How dare you think out of the box with a simple solution, go outside and give your head a shake.
Its not like the corps couldn’t find £10,875 to give out each and every cadet a full colour professional ID card. Which equates to 27p per cadet (based on printing 40,000 in 1 go). Hell give me the money to buy the kit and ill do the work for free. I am sure they could get it much cheaper as well i just went on a few websites.
Does anyone know how much a 3822 costs to buy?
Not sure, but I can’t imagine that the costs of printing a plastic ID card on spec would be vastly different to the cost of printing a small, generic book.
The problems with doing it via phones etc are signal, battery and more generally Bader outage. if you are in the backside end of nowhere and signal’s crap or battery dies, then you are knackered. Then the randomness of bader going down. OK cadets can and do leave 3822s at home etc, but you can flick through any number of 3822s far quicker than logging into Bader and waiting for each cadet’s record to open. You can imagine 3822 books being ditched and within a couple of months people wishing they had a book.
It’s just the same if the internet and or wifi go wobbly on parade night, at home, or wherever people choose to do their Air Cadet business.
Using cost as the main reason to change, rarely ends well. Ultilearn anyone?
Probably cheaper if we could piggy back on the CI card contract
…but ID cards for cadets would be a huge admin nightmare
How long do they have to be with you before they get one?
How long would it take to get it?
Would it have to be returned when Cadet leaves?
Given that most cadets manage 18 months service - if it takes 3 months for them to be enrolled and then receive a card (generous estimate given how long most admin related tasks take for staff ids etc) they will only have them for just over a year before we have to somehow reclaim and return/destroy.
Since most cadets don’t even return uniform or come in to formally leave - just an email from mum after being chased - there would soon be a lot of Cadet IDs in circulation for non cadets
Well since the 3822 is already an ID document with just as many in circulation what difference does it make?
Adult ID cards don’t carry any of the information people are suggesting for cadet cards.
As it seems that everything (or as much as possible) is moving to e-systems, then we should, at every possible opportunity, do the same for the F3822 functions.
WHTs - not insurmountable - the SAAI should have the option for bulk “upload” to SMS; for “red-flagging” an individual, have provision in the e-system for this to generate a “warning notification” to the respective sqn. Enhance the functionality on the shooting side of SMS if needed. With the new CLF exercises, do we actually need to log number of shots fired? Each CLF has a specific number of rounds anyway.
Have a plastic ID for cadets, generated locally, minimise the (paper) admin as much as possible.
@Biggles_Lovechild not to mention losing them.
The one thing I would guarantee and bet my house on is that if we went for cards for cadets, HQAC would insist that squadrons buy all the paraphernalia and probably cards. They’ve are past masters of dumping costs onto squadrons. But of course we get a £75 admin grant if the CWC get their act together.
The “what if we’re in the middle of nowhere and we have no signal to access SMS” concern has come up many times during discussion of cadet ID cards.
Here’s something to think about…
If I’m running an event and I need to ensure that staff all have a valid first aid qualification, how do I go about checking that?
Staff don’t have a 3822 to record these things in, and they don’t carry their course certificates with them to camps/courses/events… I look it up on SMS before the event.
Likewise if I need to check any other qualifications that staff hold.
Whilst there may be some occasions where the electronic system fails us I can’t really imagine it’ll be the insurmountable problem which it is sometimes made out to be… We already use SMS to check our staff records for events without worry.
Projected savings on not having to print F3822s for the next X yrs = spread the money around!
Get them in Wg, about £500 a pop + consumables. Once a month print run. Seemples.
You think?
OK so cadet going to camp on Ssturday says card lost on latter parade night. By the time Wing have woken up and decided to do some work, after coffee, biscuits, lunch, filing and painting their nails, it will be the following Tuesday.
Whereas 3822 gets lost or more likely washed, new one done there and then. I would find it hard to believe that sqn cdrs haven’t got a stash. I would say there are at least 5 or 6 pages that could be lost to no detriment to the book and in doing so reduce the costs.
I have to wonder as to why the 3822 gets changed so much, except for the sake of it to ensure someone at HQAC shows they exist.
OK so cadet arrives at camp on Saturday and says couldn’t find my 3822…
My point being: These sort of things already happen and have been happening for years. We deal with them. So what’s the difference?
Every time I’ve been CC or Adj there have been spare 3822s in the pack from Wing.
Not sure cards would be so easily replaceable, as I mentioned.
So?
Cadet arrives on camp with no 3822… You grab one from the pack and create a new one there and then… No photo, no WHTs, no 3822A from which to check the consent… It’s worthless as a record and worthless as ID. How is that any better off than the cadet who has forgotten his ID card?
I’m not saying there aren’t potential occasions for problems with cards, I’m saying that there are already equally problematic occasions which we have to deal with - and the replacement of a paper 3822 with an ID card isn’t insurmountably more problematic.
You will have most personal details on the consent forms, as for the other bits c’est la vie as it has always been. In this day and age a photo wouldn’t be too difficult to sort. We’ve taken photos of cadets and printed them at the sqn when push comes to shove.
Right.
That’s literally my point. The loss of an ID card is really no more of a problem to us than the loss of the 3822. A cadet turns up at camp without one of them and we are in the same boat. They have no ID - not a big deal. They have no record on hand of their qualifications.
We have medical and event specific consent on the TG forms and in either situation we have to check SMS if we want to know anything further.
But don’t you also always lament the fact we have to do our own printing and scanning? And now you’re advocating that as the way to do things?
I get you’re trolling and, but at least be consistent…
He is. He’s consistently inconsistent. Debates like a block of swiss cheese.
That’s if you have access to other squadron’s cadets on SMS!!
Flt Lt Bloggs from 123 Sqn would not normally have access to cadet records from 456 Sqn!!