him very likely that CONSTRUIT! (with funding close to the maximum award) would be audited. - HM indicated that Edinburgh's policy had been relatively liberal: the correlation between activities as originally envisaged and as implemented had necessarily not been exact (there were inconsistencies between the proposed LTAs and the budget, especially in the case of Edinburgh), but there was no anxiety about this. - WMB reiterated MSJ's principle that, provided we made every reasonable effort to pursue the project as proposed, it was to be expected that some changes would be necessary, and the most important consideration was that our programme of work was appropriately targetted towards the specified project goals. The advice that Warwick had had from the BC appeared to endorse Warwick and Edinburgh's perspective. For instance, there seemed to be no possibility that TPM funds would be withheld if TPMs and LTAs were collocated, provided only that there was well-documented evidence of both kinds of activity having been carried out, and it had been established that provided the overall budget was not exceeded it was reasonable to balance underspend on one LTA by overspend for another. Agenda items b and c were discussed against this backdrop. b. Addressing the problematic status of funds that were as yet unspent Both Comenius and Edumotiva indicated that their was significant unspent funding in their budgets. The same presumably applies to UEF, though this was not reported to the C16 meeting. This underspend stems principally from two factors: 1. Fewer higher-education students from Comenius and UEF participated in the C5, C6 and C7 activities than were expected. Provision was made to fund thirty students in total over the three years for each of the partners, but in practice 9 students came from Comenius and 24 from UEF. Each Comenius student was funded for 500 eur and each UEF student for 635 eur, making a notional budget surplus of 10500 eur for Comenius and 3810 eur for UEF. 2. The four proposed long term LTAs which were scheduled as six-month long visits to Warwick could not be implemented as planned. Since funds were not made available in a timely way, the two nominated representatives of UEF (Andres Moreno, Carolina Islas) could not visit in Year 1, and were no longer based at UEF in year 2. Ilkka Jormanainen (UEF) and Rene Alimisi (Edumotiva) were scheduled to visit in Year 2, but because of pressures of work in their home institutions, neither was able to make an extended visit. Some relatively small proportion of this funding was used instead to fund the visits of Rene Alimisi and Manolis Zoulias to C6, and to enable Tapani Toivonen to attend Warwick at the time of the pedagogical interim review to assist in the preparation for SciFest 2016. The total sum allocated to these four proposed visits was of the order of 51000 eur, comprising 12744 Eur to Edumotiva and 38232 to UEF. Over and above this, Comenius and Edumotiva mentioned funds associated with TPMs and other LTAs that they were not sure that they were entitled to spend (and indeed were not proposing to spend on that account). Several proposals were made concerning the unspent budget. MW highlighted possible arguments that might carry weight with the British Council. He observed that there had been a significant delay in funding, and this meant that certain activities planned for the first nine months of the project were significantly compromised, with very limited participation from Comenius for instance, as they had no financial resources to support advance payments. It might be appropriate to seek permission to spend the surplus funds on carrying out work to supplement these activities so that their goals could be more fully realised. We might also be able to make a case for an extension of the project to allow such activities to be implemented. There was considerable discussion of what form any possible supplementary activity might take. Organising a training event for teachers and HE students in association with the July conference was one possibility. For this, we should require a budget to cover travelling costs for teachers from Greece, Finland, Slovakia, Netherlands, the UK and perhaps other EU countries not represented in the consortium. This idea seemed preferable to an independent training event later in the summer since the conference would be a time when there would be a strong team of expert tutors to hand. DA and MW also mentioned the possibility of organising events within their respective countries -- perhaps multiplier events in advance of the conference that could help to recruit to such a training event. - the plans for the CONSTRUIT 2017 conference The possibility (subject to the getting the agreement from the BC) of holding an additional event alongside the conference naturally led us to think about the plans for funding the conference itself. WMB reviewed the parameters within which this organisation was being planned: the original budget includes an allocation of 20000 eur comprising a notional 100 eur for each of the projected 100 host country participant and 200 eur for the other projected 50 participants. In the light of the impact of large numbers of attendees on the local arrangements at Warwick, we are proposing to take advantage of the 20% budget reallocation principle so as to devote 16000 eur to the conference and reduce our target pro rata to 80 host country and 40 other participants. Having reflected on what the conference programme should look like, we are aiming at attracting 60 or so three day delegates and about 20 a day visiting delegates for the three days of the conference. To this end, we intend to devote each day to a different aspect of the CONSTRUIT! agenda so that we can target particular specialist communities on each day. This seems a good plan from a financial point of view since we can accommodate 80 people for a lecture session and 4 groups of 20 people for workshop sessions organised on a round-robin basis within the computer science department, thereby saving the cost of hiring special lecture theatres. Steve Russ (SBR) has consulted Warwick Conferences, who will be responsible for the accommodation and major components of the catering, and estimated the overall cost for each 3 day participant. The costs for project representatives will be met from the project budget. SBR has drawn up a spreadsheet that has been briefly reviewed by WMB and DA. To make the cost of attendance at a conference on this scale reasonable, it is essential to charge a registration fee: we are hopeful that by directing a substantial part of the conference budget into sponsoring participants we can keep the registration fee low. DA has questioned whether this is permitted within the Erasmus+ accounting rules and cautions that registration fees charged might have to be deducted from the funding allocated (defeating the purpose of charging them!). Minutes of meeting at Warwick on Tuesday April 4th 2017 Present: MSJ and WMB (Warwick) This follow up meeting revisited the agenda above with a view to 1. assessing the current status of the budget accurately, and checking that the project is on course as far as final reporting on the finance is concerned. 2. considering how to ensure that any unspent funds were used as effectively as possible towards achieving the project goals 3. identifying what questions need to be put to the BC in order to reassure project partners that we are following a legitimate path, and what kind of proposal for redirecting unspent funding might be acceptable. Regarding 1: There is clearly an urgent need to get fuller details of the current budget position for all parters and to correlate this with spreadsheets that are being drawn up by Lynn and WMB. Collating tis information and assessing the current status of the associated resources as identified in the Quality Document was identified as the first priority. WMB observed that some further documentation is required for activities in the third year (notably the C3 meeting and -- to a degree -- the six conference activities that took place between September and December -- viz. PPIG, ALT-C, ICL, i, Edurobotics, ALT-C Winter conference). A formal account of C7 and of the feedback obtained from the workshops at ALT-C, ICL and i and C7 is required. Regarding 2: WMB reported the responses of MW and DA to budget management issues minuted above. There was general enthusiasm for seeking permission from the BC to deploy unspent funds in the ways outlined above, but concern about what could be done within the rules. MSJ gave a clear indication of what kind of proposals stood the best chance of succeeding, and stressed the importance of linking these closely to the strategic goals for the project. Essentially, it is most appropriate to represent any proposal as: - compensating for activities that we have not been able to carry out for reasons beyond our control - substituting new activities that can achieve the objectives that these activities would have realised. The suggestion for holding a special training event at Warwick during the conference, and preceding this by recruiting events within the partner countries prior to the conference sounded like a plausible plan. Regarding 3: MSJ felt that it would be patently unreasonable to expect the project funding allocated to the conference to be sufficient to cover costs. It would surely be essential to charge a registration fee. Clarification on this point would be sought from our compliance officer. A more vexing question was just how to pitch the registration, given the high degree of uncertainty about the level of interest and motivation participants could be expected to have. As far as local representation at the conference is concerned, the current pressures on colleagues who might potentially participate and assist in the organisation of the conference was noted, and some ways of engaging them without adding significantly to these pressures were considered. Action plan: We agreed that the best way forward was to identify the key questions that needed to be answered in order to reassure our partners, and seek to get clear authoritative replies from our compliance officer as speedily as possible. The urgent need to post more details of conference registration was noted, as was the need to frame a proposal to the BC for using the unspent funds. As noted above, having as clear a picture as possible of the current state of the budget across all partners is perhaps an essential prerequisite for making such a proposal. At the very least, it is important to know the scale of the unspent funding, and to ensure that all partners have confidence in the financial plans entailed, Questions (mostly as distilled from above, where they can be seen in a broader context): - Can the partners be confident that they are answerable only to the British Council? For instance, MW clearly anticipated that there would be an audit, and feared that this might involve an audit in Slovakia if some breach of rules were to be discovered. - Can we confirm (preferably in writing) that the funding for Transnational Project Meetings can be spent when TPMs have been held in conjunction with other LTAs? that it is acceptable to underspend on one activity and use the surplus to fund another activity where there is potentially an overspend? - What are the expectations about the use of the Mobility Tool? DA was concerned that Warwick was not yet up-to-date on this, as he had experience of other projects where regular reporting via the tool was required. - Are the broad plans for the conference appropriate where the Erasmus+ funding scheme is concerned? Can we confirm that registration fees are acceptable so long as we are not seeking to make a profit from them? ------------ Note: In a subsequent meeting between MSJ and Julius it was established that charging a conference registration fee is indeed not permitted. SBR subsequently revised the conference budget so that there was no longer a registration fee, and adjusted the costs accordingly.