Whilst I understand the need for the changes, my concern is that it will cost us Cadets… we didn’t get a camp this year and that frustration alone was enough to put a dent in numbers.
They expect rightly so to get to do the big activities & them not happening, even for the right reasons, isn’t an easy sell.
I hope we get detail soon.
HQ needs to step back from supporting/running as many national/regional events so they can focus on fixing/sorting out policy and process so don’t expect as many big national events next year. Also announcing a consultation about the future of RAFAC, wanting volunteer input in that.
Good to hear the ‘why’ behind decisions being made, and good to have news distributed using personal accounts. An overhaul of policy is long overdue and maybe having a fresh look at it will allow activities to be organised easier on our part, and generally reduce the admin burden. Although a shame that this will come at the cost of reduced activity levels to our cadets - we have a small enough number of camp places as is 
Will be good to see details soon, and hopefully they are equally as well communicated.
Difficult not to be cynical about whether this will result in more red tape and if it’ll really make things significantly easier for volunteers. I hope the “continue to invest in technology” statement comes to fruition in terms of recruiting more full time staff, which is what is really needed.
And on a different note, I see the “national muster” is now the “large scale muster” 
Hands over ears, La La La
Then Deckchair rearrangment on a big boat…
So long as this does not mean ‘Synthetic RAFAC’
I hope it means “finish developing Units and Learn, and update our training material for the 21st century” 
There’s a Digital strategy circulating somewhere, and the small things which would make big changes doesn’t appear to be on there. We need more perm staff to develop systems properly, and stop relying on already busy volunteers so much.
Didn’t the government put the kybosh on this with a pause on CS recruiting?
There is an Astra Hub Idea that would help a lot:
Adopt an OpenSource or InnerSource development strategy for Bader Suite Application Development
What?
The idea of open source development is to allow software developers anywhere access to the source code for an application. Many popular applications (including Android, Chrome, and Edge) are either open source or built on top of open source software.Many larger organisations are adopting an “inner source” development practice, which allows anyone within the organisation access to all source code and the ability to propose code changes. This allows the adoption of open source strategy where releasing source code fully to the public is unpalatable.
Details can be found at Learn with a good introductory article at What is InnerSource? | GitLab (many other articles are available).
Why?
Continued development of complex and legacy applications takes a significant amount of time. There are an incredibly small number of full-time developers for the size of the application suite, and the volunteer digital team are only able to pick up a set amount on top of their primary roles.The organisation has a large number of additional volunteers that may be able to contribute, but do not want to commit to the additional burden of formally joining a team on top of their primary role(s).
Allowing anyone the ability to propose code changes allows informal contributions without any expectation of ongoing commitment. There’s a good chance that some volunteers may then go on to join the volunteer digital team or will continue to contribute on a semi-regular basis without formal commitment.
How?
CultureAllowing anyone to view code and propose code changes is a significant change in mindset.
This would need buy-in from existing “code owners” to ensure they are comfortable with the organisation being able to see what is going on behind the scenes.The core team must ensure they are able to set aside sufficient time to review and respond to change requests alongside their existing workload.
Development Practice
Hopefully best practice is already being followed, but adding automated testing at unit and integration levels will be necessary to ensure confidence in changes being proposed.
This could be added collaboratively as an initial step, though, and shouldn’t be used to prevent making source code visible.Over time, better documentation to support individual contributors can be developed.
To be fair to the Comdt, this would have been difficult. He was new in post and had only see how the organisation was running during Covid. If he had some in and made massive changes before even seeing how things run ‘normally’ there would have been significant push back. He needed time to come in and see how things are going.
However, there were still a lot of other people at HQAC that could have led on these sort of changes, that knew how the organisation worked in normal times.
Yeah I appreciate that it’s not quite as simple as I make it sound, and you’re quite right; if the comdt had come in and done this then there would have been very mixed reactions. But you’re also quite right that we’ve got enough experience at HQ and Region level that could have guided/supported any change program.
More bubble wrap.
More admin burden.
More synthetic (fake) activities.
More classroom.
Less good stuff.
Less staff ultimately.
Time to bang out!
There is only one way that will go, and that is that some activities will be cut - just like the cull of gliding schools during the “Pause”
I’ve watched this video through the lens of someone who is a full-time change professional.
What I see is that this is the initial warning shot that change is coming, and a heads up that things might look different going forwards. We should expect a reduction in short-term capacity for the return of an increase in long-term capacity. Admin burdens should reduce at the end of this project, but look like they may increase whilst the project is in-flight.
I suspect that HQAC are currently in the Discovery phase of their project and don’t yet know what the changes will look like, but have an idea of what they’d like the end goals to achieve. That’s normal for any change project.
It’s a positive that we are being given some org-wide comms on the topic; we all know that wouldn’t have always been the case. The timing isn’t ideal for some activities, but truthfully there wouldn’t be any ideal timing given how many things we deliver through the course of a year.
If HQAC keep us in the loop through each of the phases and stages of the project, then I’ll be happy. However, I would like to see a little less waffling in the videos and a little more brevity. There was a high degree of “male cow excrement” at the start.
If some stuff goes, is that really a problem - in principle?
The less HQ driven requirement for off-sqn activities, the less demand for Sqn staff to give up weekends for stuff that’s pretty ephemeral for 90% of the cadets on that Sqn.
Personally, I’d be very happy to see a return to the Sqn and Sector being 90%+ of what the ATC does, Regional HQ’s disbanded, and Wings job being simply about people, and a couple of Wing training days.
A) Timescales for these ‘terms’?
B) An increase in fun stuff is not going to happen is it, let’s be honest here.
Depends. Either way, I’ll judge what I see rather than what I expect to see.
It’s possible by removing a couple of activities that capacity is freed up to deliver more of another activity. That can still be seen as an increase in fun stuff, if more cadets are able to take part as a result.
There are too many unknowns at this stage to be either a pessimist or an optimist about this project.
I think this is a healthy step change.
For years and years and years the organisation has needed a stop, rationalize what we do then optimise from there. 1 year of pain for a potential foundation to build a better org on.
The pandemic would have been the perfect opportunity but now better than never
I didn’t hear him say it would only be 1 year of pain.
The gliding issue has been on going on for 9 1/2 years, and is that fixed? Is it bigger, better?
My experience of RAFAC ‘change’ leaves me incredibly fearful.
You assume that the CRAFAC will still be in post in 12 months time, if not, then it’s rinse and repeat.