[Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system

[Ram Mohan]

ISOC should consider reinstating the old AMS so that chapters can get back
to functioning, download CSVs, etc., since the assumption that there would
be fidelity in cross-over is not reality.



This approach allows ISOC tech staff the time to identify root cause(s) and
troubleshoot issues on the new system and test it without impacting
chapters worldwide in their core operations.



-Ram



*From:* Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
*Sent:* Tuesday, February 12, 2019 12:09 PM
*To:* Chapter Delegates <Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
*Subject:* [Chapter-delegates] Problems with new membership system



Hello all,

I'd be interested in your comments, as I have realised (from the feedback
received on today's Chapter Advisory Council Steering Committee) that the
UK Chapter is not the only Chapter with Membership software problems.
Throughout the week, I have been grappling with various problems brought
forward by the new Internet Society membership system.

Leaving small problems to the side, there are two main problems that the
Internet Society UK England Chapter is facing:

1. The inability to download a list of all our members in Excel format.
When we started using the ISOC AMS system, we transferred all of our
member's details to the AMS. We even registered with the Data Protection
Registrar, in case the details were going to be leaving the UK. Whilst the
Internet Society runs the AMS system, we believe that we are the data
controller. Now we cannot retrieve the data of our own members and the
question comes as to "who owns members"? I remember this debate poisoned
discussions in early 2000 when the Internet Society was about to collapse
for lack of funds and at the end of the day, the matter was dug into the
ground and full access to the membership records given to the Chapters
about their own members. Now the new system makes things a lot harder for
the Chapter to view and download records of its own members. This simply
cannot be the case.

2. Emailing members using the system: here there are two main problems:
first, it is now impossible to email a subset of our members, it's either
all of them, or 1 of them, but there is no ability to select a subset of
members, for example living in town X, and email them. Functionality loss -
which I had already pointed out during the demonstration calls a few months
ago, but it appears that someone has deliberately decided to ignore this
important feature. That's a technical thing that should be fixed easily.

The second problem, possibly more of a problem because I do not think that
it is technical, but is a "feature" that was added, is that we now appear
not to be able to email all of our members. With the decision of ISOC to go
through the toughest regimes of GDPR acceptance by asking for explicit
acceptance of GDPR terms, we went from 3400 to 1490 members. Whilst this is
a pill that's difficult to swallow, I understand the purpose and
conservative direction that ISOC took for this - the culture of "safety
first" prevailing these days. That said, we now have another challenge, in
that out of these 1490 members, we appear to only be able to email 1098 of
them - because it appears that 400 of our "members" have "decided not to
receive emails".
First, I think that the email opt out button is very badly marked, as it
cuts you off all communication and signs you off all of the mailing lists
that you might have subscribed to. In my test, I have managed to sign
myself off email mailing lists without being able to find a way to put
myself back on them - for example the Internet Policy..... But worse still,
I have found that my own colleagues in the leadership team have opted out
of emails - perhaps unwittingly.

What good is a Chapter member that opts out of emails?

How in the world will I get in touch with members that have opted out of
emails? Are these people completely cut-off from the Internet Society? Are
they receiving *any* communication at all from the Internet Society, or is
it only the Chapter that is blocked from being able to email them? Do they
know they have opted out?
To me, these 400 people that the Chapter cannot email are as good as dead
wood - why not remove them from Internet Society membership as well?

I'd be interested in your comments if you are faced with similar problems.
Kindest regards,

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond
(personal views)
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