Thomas Haws wrote:
You are right that Scouting advancement records are a local concern.
The main Scouting record-keeping problems are:
-Boy loses Scout book
-Scoutmaster or Committee changes or leaves area
-Scout shows up in area without records
You forgot:
-Convert boy scout shows up without records (was a scout in a
previous troop not associated with LDS Church).
If the goal is to start an *open* source project then it shouldn't be
*closed* for non-members to use as well. Or is the Church going to host
a large database for the other 75% of the boy scouts (the non-LDS
ones)? If this is a LDS-only project then it most likely would be used
outside of Utah. We meet with and work with more scout leaders outside
of the Church. Right now, our council is pretty well standardized on
TroopMaster it seems. For example, when the topic of scout tracking
software comes up in our round tables this what we are trained on.
These aren't academic. And centralized storage addresses all three.
So does a nice import/export feature. In fact, it would be nice to be
able to import records from other scouting software as well like
TroopMaster. If some new troop tracking software is going to be
successful, IMO, then it would need to be able to import data from other
tracking software. Otherwise people will continue using what they are
using rather than take the time to re-enter all the data into a new system.
Nobody above the troop level is interested in the records, but
centralized storage relieves a burden from the family and the Troop
Committee.
I know I previously said in a conciliatory manner that centralized
storage isn't necessary. But it *really* would be nice. As a current
membership clerk, I am regularly grateful that membership records are
handled centrally. Let's work it out.
Yes, that would be nice but we would most likely continue to use
TroopMaster if the rest of our council (mostly non-LDS scouts and scout
leaders) couldn't use it as well.
-stacey.
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