Online Advancement--Thoughts?

Having a little experience with Troopmaster and living in a very rural area quite a distance from the Council offices, I was looking forward to the online reporting of Advancement.

Anyone have thoughts on this including sending certain info on kids over the internet, such as their social security numbers? Or is it only done with PIDs?

What about checking kids' records for, say, Eagle BOR to make sure all the records match. Can you just print off a page for that from the "main office"?

Is Troopmaster the only compatible software? That's what I have now, but I'm not so ingrained in it that I can't entertain other ideas.

What's the real downside of online reporting?

Just this morning I had a rather heated discussion with our council's registrar. I have a Life Scout transferring in to our unit. He doesn't know for sure the dates of his MB's or dates of his rank advancements. I went to the office in person and asked for a printout so we can have our records up to date. Well, because of PRIVACY REASONS, she would not give me that information. I had not yet turned in the transfer since we are rechartering the end of this month and preferred to do all the paperwork in one shot. Because of that, I could not get the information I wanted. What did she think I was going to do with this information? Is it a National security problem? All I got was "We have a privacy policy" It is amazing to me how difficult the so called professionals make it for us volunteers. The less we have to do with our council office the better off we are.

Eagle90, I'd disagree with you on this point. You asked for a personal record for a scout who was not in your troop. Why should anyone need a scout's record if that scout is not in your troop? I can completely understand and support the council's position in this case. Is this a matter of national security? No, of course not. Its a matter of the privacy and security of a youth. What did she think you were going to do with the information? Who cares - they have a privacy policy which they have to follow - and I am glad that they stuck to their guns!

It sounds like there's a couple courses of action you could have taken. 1) Turned in the paperwork to do the transfer (Which, I believe, is a half-sheet of paper which the scout/his family should have filled out, and $1. If you didn't want to do this because you want to "do the paperwork all in one shot", you could 2) have the scout or his family contact the council office and request his record - an action which I doubt would violate the privacy policy.

I'm sure you had no malicious intent in requesting his personal record, and just wanted to get a head start on updating your records, but I'd argue that your convenience is secondary to protecting the privacy and security of scouts and their personal information. I would also add that before the "so-called professionals" are acting very professional in developing and enforcing a privacy policy. Maybe there's more to this story, but it seems like the pro's were acting completely correctly in this case (which, I will agree, is unexpected.)

I've used PackMaster for six years and TroopMaster for one. I've done online advancement (and online rechartering for the Troop, just last week). While both programs have a field for SS#, it isn't one of the required fields, and I haven't filled it in for any of the boys. That hasn't caused any problems so far with either the internet advancement or with rechartering.

Interestingly, the council database was missing rank advancement dates for many of our scouts from the troop, and I was able to fill in the missing information and generate an advancement report to fix those problems. So from that perspective, this is a Good Thing as it eliminates the person at council having to type in all the information (or not type it in as the case may be). I've also discovered two errors in scout DOB in the council's database, which I will fix today.

That's great info on fixing things. That, and sending personal info like SSN online were my biggest questions on this. I have several scouts with missing or mistyped info, and I want to get these in order without having to drive an hour each way to get to and from the council office with my paperwork for them to fix things. I have one scout that is working on Eagle, and at this point, he's the top priority to fix, but fixing it from home would be great! Since I'm advancement chair for three groups (one crew, one pack, one troop), does online work for all three?

Thanks again,

Mollie

I deal with a troop and a pack. I've only done the online advancement for the troop, but I know it can be done for the pack as well - the only thing stopping me is a lack of required data for PackMaster (it wants DOB for adult leaders and I haven't gotten all those yet). I would expect that it could be done for a crew also - check with council to be sure. I have a different access code for each, which I had to get from council.

It was very easy to fix the messed up rank information. Unfortunately I discovered that while I could see other info (address, DOB, etc.) I couldn't get at it to fix it. On the plus side, our district rep is very responsive via email so I was able to send him the correct information without physically going to the office (which would take me close to an hour also).

Hope that helps!

M