Council Lost Adult Training Records 5 Times in 8 Years --> Incompetance?

[Bob White]

Did it occur to you Shortridge that they are doing that as a service to you? They could just as easily enter the data and assume that everything works at the other end.

 

Instead they continue on your behalf to double check the data until the techs at national get it working properly.

 

Seems to me that a thank you to them is in order for their diligence in doing their part on your behalf. Instead you call them names.

 

You don't seem to comprehend that this is not a problem that the local council controls. Their only responsibility in this task is data entry. The database and the software controlling it are not at the Council Service Center. It is not even designed or operated by the council. You are continuing to blame them for something that is not their responsibility. We pay them to input the data. PERIOD!

 

"flip it around and think about this situation from another perspective. If I, as a unit leader, kept screwing up my Scouts' advancement information, causing problems for both my unit and folks at Council who had to deal with the aftermath,..."

 

Read the posts on this forum Shortridge. You're saying you don't see any signs of incompetent scout leaders on this forum???? But you don't see any posts from council office staffers posting that the leaders are incompetent do you? All the name calling seems to be coming from a few posters. Scout leaders who do not know how to deal with their frustrations or challenges in a more positive and effective manner than name calling.

 

(This message has been edited by Bob White)

[Eagle92]

Shortridge,

Actually record keeping is part of national's responsibility now. Council's provide teh training and record it. What is supposed to happen is that national keeps the records via SCOUTNET and those records follow you if you move. The council's responsibility is to input the data. if the pull a report, they log on to SCOUTNET to get it. If data is lost, it is not the council's fault, but national's since they are teh record keepers. Councils just run reports from and input data to the SCOUTNET database.

 

As stated there are MAJOR problems with Scoutnet. none of my records have transferred when I moved around. heck I was the district training chair and according to the records I've been to no training, not even YPT. Frustrating, yes. Council's fault, no.

 

If you want to complain, i'ld write to national since they are responsible for this faldercarb.

[highcountry]

It doesn't matter if it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours to send council the information, it is beyond pathetic they loose the records 5 times in 8 years. To wait this long to make a decision that the national database is not working and they should consider alternatives is a sign of incompetant management.

So to be a good scouter one is to be obedient and be helpful at all times. Does this mean it is still OK for them to loose your records 8 times in 8 years, how about 20 times in 10 years, where does this mentality end, as one needs to always be helpful and send that information along as an obedient scouter ? That kind of scenario is ludicrous ! At what point do you say enough is enough.

To me, if council loses my records 5 times in 8 years and expects me to keep facilitating their incompetance by asking me to keep backing their failings up is crazy. They are the ones with the problem, they are the ones moving at Glacial speed to fix it or even make a backup record! I'd have a some self re self respect and ignore them. If they can't/won't fix their problem in nearly a decade, why do you have to keep backstopping for them. I'd let my DE know the story and if they got sticky about it, I'd keep my ASM's but not register them next year. I'd also tell them we are too busy when FOS calls to ask for more funding. If they keep having people cover their mess they will continue to drag thier feet in fixing the mess.

"Supposedly" just sending the data in and not being upset about it is "Mature".....to me, to do that you are letting yourself be used as a Doormat.

We expect our scouts to show personal growth and increase in levels of responsibility but Council gets a pass on this right ? Or with this sort of mindset, I suggest it is OK to drive a scout home from 5 out of 8 campouts to get his sleeping bag he keeps forgettting to bring. After all a Scout is helpful at ALL times....we should not expect him to learn or change anything, it is up to us "mature" scouters to cover his mess no matter how many times he repeats it.

Obsurd.

[Bob White]

Please highcountry, have you nothing to offer this discussion other than just another tantrum. The office is trying to deal with a system that is not theirs. It is not their responsible to maintain training records. If it is anyone's responsibility it is the individual adult's.

 

National is trying to make it easier for everyone and be able to verify training activity with a national data base but the program still has some bugs evidently.

 

Heck you have posters here how have shut down units and chased countless youth out of scouting, yet few if any of you even raise an eybrow to such behavior. But let a computer program crash and you start yelling at a few folks who only input data as being incompetent.

 

Dluders is an angry guy. things have not gone well in the unit he serves and he is taking his frustrations out on the wrong people and some of you are following behind him just for the sport of it.

 

Make a ppersonal training history for yourselves and if sometimes someone is interested in it you can just email it. How tough is that?

 

 

 

 

[highcountry]

Not a tantrum, sorry you think it is just fine for council to keep asking volunteers to make up for their repeated failings while not fixing it for 8 years apparently. You seem to have plenty of problems having rants and tantrums with everyone who doesn't embrace and adhere to every single nit picky rule that BSA or camps or councils foist on volunteers no matter how useless or contrary to common sense. You do it here dailey but when you are called for your ranting, that is OK right ? If there is one thing that certainly helps chase away volunteers and scouts it is know it alls who's apparent sole purpose is to constantly point out how the others are doing it wrong and how they are rule book experts and know are holier than thou.

The situation is absurd and your proposal that one should cheerfully roll over and keep making up for council's inability to do a basic function is not consistant with the things we are supposed to be teaching the scouts. So when does this scenario get beyond reasonable for you ? when they call every month with lost data requests? Do you keep doing the same thing over and over hoping for different results ?....You know what the definition of that is right ?

[Bob White]

You're kidding right? You really still think, after all the posts explaining that the local office has nothing to do with this computer program other than data entry, that the local office is somehow responsible for this?

 

How can you not grasp this simple concept?

 

I do mot rant...I marvel...I marvel at the ability of some scouters to not read, or who refuse to accept what policies, or programs are, then I wait for the ranters to orbit my pots like moons around Saturn.

 

Forgive me for continuing to interject facts into this whine-fest.

 

In the past national had a very limited data system. It was used primarily for creating and storing Charter information including unit membership. As part of this national kept only three conditions of training on a person. The records showed you were untrained, FastStart or Basic Trained. That was it. And if you changed programs but were not trained the BSA did not know unless you altered the charter at re-charter time.

 

Councils at this time were not responsible directly for keeping training records as they are for advancement records. At v=best a council would have a slew of three ring notebooks that had carbons of the training course record sheet. Often the District had a set as well. But if room was scarce these folders were usually trashed.

Some councils may have transferred these records to microfiche as they did with advancement records but I doubt it.

 

The reason being it was the individuals responsibility to keep their own records.

 

When PCs came out each council (that actually had a computer) had there own systems, that depended largely on the computer knowledge of the person who had the computer.

 

Eventually National BSA created a network between the councils and national called ScoutNet. It did not work real well at first but then a lot of networks did not work well at first.

 

As ScoutNet has grown so has the number of things they use it for. One service they are trying to develop is training record keeping for 1.2 million adult a volunteers as year.

 

This nationally based database has had some problem, not all of them the same. For instance in the council where I live my personal training report is accurate but the unit charter says II am not trained. Both are generated by national but for some reason the data is not being shared properly. In the past we have had leaders appear on a unit report and a month later they are gone for no apparent reason.

 

I am sure that the folks working on the program would love to know why this is happening so that they can stop it and do other things. But it certainly has nothing to do with the local scout office.

 

But to be quite frank it is not a problem that affects my life in any way. Whether or not my training appears on the report or not is not be any means a big issue. It jas no effect on my next meeting, my next outing, the health of the unit, the fun for the scouts..none are effected by this computer problem.

 

It is certainly nothing to cause the name calling and the gnashing of teeth apparent in this thread.

 

I have a training history typed up and if someone at the office needs it I can e-mail it to them. No big deal, and no name calling and no refusing to help out.

 

If this kind of thing bothers you this much, then how can you possibly be expected to be able to handle real problems?

 

[shortridge]

A few points, and then I'm closing my book on this discussion. We can all politely agree to disagree.

 

* The council is clearly the gatekeeper of the data, both input and output. National does not send out letters to individual Scouters about new training requirements - councils do. That makes them the responsible front-line people. It doesn't matter if the database is kept on a National server or a council server.

 

* If councils can drop Scoutnet - as dluders' reply indicates - then councils do have an option in this case. They don't have to use the National system. Councils also have more pull with National than a single unit leader does. If they complain en masse, one would hope they're going to get results.

 

* If National made itself the arbiter and recordkeeper of all (or most) training records through Scoutnet, then it needs to give its local councils the proper support. That seems to be the failing in this case. Unfortunately, I'd suspect that most Scouters don't understand the Council/National split. Councils are as high as the majority of Scouters get. I thank you, BW, for clarifying the differences in this case.

 

* If problems such as this persist, they lead to a severe lack of confidence in the ability of both National and Council to perform basic functions. You don't take over a task unless you're sure you can accomplish it. That's what we're hearing here.

 

BW: I have never called anyone a name on this forum. All I have said is that someone who continually loses records, inconveniencing groups of people on multiple occasions even after being provided the correct information, could reasonably be classified as incompetent. Competence isn't simply a question of punching in the right codes beside someone's name. It's also doing the right thing over a period of time.

[dluders]

1. Whether or not a council continues to use the (faulty) ScoutNet national database or not, BACK UP THE DATA with a locally-developed, Excel spreadsheet. How complicated could this be? If ScoutNet is unreliable, then (gee) maybe they should have a BACKUP. What a business concept!

 

2. The fact that I called my council's staff "incompetant" seems to rankle "Bob White". He apparently wants me to settle for mediocrity, and just resubmit the same paperwork for the 6th time without a peep. Well, "A Scout Is Trustworthy" to keep the records of the volunteers who make the program work. Although I DO keep my own records, I won't play their game anymore. The council is going to FIX their problem. I'm not holding my breath, because their track record stinks in this matter.

 

3. I'll be a good little boy, and won't bring it up at the Oct 30th council "Open House" (where concerns and grievances are supposed to be brought up). I'll see if the council REALLY fixes the problem this time around. When it comes time to recharter in December, we'll see if they say that I'm "ineligible" to recharter because I supposedly haven't been trained. These are the same folks who awarded me the Boy Scout Leaders Training Award and Scoutmaster's Key a year ago; they know that Outdoor Leadership Skills and Scoutmaster-specific training are PREREQUISITES for those awards.

 

4. I'm not putting up with Mickey-Mouse organizational skills -- BACK UP THE DATA just like all (solvent) businesses do.

 

[Eagle92]

DLuders,

I know your ticked, and I have too when I've been in your shoes. I can tell you

 

1)councils can NOT opt out of SCOUTNET. National mandates its use, just like they are now mandating that OA Lodges use some new software that also has problems. Your PD may have a expressed a wish that they could opt out since he is on the receiving end of complaints. Again COUNCILS CANNOT OPT OUT OF SCOUTNET.

 

2)If memory serves me correct (it's been 9 years since I served as a pro with a council; also things may have changed with the database), council's do not have backup privileges. They can only input data and access it. They cannot store it. Again we had to do a mailout using SCOUTNET and it took three months to get the labels printed because all the information came from the computers in Irving.

 

3)Having councils backup data on a spreadsheet is unreasonable. Trust me it is a long time consuming just putting info into the database. When you got the number of volunteers of a small council like mine, let alone a Metro size council, the numbers are staggering. Ther is just not enough time and/or manpower to do both.

 

Again my advice would be the following.

 

1) Send a letter to the SE expressing your displeasure with the problem accompanied by your copy of the training records.

 

2) Along with the letter to the SE and a copy of your records, I would ask for a computer printout of your records to be sent to you. that way you know it is in the system and you have a verifiable copy of your records from council so there is no confusion later.

 

3)Send a letter to national. I don't know the contact info, but I bet if you googled it you could find the exact person to contact. Express you displeasure to them, an dhow they need to fix SCOUTNET.

 

Again I feel for you as I've been in your shoes. Further I had to reconstitute the training records of my entire district. You think dealing with just your records is a pain, try dealing with 60+ volunteers who responded to your call to fix the records. Trying to get everyone to turn in the forms was a pain as evidenced by the low number of people turning the surveys in.

 

 

 

[Bob White]

Dluders, People who live in glass houses....

 

I think if the purpose of the open house is to air your grievances then you by all means should do just that. I urge you to share it with the same language and the same intensity that you have shared it here on the Internet. If your goal is to see "incompetent" office staff exposed for the slipshod job you claim they do, then go for it.

 

But let's be honest dluders, how has the troop you have lead faired these last 4 years? Would you say "competently"? Would you say that the same problems have been going on for years in the troop but with no solution? If the troop were a business what percentage of your customer base have you lost? Would a "solvent" business experiencing that same loss be able to survive?

 

These are in fact the same devices by which you measured the competency or the council office staff, so how does the job you have done measure up under the same conditions.

 

But I bet not a single council office person would ever call you or any of your other leaders incompetent. Or post such a thing on the Internet, and certainly they will not attack you publicly. In fact I bet the worst they would do is continue to give you the same service they provide for all the other units.

 

Why do you suppose that your attitude is so much diferent over a couple of training dates, then their response is over the loss of so many scouts? More importantly how has your anger helped your troop to grow?

 

Why do I not this training record issue as a big problem? Because I think it is a difference of priorities.

 

 

[dluders]

"Bob White", I ALREADY TOLD YOU (via your two, unsolicited "Private Messages") WHY my troop lost membership. DON'T CHANGE THE SUBJECT. We're talking about COUNCIL RECORD KEEPING, not my troop.

 

I know the saying, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." Well, any organization who loses the same records 5 times in 8 years (regardless of the reason) IS INCOMPETANT by any objective measure.

 

I'm a licensed Civil Engineer working for the US Air Force. Anybody who goofs up the SAME WAY in my profession/workplace gets people killed. There is little/no tolerance for incompetance. WE CAN DO BETTER than mediocrity.

 

If the people I know (not complete strangers on this forum) think I'm incompetant, then ATTACK ME ON IT. I am licensed through my state as a Professional Engineer (P.E.) to have COMPETANCE in my field (Civil Engineering). If I am found not to be COMPETANT in my field, then my license gets revoked and I'm without a job. "Welcome to the real world."

 

So, instead of poo-pooing the SAME, PITIFUL OPERATION OVER AND OVER, I'm not tolerating my council (or BSA National's) incompetance. If the danged ScoutNet program doesn't work, FIX IT. We have poor data management programs in the USAF too, and we ABANDONED THEM for something better. Sticking with the same, flawed program year after year shows a complete lack of COMMON SENSE.

[Bob White]

You are definitely one angry guy, I doubt that works well for you.

 

The PMs were sent to help you try and tone down the rhetoric by seeing that you have other concerns then the office needing a couple of training dates from you.

 

The excuses you shared in your replies regarding the loss of the scouts do not reflect a healthy program. Again your credentials as an engineer ar nice but irrelevant to the issues of scouting.

 

We are talking about a couple of training dates and you (and a couple other) are way over the top in your anger about it when you have more pressing problems in the troop you serve.

 

In your PMS (which you said I could share but I think it best that I leave out some of the personal details) you explained the personal problems that Scoutmastership has created in your life. If being a Scoutmaster is causing those kinds of problems then you are obviously doing it incorrectly. There is nothing in being a Scouting volunteer that should cause that.

 

And again if that is happening then you have far greater issues than a couple of training dates and it is conceivable that these issues are causing your anger to be misdirected at others, such as the office staff.

 

You need to consider changing your priorities, and you might find you have far less to be angry about.

 

Best of luck!

[resqman]

BobWhite,

 

I am so happy that you know about all the inner workings of council and national. Nice of you to stand up for the local office and explain how YOU view it as not their fault.

 

YOU are missing the point. As a volunteer I don't care about internal workings of the system. It should be invisible to the end user, the customer. If the local office cannot resolve an ongoing problem in 8 years, then way too many things are broken.

 

My job as a customer of BSA is to let them know when they are doing things wrong so they can improve. The face of BSA national is the local office. If I can make it painful enough for the local office, then they will push that pain up the chain to national. If national gets enough pain, then they fix things.

 

You keep harping about the minor amount of time involved for each and every volunteer to maintain thier own training records and continually ignore the failings of BSA national. It is not about the time, it is about the inability for BSA to performs its job in a compentent manner. What is the point of BSA keeping records if they don't really keep records? If they can't track training, why would I rely on them to keep valid records of anything, like scout awards and achievments? Why would I trust them to actually perform background checks? Why would I bother to submit a tour permit since they would just loose it anyway?

 

The local office IS national. You want the customer to learn and understand all about the internal organizationl chart for every part of the buisness. That is riduculous. If my car is failing, I don't bypass the local dealership and call up the CEO of Ford. I deal with the local dealership. It is the responsibility of the local dealership to service the customer. If they can't provide adequate service because the internal company stuff doesn't work, they have to bear the brunt of that. I don't care that an engineer in Detroit designed a bad part, or that the assembley line worker just tightened what he was told to. I want my car to work. Part of the job of the local dealership is to take the heat for internal company failings.

 

Stop passing the buck and make the people paid to deal with customer do their job. If the tools they need to perform their job are broken, then it becomes their job to make sure that their company fixes the problem.

[Eagle92]

Res,

While national does respond to local council complaints, believe it or not they respond better (and faster)if you complain directly to them. trust me on this. While working for supply, we received letters about the lack of knee socks. We forwarded them to Charlotte. However those who wrote directly to Charlotte, got replys from them, and faster than we did.

Eagle92

[Bob White]

First I am not saying pass the buck. I am saying that if you are have a problem do more that just complain about.

 

First, have good priorities and be able to tell big problems from little ones. Certainly as someone trained in rescue you must understand that. You need to know what issues are important and what ones are not. To make as big a deal out of such a minor issue is silly.

 

Second, React appropriately and proportionately. Since the problem is not with the councils data entry but with the software at National, and considering the PD's open and honest letter explaining the situation, I don't think you can call Dluders behavior appropriate or proportional.

 

Thirdly, Be helpful, with people who are trying to help you. remember that until fairly recently this responsibility was the individuals not the council's or national. They do not have to do this. this is being done as much as a service to us as a it is a benefit to the BSA. So let's work together on this. The bugs will get worked out. It is not as if it has not gotten better, or that it is the same problem every time. This is a very elaborate data base that draws from and feeds into other data bases, and sometimes the communication fizzles.

 

Finally don't make things worse. Refusing to send a couple of dates so that they can try and fix the problem with your own record is immature. Dluders may not be a part of the problem but that doesnt mean he should irritate the problem further.

 

 

If dluders really needs his once of blood from the office staff over this then he should go for it, and he should be very grateful that no one in return will ever come from the council office for their pound of flesh over the much larger problems in the unit he leads.