Proposal in the mix: New Restricted Application: Member Attendance

[Short Field]

I love SIMs, but anything that moves to eServices is my preference. 

SIMS is nice but doesn't help manage the Senior Member's records as well as I would like.  E-Services is the way to go whenever possible.

I started tracking attendance on a spreadsheet (using the sign-in roster needed for the safety signoff) just to see if the Sqdn Cdr was really giving the good deals to the "ones who participate" or just his buds.  Very interesting to realize that some "very active" members hadn't attended a meeting in over a year.  I do like the idea of a grease pencil check-off on a wall chart for everyone to see.


One problem with tracking attendance (if you are going to base hard decisions on it) is you really need to add either an "approved absent" or add all activites.  I missed some meetings last year because I was on a SAR and other meetings because I was doing wing buisness - at a significant cost of my time and money.   So - should I be penalized on attendance because I volunteer to do stuff more than members who just show up for meetings?

[Tim Medeiros]

I was thinking there could be an "Excused" option as well for the taking of the attendance, that would cover cadets who couldn't make it due to homework or seniors due to work or other necessary committments.

[mikeylikey]

I was thinking there could be an "Excused" option as well for the taking of the attendance, that would cover cadets who couldn't make it due to homework or seniors due to work or other necessary commitments.

Do you accept the "I can't make it tonight because I have a lot of homework" excuse?

[Tim Medeiros]

I used it tonight, college is a pain especially when I have a weekend long activity I'm supporting for the wing.  I have yet to be in a position to have it be given to me as I have yet to be a commander, however I am of the opinion that school work should come before other activities, the only thing that should trump school work especially for a cadet should be family.  Case in point, I said I'm not going to school (when I was given the option) for the two days before my dads death in 1996.

Edit: for the record, I'm still working on the homework nearly done with one subject, 3 more to do

[mikeylikey]

^ True!  School should come first.  Hey enjoy your homework.  (Little secret......make friends with the smartest, know-it all girl in the class, and start saying things like "you were totally right in there about blah blah"......or "why are you taking this class, you should test out of it".......then one day tell her "I think since we are the smartest two in the class we should get together and study".  THEN hit her up for her previous nights homework so you can "check" your answerers)  May or may not work for you, probably not so much if your married?!?

[smj58501]

I was thinking there could be an "Excused" option as well for the taking of the attendance, that would cover cadets who couldn't make it due to homework or seniors due to work or other necessary committments.

Or it gets kept simple.... 1 column for present, 1 for absent, and a remarks column to fill in whatever information you deem pertinent regarding the members presence, absence, duty that mtg, etc.

On a sidebar.... in a similar vein but still a sidebar. This thread triggered the memory and it is too priceless not to share.

Best request to get out of National Guard annual training I ever got when I was a Battery Commander- "My wife and I are trying to have a baby. She usually is <paraphrasing now> 'most able to support conception' during the time of month we have scheduled for annual training. I need to stay home so I can...." (you can figure the rest out). You can guess the answer he got (followed immediately by me excusing myself to my office so I could laugh my fourth point of contact off for a good half hour)

[Tim Medeiros]

^ True!  School should come first.  Hey enjoy your homework.  (Little secret......make friends with the smartest, know-it all girl in the class, and start saying things like "you were totally right in there about blah blah"......or "why are you taking this class, you should test out of it".......then one day tell her "I think since we are the smartest two in the class we should get together and study".  THEN hit her up for her previous nights homework so you can "check" your answerers)  May or may not work for you, probably not so much if your married?!?

Good idea, not married yet, still working on the girlfriend aspect with someone in mind (so much in mind I'm planning to visit her 1200+ miles away before she moves to Elmendorf), even helped her with some studies the other night over the phone

I was thinking there could be an "Excused" option as well for the taking of the attendance, that would cover cadets who couldn't make it due to homework or seniors due to work or other necessary committments.

Or it gets kept simple.... 1 column for present, 1 for absent, and a remarks column to fill in whatever information you deem pertinent regarding the members presence, absence, duty that mtg, etc.

On a sidebar.... in a similar vein but still a sidebar. This thread triggered the memory and it is too priceless not to share.

Best request to get out of National Guard annual training I ever got when I was a Battery Commander- "My wife and I are trying to have a baby. She usually is <paraphrasing now> 'most able to support conception' during the time of month we have scheduled for annual training. I need to stay home so I can...." (you can figure the rest out). You can guess the answer he got (followed immediately by me excusing myself to my office so I could laugh my fourth point of contact off for a good half hour)

Good idea for the reason column, which could also be used with an excused checkbox either way works really.  As for your sidebar, one word, nice.  Thats a winner for the best excuse I've ever heard

[Dragoon]

The answer might not be in automation - but in policy.

If we could define what an "active member" is, then we could give commanders the option to put members into the "inactive"  status.

No need for a centralized attendance module - all you'd need in the database is the ability to declare and change active/inactive status.

I don't think we need to roll up individual unit meeting and activity attendance to the National Level - a decentralized approach makes more sense.

But the key is to agree on the problem to be solved.  If that problem is "how can we find out how many of our 60,000 members are actually doing anything", then defining active status and asking commanders to enforce it might be worthwhile.

[RiverAux]

An "active member" is already specifically defined in our regulations, but I realize that some folks want it defined differently. 

[DNall]

River, didn't we have a rather involved, including technical details, conversation about this last spring? I thought we woked out a real strong plan of action. I don't remember if this was before or after iowa popped on the scene, but we were talking about a reserve status kind of thing.

I do think we need to do this, and it's rather simple to do. I just want to warn you up front though that it's real dangerous. We got 52k or whatever members on the books nationally. You hear folks talking all the time about 50 thousand volunteers, Sar mission this & that. Obviously that's BS & we're talking about a miniscule percentage capable of responding in any given area.

If you start giving legit manning & capability numbers. A lot of resources (planes, radios, vans, training dollars, etc) are going to be moved around significantly. I think that's a good thing. The hard part is you still have to justify to congress, but now you have to do it on real world numbers. I'm not sure most of CAP wants to those numbers actually known.

[NIN]

we're at least using the CAPID scan part of SIMS.. Now if I can just get it to give me usable data out the back end in a promotion board setting, or when my supply officer wants to see who's "recently inactive" so she can get uniforms back, etc.

I can't do everything.. I've no CPU cycles left for SIMS, so hopefully one of my "two really savvy" folks will take it and run with it.

Oh, yeah, and on safety brief nights, everybody signs in before safety starts, and the whole squadron, by policy, is in the brief.  Makes for fairly accurate rosters.

[BlackKnight]

No need for a centralized attendance module - all you'd need in the database is the ability to declare and change active/inactive status.
[snip]
But the key is to agree on the problem to be solved.  If that problem is "how can we find out how many of our 60,000 members are actually doing anything", then defining active status and asking commanders to enforce it might be worthwhile.

^^^ What Dragoon wrote.   Absolutely correct!!! 
The problem for NHQ and CAP-USAF is that we don't know how many of our members are "active" at any given time.  It's a dynamic number and changes daily.  And the active/inactive status is probably unrelated to weekly meeting attendance.  I'm sure we all know members who haven't made a meeting in 3 months, but if the big one hits they'd rally round.  So the squadron commander or personnel officer should be making the call on who's active.  Not some attendance formula in e-services.

Besides which, capturing and storing on-line weekly attendance data on 60,000 people would be an I/T nightmare. On the other hand, if Walmart and Kroger can track what brand of toilet paper you buy each month... 

[RiverAux]

Yep, we talked about it.  However, I still maintain that the only active membership numbers that anyone in or out of CAP care about are those relating to our ES capabilities.  And as all our ES qualifications are available in services, if anyone wants them, they are already available. 

[Dragoon]

Yep, we talked about it.  However, I still maintain that the only active membership numbers that anyone in or out of CAP care about are those relating to our ES capabilities.  And as all our ES qualifications are available in services, if anyone wants them, they are already available. 

The assumption  is that a currently qualified person is "active."  This is not a good assumption, me thinks.

Some of these ES qualified folks have already announced they are going to let their membership drop.

Some of them have already told their commanders that they won't be doing any real CAP for the next year because of work/family/etc.

Some have said "no" when called out for every mission of the previous year.

Some haven't attended a meeting in so long that no one has current contact information on them to alert them if needed.

Some may have been restricted from participating in any CAP activity due to disciplinary action, ongoing investigations, grounding, etc.

Of course, any commander could scrub their roles and very quickly determine who is active and who isn't. 

Also, defining an active status could also be used to get members to meetings where important training is going on - for example,why the heck hold safety briefings if half your "active members" never attend them?

Creating criteria on minimium active status, and giving commanders the ability to put people into inactive status (with adequate safeguards against abuse) would give us a much better feel for how many folks we really have.  It would also motivate folks to at least do the minimum, whatever that ends up being, to retain their active status.

[tribalelder]

Does the guy who certifies your radios but doesn't come to meetings count ?

The CFI who spends a week at flight encampment instructing, but attends few meetings ?

How about the member who plans the menu for the member-cooked encampment meals ?

Collectively, our members bring a very diverse set of skills to CAP, and some of those skills may not be all that useful at Thursday night's meeting at the hangar/church basement ..., but a important to overall accomplishment of our missions. 

[Dragoon]

Does the guy who certifies your radios but doesn't come to meetings count ?

The CFI who spends a week at flight encampment instructing, but attends few meetings ?

How about the member who plans the menu for the member-cooked encampment meals ?

Collectively, our members bring a very diverse set of skills to CAP, and some of those skills may not be all that useful at Thursday night's meeting at the hangar/church basement ..., but a important to overall accomplishment of our missions. 

Could be - that would be a commander's call.  Is the guy doing enough for the unit he's worth keeping around?  Or is he just a name on the roster?  Methinks there are many more of the latter than the former.  And the former type could remain active by working out a plan with the commander to keep in contact with the unit and accomplish any mandatory tasks required of all members.

But even with that, there IS some value to meetings, even for these kind of folks.  Again, wouldn't you want your CFI, who's going to be trusted with the lives of our cadets, to be an active member in the CAP safety program?

Also, a guy labled as "inactive" isn't 2B'd - he's just not counted against the roles, not required to participate in mandatory things (like OPSEC training), and probably can't do anything outside of the squadron without regaining "active" status.

[DNall]

We're talking about active versus an administrative reserve status, not active versus kicked out. The member is still able to participate or not on thier own terms.

This is about fair & logical distribution of resources that back up & incentivize mission accomplishment, rather than vice versa.

If you have two units, both with 40 on the roster, 2 GTs, 4 pilots, etc the same. BUT, one of those units has 35 folks showing up & the other has 10. Do you need to be giving the same resources to both? Let me put that even another way. What about the unit with 60 on the roster, 3GTs, 10 pilots; versus that same 40 man unit. But this time the 40 man has 35 showing up & the 60 man has 20 & a bunch of folks that no one's ever met. Do you give more resources to the 60 man unit cause they look like on paper they need it? That's what tends to happen. It hordes resources where they aren't best utilized & keeps them from where they're needed.

From the Wg/Reg/NHQ/customer/AF perspective... we really need an acurate picture of what's happening on the ground. I understand active mtg participation isn't alone the gold standard, but it is a big part of that equation.

Let me put it another way. If you have one pilot with a gillion hours that has nothing to do with CAP unless there is free flying to do. And then you have another pilot with fewer hours but who is busting their butt to make the program work & would like to get some sorties. Why does the the first guy get the advantage in that scenerio? Why not the guy that's working his tail off keeping the program afloat, staying in touch with current regs & trng, etc.

That & where you draw the line on active versus reserve, and possibly if reserve means you get assigned off the unit rolls to a holding unit (doesn't preclude you from participating), those are the meat of the issue. The technical execution is just a minor detail for which there's half a dozen feasible options.

[RiverAux]

There are just so many possible scenarios relating to member contributions to the program that I don't think any numerical system will ever work, or would ever be implemented below the wing level.  At some point you've got to trust the judgement of the leadership to take everything into account and make the right call, and I don't see additional numbers really playing a major factor in their decision. 

The only resources that really get allocated down to the unit level are airplanes and radios.  They've already got a system for allocating the radios and I don't recall anyone here complaining about it.  So, if we're talking about planes, we all know it comes down to flying hours since that is a key factor national uses in decididing where to put planes.

[ZigZag911]

If someone wants to set up an application program for unit use, great....but keeping track of this at National (or any echelon in between) is creating a needless administrative migraine!

[BlackKnight]

The only resources that really get allocated down to the unit level are airplanes and radios. 

I don't know about you, but vehicle allocation is pretty important to our ground teams.  Those C172s aren't all that useful for ground team ops except for lead-ins and comm relays.