The following announcement was made to the  staff this afternoon and is included here for the Board’s information. It was discussed with the Administration and Finance Committee at their last meeting a little over a week ago. If you have any questions, please let me know.:

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Over the past several years we’ve seen significant improvements in the working relationships and cooperation between departments in completing a variety of important projects. Two groups that are working increasingly closely are the Information Services Department (ISD) and the Web Software Development Department (WSDD).

Looking in to the future and specifically the future of our corporate systems here at the ARRL, we believe we will see more of what we’ve already experienced, a change in our computing environment and an increasing integration between our web site and the back-end systems used as corporate data bases. What will also change is the role that WSDD has traditionally played relative to the ARRL web site. Local content control will no longer require them to be the “gatekeepers” for all changes to the ARRL web page. We also believe that the working relationship of these two departments will need to be even closer.

As such, I am pleased to announce that we plan to merge the Information Services Department and the Web Software Development Department into one department….the Information Technology Department (IT). Jon Bloom has been selected to be the Manager of this new department reporting to me. Don Durand will be the Assistant Manager of the department reporting to Jon.

While the specific duties of the staff in these departments are unlikely to change immediately, we fully expect to gain several benefits from this merger as we move forward including:

• More efficient use of our limited technology resources with better planning for systems and technology services for the organization;
• A better working environment allowing the members of the department to work side-by-side on projects, using their complementary skills to deliver better coordinated solutions to systems issues faced by the organization, and
• Reduced dependence on outside vendors for selected tasks and services.

Due to some current project commitments in WSDD, we expect that the merger will be effective shortly after September 1^st.

We feel that this change will not only help us now, but better position the organization to deal with the changing world of technology and systems as we move into the future.

73,

Barry J. Shelley, N1VXY

Chief Financial Officer

ARRL, Inc—The National Association for Amateur Radio

225 Main St.

Newington, CT  06111

www.arrl.org

Phone: (860) 594-0212

E-mail: bshelley@arrl.org