Operations Specialty Track bottleneck

Started by N6RVT, June 22, 2021, 07:41:18 PM

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N6RVT

Most of the elements you need to accomplish and get signed off can be done in a reasonable mount of time.  Even the requirement to present three safety briefings isn't too much.

But then there is this: "Develop, have approved, and implement an annual operations training plan".

This seems odd considering there is no requirement to ever be the primary operations officer who would do this. You even only have to be an assistant for 6 months.  It does not say to do this under the supervision of a senior operations officer, or does it say to accomplish this as part of a team.

It appears the requirement is to produce the entire Operations Training plan alone and then supervise it over the space of a full year, meaning only one person could ever be enrolled in the specialty track at a time.

Or am I reading this wrong?

dwb

You can have more than one person work on an operations training plan.

I wouldn't expect an apprentice ops officer to do all of that by themselves.

etodd

Doesn't make any sense to reinvent the wheel. Where is last year's training plan? Get a copy, study it, look for areas to improve, talk it over with a mentor. Done.
"Don't try to explain it, just bow your head
Breathe in, breathe out, move on ..."

Holding Pattern

In a perfect world e-services would have a place where people all upload all of these "plans" we keep getting told we need for all of these specialty tracks and people could learn from those that did them before.

Alas.

dwb

Two things with poorly worded specialty tracks like this one:

1. Pay attention to what the learning objectives are, and what the competencies are to be demonstrated
2. Remember that service requirements exist in the real world

The goal here is to demonstrate competence planning and executing on training plans. Because this is the real world and not just a classroom setting, an ops officer is going to be working with all sorts of people on these plans and training exercises, and there can be more than one ops officer working together.

So don't get too hung up on the narrowest possible interpretation of the requirement. If you have an apprentice ops officer who knows the training objectives, and who consistently demonstrates their ability to assist with planning and execution (assist, because remember this is only for the technician rating and mastery comes later), then they have met the requirement.

Don't make CAP harder than it already is.

N6RVT

Quote from: dwb on June 23, 2021, 11:42:08 AMSo don't get too hung up on the narrowest possible interpretation of the requirement. If you have an apprentice ops officer who knows the training objectives, and who consistently demonstrates their ability to assist with planning and execution (assist, because remember this is only for the technician rating and mastery comes later), then they have met the requirement.

Don't make CAP harder than it already is.
Actually I *AM* the apprentice operations officer.  I was looking at the requirements and thinking how those were probably achievable in some small squadron with a dozen members somewhere, but not where I am.  As it happens I have three master ratings, all from 2011.

I was looking into learning something new.  My squadron has 8 people in the operations track, all with a rating of NONE.  I looked into what was making it so difficult and found this one requirement that was probably the cause, or at least the misinterpretation of it is.

Eclipse

Quote from: Dwight Dutton on June 23, 2021, 02:25:06 PMapprentice operations officer.  I was looking at the requirements and thinking how those were probably achievable in some small squadron with a dozen members somewhere, but not where I am.  As it happens I have three master ratings, all from 201

More likely they were put in a staff role that had an automatic Specialty Track
appointment, and had no interest in pursuing it.

The system won't give members credit for SLS / CLC unless they have a Specialty track assigned,
so things were changed a few years ago so that any staff appointment done in eServices automatically
punched the requisite track with a rating of "none" along with it.

The result was thousands of members with specialty tracks of "none" and zero intention
to pursue that track.

I've had any number of situations where a member needed access to a given report or level
of member info, and the only way to do it was appointing them to a given job as an
assistant, with the result being the above.

"That Others May Zoom"

dwb

Thankfully it's quite easy for an ETO or CC to delete "NONE" ratings if they are bothersome to look at.

N6RVT

Quote from: Eclipse on June 23, 2021, 02:55:53 PMI've had any number of situations where a member needed access to a given report or level of member info, and the only way to do it was appointing them to a given job as an assistant, with the result being the above.

The "Web Security Administrator" can assign any permission and authority to any member.  I could assign myself every permission to see and do anything, without having any actual staff position at all.  And for that matter, take away the deputy commanders ability to do anything.  As WSA I can override all of those automatic permissions in either direction.

Quite a few people are unaware that position exists or what it can do.  They seem to think it has to do with viruses and hacking or such.

Eclipse

Quote from: Dwight Dutton on June 24, 2021, 01:09:02 AMThe "Web Security Administrator" can assign any permission and authority to any member.

In theory, though I know I've hit exceptions.

You're right though, a lot of people aren't aware of this function, the downside is
that manually applied rights don't show up in obvious places and can often result in
people maintaining access to things longs past when they are supposed to (BTDT).

I seem to remember some Patrons BITD who maintained full Wing-level CAPWatch access because of a manual
rights assignment even though they had zero staff roles showing in the obvious places and were
no longer on the -001 roster.

"That Others May Zoom"

NovemberWhiskey

... and this is how you fail your internal audit for lack of effective controls (c.f. mover/leaver access revocation/recertification) in identity and access management.

But, you know, CAP, IT.