Hi, Here are the answers to the questions that Director Vallio's email. BTW: I am going on vacation starting Thursday Dec 18 and will return to the office Monday Dec 29. Happy Holidays everyone! Regards/73, Harold Harold Kramer, WJ1B ARRL Chief Operating Officer 860 594 0220 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greetings: There are, of course, many issues in this plan. These two seemed to strike a familiar sounding chord with me. I believe that we have a fine IT Department, and I note that it is being increased by one additional employee. Item E (highlights provided), has the proviso that a new application would be provided by a vendor with practically no information available on-line ($79,000 in annual revenue and two employees), and involve minimal involvement by the IT Department. Item G (highlights provided), provides for databases to be upgraded by an unnamed programmer, again with minimal involvement by the IT Department. Both of these issues give me bad feelings of deja vu. Does anyone share those feelings with me? Bob Vallio, W6RGG --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I believe that we have a fine IT Department, and I note that it is being increased by one additional employee. I checked with Barry on the question about IT Staffing schedule in the Plan (page 84) which compares planned staffing in 2014 to planned staffing in 2015. It shows an increase of one full-time position in IT. This position is the additional Logbook of The World programmer approved by the A&F Committee in April of this year. Item E (highlights provided), has the proviso that a new application would be provided by a vendor with practically no information available on-line ($79,000 in annual revenue and two employees), Item E is for a new Repeater Database to be developed by DHS Systems whose principal, Al Ambrose, has been working with the ARRL since 1997. Details of the application's functions are explained in the text of the plan. Many of you know Al since he has been with us in our booth at Dayton for many years demonstrating the Travel Plus Product that he developed for us. I have attached a document that I requested from DHF systems detailing their work for the ARRL. Al told me that he does not have a website for his business since he has enough work without having to solicit any new business. Item G (highlights provided), provides for databases to be upgraded by an unnamed programmer, again with minimal involvement by the IT Department. The contest results database update has been in the budget for the past couple of years for $20,000. It was postponed last year because of HR issues with the previous Contest Manager. The MS Access database that runs the contest queries dates back to 2001 and needs updating. After recent discussions between the Contest Branch staff and IT Manager, Mike Keane, we may be able to do some of this work in-house, particularly since our new Contest Manager, Matt Wilhelm W1MSW, has higher level IT skills than the previous Contest Manager. Secondly, the contest management system is extremely complex and we are trying, not just to update the Access database, but to improve the efficiency of the entire end-to-end process. Therefore, we are not sure what parts of the project we can do in-house and what needs to be contracted, so we have not yet contracted with a vendor for this work until we develop more specific requirements and specifications. .