District Meeting brief

Shipmates,
On Friday and Saturday (12-13Feb) I attended the District Meeting. There were a number of points that will be of interest to the general membership.

New paddle craft safety course: Within the month a new paddlers safety course will be available for us to teach. Paddling related injuries and fatalities are a major issue, particularly in our area where we have so many members of the public participating in paddle sports and recreational paddling of all sorts. This course is a great opportunity to strengthen our outreach on paddling safety. Tim Young, VFC 76 is our paddle safety lead and I know we have a number of members who are very interested in paddling safety and paddle craft operations.

New Auxiliary Manual: The new Auxiliary Manual may be released within 30 to 60 days. The manual should incorporate the changes to the National organization, as well as other changes promulgated since the last (F) edition was published in 2004. We can expect additional changes to be incorporated into the new manual. As with all policy changes I ask your patience as we determine the impacts and incorporate the changes into our Auxiliary practices and activities.

Online testing revisions: The online tests have been reviewed to remove or clarify questions that were inaccurate, tricky or did not properly reflect a member's understanding of the required material. We had issues where certain questions had very high failure rates, often an indicator of a bad question rather than a lack of knowledge on the part of the members taking the test. The tests should now be a better reflection of our member's knowledge.

Remote teaching of ICS-210: We will be able to conduct ICS-210 training, with Coast Guard instructors, via video conferencing.

Online mission and activity reporting: In the next few years we should have direct online reporting of member activities and missions to replace our current forms. This will reduce the paperwork overhead experienced by our IS officers, ease reporting by members, and should result in more hours reported by members with greater accuracy. Complete, accurate, and relevant reporting is important as we expand our missions.

Metrics: We report to track activity for awards and qualification maintenance but the reporting is also used to manage our programs and determine needs. These numbers will be directly incorporated into the Coast Guard's future SOPP (Standard Operations Planning Project) so our activity will be part of the Coast Guard's overall view of risks and risk management. This is part of the reasoning behind the new 7029 so we can better understand our value to the Coast Guard.

Strategic approach to what we do for the Coast Guard: Traditionally we've gone to our active duty counterparts and asked what they need of us. Captain Englebert, the Sector Seattle Commander, wants us to change our approach - to take the reporting and metrics on Auxiliary capacities and Coast Guard needs and develop strategies which meet needs. This would allow us to go to our OICs and Commands and say "This is what we can do for you", being proactive to meet risks and needs. We'll discuss this much more in future posts.

Finally, I'd like to thank the Division members who assisted with the raffle including Doug Balkema, Mark Murphy, Barbara Korsmo, Todd Mains and Brian Rollins. We also had assistance from the DCDR of Division 6, Gary Kobes and the VCDR Emily Chaput. The raffle was a success and raised over $400 for the District.