BPA Inssurance Vote. All members should read.

[skytash 0]

insurer and BPA reserves are definitely separate - they are separate companies and will each have reserves (or not in the case of the insurer from the quote you posted as it says they have a deficit!)

tash

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

[cpoxon 0]

Discussion on UKSkydiver.com

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[ps5601 0]

Question: What is the outcome if the members vote against giving the BPA a blank cheque?

Do the BPA have to go back to the members once a quote is given? Are we unable to renew at all for next year?

Knowing the potential outcome of both votes would make it much easier to make an informed decision of which way to vote.

Blue skies

Paul

[gremlin 0]

If the members vote against the blank cheque then once the quote is received the members would have to agree to it - this could be done via post or via an EGM. Post would cost about (5000 members x 24p) £1200. An EGM would be effectively undemocratic as I was be surprised if more than a handful of people turned up, due to time needed to get to Leicester for a 5 minute debate and vote.

This is just my understanding.

I'm drunk, you're drunk, lets go back to mine....

[pincheck 0]

there is still some time left till the new insurance is in place so i would go with the get everything in order and then come back to the members vai postal or online voting. could send the votingf forms to dz to be collected or make them downloadable form Bpa website.

Billy-Sonic Haggis Flickr-Fun

[bigway 4]

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If the members vote against the blank cheque then once the quote is received the members would have to agree to it - this could be done via post or via an EGM. Post would cost about (5000 members x 24p) £1200. An EGM would be effectively undemocratic as I was be surprised if more than a handful of people turned up, due to time needed to get to Leicester for a 5 minute debate and vote.

This is just my understanding.

Day and age of technology. Pretty easy to download a copy these days and email it back. Or even log on to their website with your bpa number and vote.

.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

[skytash 0]

would need some reasonably sophisticated membership checking mechanism to make sure each member ONLY uses one vote. In my experience there is little legal voting for companies and such that's done on the Internet in the UK.

Worth looking into though as there is already a mechanism by which DZ's can look up whether someone is BPA member I think, similar to the one the USPA has, so perhaps that can be used/modified.

tash

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

[cpoxon 0]

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would need some reasonably sophisticated membership checking mechanism to make sure each member ONLY uses one vote. In my experience there is little legal voting for companies and such that's done on the Internet in the UK.

Whilst I feel Gary is being overly simplistic, I wonder how sophisticated such a system needs to be. What information would you be happy supplying about yourself that the BPA knows about that is good enough to identify you. Surname, DOB and membership number I would say. Maybe even FAI number. I think address is to liable to error with differences in the way it can be presented. Combine that with IP address of the applicant to identify any multiple/fraudulant/odd votes and I think that is good enough.

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Worth looking into though as there is already a mechanism by which DZ's can look up whether someone is BPA member I think, similar to the one the USPA has, so perhaps that can be used/modified.

tash

http://www.bpa.org.uk/membercheck.php

Any member can use it if you know the surname and date of birth. And I note with interest that the same system has been implemented in the Classifieds so that only current BPA members can contact advertsers.

But yes, there is a BPA membership database which could possibly be utilised.

I just had a quick look online to see if there was any suitable voting systems that could be implemented quickly, easily intagrated with our current database and cheaply (less than the cost to mail each of the 5,000 members at the cost of a second-class stamp and stationary - ~£1500). The only one I came up with was VoteNet but it gave no idea of price and didn't appear to be easy to integrate.

Edit: The Chair of the Development committee has expressed his interest in electronic voting in the most recent council minutes (item 66/06).

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Kieran Brady said that he would like eventually to see the Association move towards an electronic voting system, but this would require careful investigation.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[skytash 0]

sounds like now is the ideal time to give it go! Good investigating there Craig!

tash

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

[bigway 4]

You see, where i am coming from is with the NZPF we have a website where you log in. When you become a member you have mebership id and password.
Maybe that is being too simple but when you become a member they use your details i.e. DOB, address, mothers maiden name (secret question) etc and then give you a membership id and password.

If you logged into this to vote, well that seems basic to me and is just as secure as anything else on the net.

That is something i miss from the NZPF, monthly newsletters and updates via email. shame the BPA does not do this(to my knowledge)

.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

[Eule 0]

NOTE: This is getting a little far afield from the question of getting insurance for BPA members, but I figured I'd respond to the "electronic voting" subtopic.

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Whilst I feel Gary is being overly simplistic, I wonder how sophisticated such a system needs to be.

I think the answer is "not very", although it probably can't be (cheaply) set up in time to be useful for a vote in the next few months. Here's one way it might work.

I think BPA, like USPA, communicates with all of its members by post at least once a year for membership renewals. Starting tomorrow, put a tick box on the renewal form that says "I would like a login to vote / do business electronically." If somebody ticks it, generate a PIN for that member, and send it out with the renewal confirmation letter. This is a bit more work when processing renewals, but doesn't cost any extra postage. Also, it doesn't force people to vote online if they don't want to. On the other hand, if few people sign up for the online option, it doesn't make much sense to set it up.

Then, set up a members area on the BPA website. Require the name as printed on the membership card, licence class and number, PIN, and maybe a part of the address (post code?) to log in. Do a nightly extract from the members database (which is hopefully off-line) to the Web server so this information can be verified. Log the date, time, and IP address. This is off-the-shelf HTML/Javascript/PHP stuff. Some people might prefer a secure (https://) site, which may cost money for the security certificate if the BPA doesn't already own one.

Once you've logged in, you might see some details on your membership - when it expires, etc - and have the option to vote on any questions that are currently open. Voting would be similar to making an online purchase - you'd make your choice, get a couple of "are you sure?" questions, and then submit your vote. As soon as you submit it, the link to vote on that question disappears off of your page, and the software remembers that your set of credentials has already voted and disallows further votes on that question. Again, I think this is pretty standard Web programming stuff.

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I just had a quick look online to see if there was any suitable voting systems that could be implemented quickly, easily intagrated with our current database and cheaply (less than the cost to mail each of the 5,000 members at the cost of a second-class stamp and stationary - ~£1500).

Eule's handy rule of thumb to judge the quality of legally acquired software, developed after 10+ years in the IT racket:

Did you have to pay money for the software?
NO: It probably sucks.
YES: It definitely sucks.

:)

I would have to think that one or more BPA members would be able to do the required programming, code review, and testing - perhaps after being bribed with sufficient amounts of beer. Alternatively, skydivers can't be the only sports association to have had this problem - maybe the glider pilots or rock climbers or SCUBA divers have set up a voting system like this, and we could use a copy of their system.

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[cpoxon 0]

Gary, the BPA already has a membership database, but it is set up mostly for office use with no real member authentication (ignoring the membercheck on the website which only requires surname and date of birth). What I meant by overly simplistic is the idea of 'just' adding some decent authentication as well as the voting mechanism, especially when you are dealing with committees that only meet once every 2 months and outsourcing the work to a third party. Oh, and the BPA does send out a monthly email but it's only a list of the upcoming events. You already get a regular update, it's called the magazine. :-P Seriously though, there would be an overlap. what with the important stuff that's on the website and the mag what would you like to see in an email list?

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[cpoxon 0]

Thanks Matt. was discssing this off-line last night and came up with the same ideas as you. The main sticking point is authentication; if we wanted to get something up running now would it be good enough to authenticate with the information we have already? The BPA membership runs 1st of April until the 31st of March, for everybody in order that we can set our membership and insurance (ha!) fees, so I would imagine that the renewal forms are being prepared now.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[bigway 4]

nothing in a email list, just a secure sign in with 'real authenticatio as personal questions so we can vote secure'. Tat would be a big head start

.Karnage Krew Gear Store
.

[yoink 321]

I can't believe that there isn't a simple internet based way of voting that links to a database.

Hell, you could even do it in Excel. You'd need some way of writing membership number and vote to a database and then using a LOOKUP function to check the member ID against the BPA's database of issued memberships... That'd stop any fake or lapsed numbers being used for a vote.

A macro that deletes any entries with duplicate member IDs would leave you with registered member votes, of 1 vote per member. It's not that difficult to write.

At the very worst some time would have to be spent manually putting the vote and membership number of each reply (be it e-mail or any other way) into a database... How many people are we expecting to vote at the AGM? 1000? Less? There's a whole lot of man-hours in 1200 quid...

It's unfortunate, but it's a very similar scenario to the AGM where people voted against the increase in membership fee... if memory serves the reply was along the lines of "well, there's no other option so vote again, and this time vote for the proposition, or you won't skydive..."

[Eule 0]

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The main sticking point is authentication; if we wanted to get something up running now would it be good enough to authenticate with the information we have already?

Looking at the new-member and renewal forms on the BPA web site, I'm not sure if any of the pieces of information really qualify as something that both the member and the BPA are likely to know and others are likely to not know. The FAI number and sporting licence number are probably the closest, as I think you mentioned.

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The BPA membership runs 1st of April until the 31st of March, for everybody in order that we can set our membership and insurance (ha!) fees, so I would imagine that the renewal forms are being prepared now.

I didn't know that all the memberships are concurrent. This does prevent a "soft start" by starting to generate PINs throughout the year as people renew. If the renewal confirmation/new card is the only thing the BPA typically sends in an envelope, then you have to be ready with all the PINs in one go. Not that it's hard to make PINs, but you have to plan for it in the renewal process or put it off for another year.

(You probably know this, but USPA memberships expire at the end of the month in which you originally applied for them. Therefore, some portion of the memberships are always up for renewal.)

On the other hand, an organisation that thinks it's fine to distribute important documents as Word files already has significant IT challenges. :) It's not like making PDFs costs money.

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[Eule 0]

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I can't believe that there isn't a simple internet based way of voting that links to a database.

A little Googling finds a couple and I'm sure there are many more. For 5,000 people and modern hardware you could almost just stick the results in a text file. :)

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Hell, you could even do it in Excel.

I've done something like this and it worked OK for up to about 100 "voters". Beyond that you need something more automated, IMHO.

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A macro that deletes any entries with duplicate member IDs would leave you with registered member votes, of 1 vote per member.

If the member IDs are the same but the votes are different, which one do you keep?

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At the very worst some time would have to be spent manually putting the vote and membership number of each reply (be it e-mail or any other way) into a database...

If the key-punching takes 10 seconds per member and 1000 members vote, that's about 2 hours 45 minutes of just key-punching. If 5000 members vote, that's nearly 14 hours of key-punching.

You will go crazy trying to automate 100% of the process, though. In this situation it might be OK to kick out the ambiguous electronic votes for review by a human. Also, my guess is that you won't get 100% of the membership to vote electronically; you'll still be handling slips of paper for some time.

Eule

PLF does not stand for Please Land on Face.

[cpoxon 0]

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Also, my guess is that you won't get 100% of the membership to vote electronically; you'll still be handling slips of paper for some time.

Eule

Historically, no more than 10-15% of the membership take part in voting (despite the chance of winning one free membership per 1000 valid votes received - we've never ever had a 1000 voters since I've been a member, but they still give away one drawn at random). I would hope this would increase if there was opportunity to vote electronically as we'll as via the post. We also get a large proportion of spoiled votes. Whether these are mistakes (we have a slightly complicated voting card) or whether they are protest votes, I hope this would also decrease after the move to internet voting.

And then some years, we don't even get 15 candidates for the 15 seats, so we don't even have a vote!

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[pincheck 0]

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And then some years, we don't even get 15 candidates for the 15 seats, so we don't even have a vote!

you know that came as a complete shocker Craig. There has to be a better way off getting members more Engaged in taking part. I hate it when i hear people whine about something and you ask "well did you vote at Election time" they Answer "No" I feel the need to scream, they have no right to whine is what i will tell them

The other part is some don't actually know what the bpa council is or does that came up quite recently on uks which was a shocker

Perhaps we do need to simplify the voting forms so we get less spoiled, I hope the article in the mag helped people out.

Billy-Sonic Haggis Flickr-Fun

[damion75 0]

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The other part is some don't actually know what the bpa council is or does that came up quite recently on uks which was a shocker

That is a very interesting point, which surprises me too. Perhaps a couple of articles in the mag about the council and some of the council members would help? Council member profiles of someone who has been in for ages, and someone in the first or second year... Craig

People do tend to bash the council and perhaps a bit more info about what they get up to would help us decide whether we should or not!!

And yes, I did vote... but maybe only for the chance of a free membership...

***************

Not one shred of evidence supports the theory that life is serious - look at the platypus.

[cpoxon 0]

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Perhaps a couple of articles in the mag about the council and some of the council members would help? Council member profiles of someone who has been in for ages, and someone in the first or second year... Craig

Erm, I haven't been on council for a few years! Or are you just suggesting that I might like to write the article! :-P Actually, it's a good idea. It has been done occassionally before and is probably time for another.

Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

[Stumpy 256]

Craig for President!!!

All we need now is a proposer and a seconder and i reckon its a done deal!!!

Never try to eat more than you can lift

[pincheck 0]

i would second that but eh.....................Craig didn't stand this year not to mantion its ther new coucil memeber not the actual members who will elect the new chairman

Billy-Sonic Haggis Flickr-Fun

[damion75 0]

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Erm, I haven't been on council for a few years!

Yes errr, I meant that you could write it...

I guess I really should read all that stuff from the BPA then I would have known that you gave it up some time ago...

***************

Not one shred of evidence supports the theory that life is serious - look at the platypus.

[mr2mk1g 10]

Craig, the term "reserve" as used in the letter is a reference to the amount of money an insurance company is required to hold in the event the claim is settled in favor of the claimant.

For each claim, the figure is based on an estimate of the total amount the insurer may have to pay out if their insured, (in this case the BPA/instructor/DZ etc), is found to be liable. The likelihood of liability attaching to their insured may sometimes come into the equation, but often a reserve will relate to the full value of the claim and will be held even if the insurer feels that it is unlikely that liability will ultimately be conceded.

In respect of the paralysis case for example, the reserve is likely to be in the region of a low seven figure sum, (it will have to include payments in respect of future earnings the claimant would have earned throughout the rest of their life had they not been injured, pain and suffering, loss of mobility etc, cost of future healthcare, cost of modifying their home, etc etc etc).

We may also find that this reserve is still being held, (and thus still affecting our premium), in two or three years time. Claims such as this take a long time to run to completion – not the least because a medical practitioner is unlikely to be able to give a final prognosis until a year or two post accident in any event. As such the claimant is likely to delay bringing court proceedings until going on three years after the accident and even then it's likely to take up to a year to come to court.

Unfortunately this is just the nature of the beast - the only real way to avoid the problem is to not have claims... and yes, I realise that's about as much use as saying "don't fuck up".