Severity: life-threatening
Audience: large
Fiscal effect: absolutely
Reported: yes, yes, yes
Policy Question: yes
Link: http://www.aauw.org/member_center/forms/branchofficers.cfm
Okay, shoot me. The branch officer form *still* hasn’t changed. Branch and state presidents are expected to complete a form where they enter names and addresses of all their officers - and to do it in a format that is not at all useful for them to use in other contexts. [Seven pages, give me a break.]
I know this sounds like whining, but the issue has been raised since the IT2001 campaign: www.mindspring.com/~it2001
Aside from the completely unnecessary data entry (the Association HAS all that address data, after all), it is just super annoying to be told (3/31/04, e-mail from membership department, regarding listing “secretary” as a standard position):
we’ll bring this to our IT dept. and we’ll see what we can do. As soon as it’s feasible, we’ll add it to the web form.
and then to be told (4/13/06, e-mail from IT on the same subject):
[this] needs to be brought up to membership department/committee for discussion
Either it’s been decided or it hasn’t. Will someone please find a way to collect all the info on this and move forward? And, in the meantime, is there any way to make the HTML form and the MS Word form agree? The MS Word form includes officers 10-12 (C/U, Int’l and Newsletter Editor) that don’t appear on the HTML form (but still no secretary …).
A demo of doing this in a much more reasonable way was held in June 2005, but that system is still not online. Yes, I know, staff is short-handed and there are other priorities. I really do appreciate all that the Association is doing - DTL, Pay Equity, etc., etc. But is this problem really that hard? What do they *do* with the forms that are submitted? Is there really a need for branch presidents to waste their time reporting addresses and phone numbers when the branch treasurers are going to be asked to confirm EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION in less than two months?
As I’ve said over and over, unless we get a handle on how the organization handles data and streamlines its processes to fit with the lives of busy women, it is just another several stakes in our coffin. [Or we’re saying that we really do want the branches to just “go away” …]