WA STATE OFFICIALS PANEL
WA STATE OFFICIALS PANEL
Minutes of the CAMS WA State Officials Panel meeting held at
CAMS Office Board Room on Thursday 18th June 2015.
Present: Doug Bell (Chair), Colin Arkell, John Smith, Tracey Rowley, Frank Fiocco, Bec Newman
Apologies: Peta Mullings, John Hurney
Start: 1910 hrs
The panel welcomed Bec Newman (WA CAMS Office)
06-OP-1806-01: Minutes of previous meeting:
Minutes were accepted by Colin Arkell and seconded by John Smith.
06-OP-1806-02: Correspondence
nil
06-OP-1806-03: Action Items
06-OP-1604-05-01 Done. Tracey contacted them directly and fed the issues raised to AOC.
06-OP-1604-06-01 Ongoing – see General Business
06-OP-1604-06-02 Ongoing
06-OP-1604-06-03 Ongoing
06-OP-1806-04: State Council Report
· Doug attended the last State Council and gave a brief overview of the results of this year’s Young Officials program and invited the various disciplines to contact the office if they would like to promote officiating in their area to the YOs.
· Mentioned courses that had recently run and ones that were coming up.
· Asked again for representation from other areas to SOP.
06-OP-1806-05: AOC Report
· In WA, Stewards are the only officials licence category that is seeing a declining membership.
· Need to find a way of increasing the number of Stewards in WA so as not to burn out the ones we have.
· There is a face-to-face AOC meeting at the end of June.
06-OP-1806-06: Recruitment / Recognition / Retention / Training
Training
· Doug reported that the courses so far have all run as scheduled.
· Colin requested that we try and find time to run a CATO course of approximately five hours somewhere in the calendar. Panel to look for possible dates.
Recognition
· Regarding Fabulous Officials, Doug is still wanting to use it as a means of recognising officials across all areas of motorsport who are doing a great job, but finding nominees is proving difficult.
· The panel discussed why there may be a reluctance to nominate people. Some possible reasons are that promoters and clubs prefer to handle recognition in-house and that there may be an aversion to filling out the nomination forms as it’s seen as just more paperwork.
· Discussion continued onto how SOP could reduce the burden on clubs and promoters.
· One strategy which came from the DSR sponsored Workforce Development workshops in late 2014 was to ask clubs and promoters to send in the officials’ sign-on sheets as part of the paperwork they return to CAMS. We could then start building a database of which officials are going to which events and how often.
· There was discussion over how to encourage promoters and clubs to send in the sign-on sheets. We really need their co-operation and buy in for it to work. Once we have the data in the WA CAMS office we can then use it to search for officials who the panel may want to recognise for their service by way of a Fabulous Officials letter.
· Another use for the data would be to identify registered officials who have stopped going to events, and find out if we can re-engage them.
· Bec suggested that a quarterly enquiry to the state panels asking them to put forward name/s of officials who’ve stood out to be trialled as a way of generating Fabulous Officials letters. Bec is happy to co-ordinate the database and most panel members also indicated they would be willing to help with this if required.
06-OP-1806-07: General Business
Young Officials
· Young Officials ran with a reduced number of participants this year. There didn’t seem to be the same level of interest from schools, youth groups, etc. This is something we need to look into for next year.
· The program ran with six people and we used all of Saturday this time rather than a half-day for each group. The full day format was a lot easier to manage and it gave the participants time to ask questions and really get involved instead of being rushed from one place to another.
· Two YOs came back on the Sunday – one in flags and one in recovery. We hope to keep them interested and engaged throughout the rest of 2015.
SOP Membership
· Bec offered the suggestion that we approach the panel chairs directly to ask for nominations from those areas to join SOP. We still need representation from areas other than circuit and rally for our panel to have a broad base of knowledge and experience.
· Another possible avenue for panel membership is to target young officials since that’s a particular focus with the YO program.
Appeal of Stewards’ Decisions
· Regarding AOC0019, Colin asked for more detail on what that part of the AOC minutes meant. Tracey explained that it was part of a report to AOC that was simply noted. It isn’t something new that either AOC or SOP are needing to be involved in. It was merely a change in how the Board are looking to implement the process of appealing the decision of Stewards.
Signing on at Rally events
· Colin asked if there has been any update to the requirement for officials to sign on every day at an event, given the well documented issues around this process for Rally.
· Tracey advised that this is a requirement imposed upon CAMS by the new insurance company.
· As it’s not something that SOP has any influence over, Doug suggested that the Rally panels in each state should perhaps be asked to liaise directly with CAMS over the matter to look for a resolution.
Interstate opportunities for officials
· John reported on an initiative of Barbagallo Raceway in sponsoring one of their senior officials to go to the V8 round in Darwin as part of his development.
· While this was possible in this case through a network of personal contacts, John suggested that it would be of benefit if this was something that could be done by CAMS, possibly with sponsorship money.
· Doug suggested that this could be a two-pronged approach. Firstly to set up a network of people in each state of senior officials who would be willing to participate in such a scheme and to accept suitable officials from other states as part of a training and development initiative.
· Once such a network was in place, CAMS as a whole or even individual states could try and seek sponsorship to help offset the costs of transport and accommodation.
· Further discussion resolved that WA SOP is very much in favour of such an exchange network being established across multiple disciplines and multiple states. We would be willing to help get any such scheme off the ground.
· Tracey suggested that the idea be raised with AOC so as to promote it within other states. There was agreement that this was a good idea.
06-OP-1806-08: Next Meeting and Closure
The next meeting will 20th August 2015 at CAMS office.
Meeting closed 2115hrs
Action items:
Reference / Action Required / Responsibility06-OP-1604-06-01 / Promote Fabulous Officials at State Council. / Doug
06-OP-1604-06-02 / Prompt panel chairs to start nominating people for CAMS awards. / Doug
06-OP-1604-06-03 / Make a recommendation to the awards committee that state winners are also considered for the national official of the year award. / Tracey
06-OP-1806-06-01 / Develop local database for accepting sign-on sheets from events / Tracey / Bec
06-OP-1806-06-02 / Start requesting information from panels every quarter looking for officials who may be eligible for a Fabulous Officials letter. / Doug / Bec
06-OP-1806-07-01 / Start the search for an appropriate YO member for SOP. / Doug
06-OP-1806-07-02 / Bring the idea for an interstate / inter-discipline officials exchange to AOC / Tracey