You are in:
Happy New Year from the VP!
Hi all, As it’s the beginning of a New Year I thought I’d start a new tradition for BAPCO – a quarterly update from the Vice President – with apologies to all my future successors.
For those who have no idea who I am – a short introduction. My day job is Head of Contact for Surrey Police and I also chair the Telecoms Sub-Group for Surrey’s Local Resilience Forum. I’ve bounced in and out of the Comms world for much of my 27-year career and have been lucky enough to experience comms roles at every level on the way up.
I’ve been a BAPCO member for about three years and part of the exec team for the past year. I’m also Acting Chair for BAPCO South East – but more about the regions later this year! Many members may be blissfully unaware of what’s been happening in BAPCO recently, some may even be wondering if we still exist. Others have had a passing interest or some direct involvement with events and will therefore be more up to date.
Suffice it to say it’s been a difficult time for everyone, resulting in changes to the Executive Board and a number of proposals on the table which are designed to modernise us during the future months and years.
Following Ray Trotter’s resignation, Tony Antoniou was appointed as Executive Director. He immediately set himself a task for his first ‘100 days’ to address some of the finer detail needed to improve our support functions. This has included reviewing the technology, as well as looking at our accounting systems.
At our recent Exec meeting in Kegworth, Alan House took the chair (in anticipation of Hayden Newton’s resignation) – with the team expressing their grateful thanks to Ian Readhead for steering BAPCO through its recent challenges. Ian will remain as Immediate Past President.
There were also significant changes proposed to the way BAPCO operates which included:-
· Re-writing the constitution
· Rebranding (logo and possibly name)
· Broadening membership to wider public safety partners
· BAPCO’s own awards
· Involvement with the newly formed Global Alliance
· Additional European projects to help future funding
The constitutional change proposals include removing the President Elect position, with the remaining three executive posts serving for two years rather than one, to provide continuity (plus we figured it takes at least a year to learn the job!).
It will also look for ways to allow greater flexibility for involvement of commercial members, although we still very much want to remain a ‘user-led’ organisation.
Dave King (CAG Chair) put out an open invite to commercial members to join the CAG meeting and this will continue for future meetings. As Suppliers - this is your chance to become more involved!
We’re also reviewing membership fees to see how we can reduce cost for public servants and introduce corporate schemes. It feels like we’re going through the whole organisation like a dose of salts. That’s sometimes a good thing to do.
My own experience in the Comms world has shown me that as a sweeping generalisation:
|
· Users don’t understand technology – and what’s available to them
· Techies don’t understand how the sharp end of the business works
· Suppliers know what’s out there now and for the future but get to talk to techies rather than users and decision makers
· Decision makers don’t understand much of the above!
Apologies to anyone who may not fit into those categories – but I suspect many readers will know exactly what I mean.
All in all it’s not the best environment to progress technology in the public safety industry. The BAPCO Exec believes that this is a significant gap that we should be doing more to fill.
We have real opportunity to draw all parts of the operational business and commercial partners together across a number of areas such as national accreditation for Comms operators, BAPCO comment on industry standards and professional advice to decision makers in the procurement process.
In the current climate of austerity, we’re well placed as a ‘not for profit’ organisation to provide services to the public safety community. Historically we’ve done this through the annual conference and regional events and road shows. Mindful that public servants are no longer able to travel or attend conferences, we need to find new ways of sharing best practice and providing platforms to demonstrate innovative technologies.
As budgets are stretched we’re aware that staff are being asked to do more, meaning there is less time for the more ‘peripheral’ activities such as BAPCO. Set against this backdrop we want BAPCO to work for existing members – as well as making it an organisation that any self respecting public safety comms person or Supplier would want to be part of.
If you can help, please:
· Tell colleagues about us
· Check out the website!
· Feedback thoughts and ideas to me (including whether this newsletter is useful!) at vicepresident@bapco.org.uk
All the best for 2011!
Sue Lampard
|
