Am I the only one, but do people with the advent of almost constant document change via electronic documents feeling increasingly in the dark about things? It seems to be a system of fire fighting.
When I was a Staff Cadet and later Staff you would see bits of paper and as a Staff Cadet asked to update various ACPs with the amendments and when I was first in charge of a unit the post would come out and you’d read it before passing it to others with that responsibility. I dislike large electronic documents as you can’t flick around between pages. We print reports etc at work just so we can read them properly. I sit in meetings where we all have copies of what we are discussing and even the youngsters like it that way. We did have one who would sit there with a laptop, but they gave up when we used to move between pages all the time and they couldn’t keep up.
I’ve had a call from one of the staff and was asked about general cadet training and although I’ve tried to answer and I’m pretty sure I’m on the mark, I’ve had to say look on Bader as I don’t have any idea if I’m current and as they discourage printing things, there is little point in wasting the ink.
I used to have alerts but they just seemed to be folder moves, filename changes, change of HQAC role etc and no indication if anything had actually changed, so I stopped clogging my inbox. Even when you look at the document there’s no indication of the changes.
I do feel that most amendments aren’t very clear, in that even when you are made aware that a document has been updated there is often no clear précis of what’s different. (Our Shooting and AT Officers are very good at letting us know the details and ACP1358C is generally quite clear on what’s changed but others people and documents are less so).
Also how are we on the 11th Version of the TG21 it’s not that complicated, how has it taken us 11 attempts to get it right?!
I got the impression they gave the consent forms to someone on YTS or work experience kids as the layout etc is / was far too poor to have been done by anyone who is a professional. I do wish whoever designs the forms could be sent on a course about using tables in Word or setting things up in Excel.
You would have thought, as said, a précis of what the changes are, like the old amendment lists that came out, should be easy to do and with given these are electronic documents hyperlinks to the changes. I can remember annotating handwritten changes in margins, some of which were punctuation alterations. A précis of changes could be sent as Corps wide emails. Does anyone think that splitting documents up into individual bits has been a good move? In the old days all the bits relating to say shooting would be in a group, now you need to have several documents to look at which will often cross-reference with other documents that would have been in all in the same book, but being electronic aren’t user friendly.
If only the Bader search option would come up with fewer/more logical results!
As to the general premise of updated documents with no promulgation, I despair. I thought that my company’s system of document storage/update/notification was poor (but it has got a lot better recently - moving to iPad access), but the ACO’s file system is archaic with a huge number of documents that are not “filed” correctly or that are years out of date/defunct/superseded - even if you look at a document, you can’t see any highlighted element to show that it has been updated since your last visit. If Bader can’t cope with this, then they need to “morph” to an on-line document facility that can permit this - “mymobile365” is one such option.
The issue with ‘word searching’ is that the documents are largely stand alone files for each ‘order’ and trying to search across documents is impossible unless you merge files for your own use. We need documentation that is in a useful format.
Even doing a word search via the main pages brings up so many documents that are unrelated or irrelevant that you give up. I don’t want to see some email or other document from somewhere in the Corps that just happens to have the word I’m looking for in it and has been put onto Bader.
You get the sense that one or more of the grandparents at Cranwell heard of ewow and online everything and thought this is what the kids do and want so we have to do it to be down with the kids. But it wasn’t properly thought through as a result Bader is not user friendly by any stretch of the imagination.
We have electronic documents at work organised by section and department directories and folder BUT they make sense. Only a few people have an ‘all access’ with most only accessing the department and their section’s files, so you don’t get (many) spurious or doubled up documents.
The system does need to be improved, but until then I would say look at the amendment dates of the documents and set up alerts on key folders. I get an email alert every time an ACTO or shooting document is updated so I know to have a look through for changes. The email updates actually have some detail about what has been changed but is dependant on how much detail the document owner includes.
It’s all well and good having amendment dates but as the CO and everyone else we just need an overview of any changes, I don’t think we all need to know the ins and outs of everything, the specifics are the job of whoever has responsibility. My manager here doesn’t know everything about everything everyone does, which is what seems to be suggested should be the case for sqn cdrs who are volunteers in a youth organisation. At the best of times COs have an information overload. I used to get alerts but there were so many “false alerts” that I stopped using them. I’ve got better things to do than worry about where the file is now and or who is responsible for it at HQAC. I might send them notifications of my responsibilities at work to see if it’s relevant to them, as relevant to them as their’s is to us.
I wish we could go back to just getting a weekly post as that would filter out the really important stuff and all the other detritus would be missed. It would also make people plan things better.
I would suggest the Squadron Commander does need to know the updates as he/she will sign off paperwork from other staff, and at the end of the day the buck stops with them. The “I didn’t read the update as I don’t deal with it” defence won’t hold up when there is an issue.
Therefore provide a précis of what has changed, I defy anyone to be fully up to date on every little thing. When you consider how many orders, policies and sub-clauses there are you couldn’t do it as a full time job. Go and ask your manager about some obscure part of your job and see how much they know.
Absolutely right. When I became Contingent Commander (2009) the Army used to issue a handy annual summary of policy updates. That’s disappeared and we are lucky if any of them is flagged up - we are supposed to be psychic.
and how frequently they are updated. This is why we ‘appoint’ people to run shooting, at, sports, flying, dofe etc for them to know about the changes that affect what we can or cannot do or need some more paperwork for.
[quote=“juliet_mike, post:11, topic:2434, full:true”]
I would suggest the Squadron Commander does need to know the updates as he/she will sign off paperwork from other staff, and at the end of the day the buck stops with them. The “I didn’t read the update as I don’t deal with it” defence won’t hold up when there is an issue.[/quote]
I suppose that the CO could do it all and do all of the courses and hold all of the qualifications, which would mean no need for other staff to bother or no need for other staff at all.
I don’t sign things off (as the authorising party), all I do is check that the various bits are in place and people have the right qualifications for the activity on the SMS digital application. The appropriate member of Wing Staff sign them offt, which when you consider they should be the SME for their area and given they have little else to do (ocassional sqn visit and a bit of admin), keeping up to date with the minutae of their area of responsibility should be easy.
Sounds brilliant. Why did it stop? Or was it a decision made without explanation?
The reason it has been made difficult is probably because the thinking at HQAC is that everyone only uses electronic things for everything and making changes etc easy to find would go against the electronic/online documentation policy.
What happens in the real RAF? Do the various commanders have to look though documents seeing what has changed and does the head of an area (probably similar to ATC sqn cdrs) have to know every little thing about every little thing?
I find it incredible that we need to have a technical competence about doing things and using the systems we have had enforced over the years and yet people who are employed seemingly aren’t expected to. I’ve spoken to Wing Admin staff and they don’t seem anywhere near as adept as you might expect using basic office software and even basic database skills, whereas we have been expected from day one to get on with it. I have had all manner of problems regarding staff at the sqn using and accessing electronic documents as they have little or no experience of them.
Providing updates to documents is not a difficult task and should probably be one of the easiest things to do to Reduce Admin Burden … anyone remember that? But it was under the auspice of the individual shifted sideways to take over 2 FTS, so the fact it didn’t get off the ground is of little surprise.
The admin burden could be reduced VERY simply by adopting a commercial product, such as Comply365, or IBM Connections, whatever. Connections has the advantage that other users can add on documents. Comply365 can be set up for a read/acknowledge facility so that important/priority/policy documents have to be acknowledged - but I think that is a step too far for the ACO!
For Comply365, you sign in, any latest letters, announcements or changes to publications are automatically synch’d to your (mobile) device. You can read the relevant items at your leisure off-line. However, this would need a logical (& continuously updated) file structure…
It would depend on how much it costs and how much work it involves to implement, use and if the will was there. Also training on it. We have never had training / instruction whatever it might like to be called on the current systems, which would go a long, long way to improve things. Although saying that, I doubt if people at HQAC have had any training given the mess the system is in.
Personally they should drag all the important documents onto a 8GB stick, delete it all and start again. We did it at work and freed so much space it was amazing.