This newsletter keeps members abreast of the activities of the president, the Executive Committee, and the Council. Previous columns have laid out my philosophical and political attitude toward dissension, both within The American and between us and the organizations we seek as allies in fighting for a climate more congenial to analytic practice. Efforts to involve practitioners and society members, as well as institute faculty, in deliberating initiatives and proposals are essential, but some knowledge of the inner workings of The American will also be of use, particularly in considering the many changes in structure and administration recommended by the task forces under Fox and Pyles and in the newly combined Kris and Pyles proposals. To decide knowledgeably among these options, members should know the work their officers do, and how that work is supported by reimbursements and “comps,” as well as by a complex Central Office infrastructure. As societies will be discussing the reorganization proposal prior to its discussion at the May meeting in Chicago, knowing the details of the Executive Committee's work as presently organized may help members in evaluating the proposal.
David Hurst, in his excellent minutes, gives an account of the six Executive Committee conference calls that took place between the May 1994 meeting in Philadelphia and the December meeting in New York. We should note that the calls, with only six participants, cost over $1,700. Imagine the difficulty, in addition to the expense, of hooking up the six members of the Executive Committee in a conference call almost monthly—finding a time suitable for all, setting the agenda, and moving through it to reach consensual decisions wherever possible. Is all this really necessary? In a participatory administration the answer, obviously, is yes. While members of the committee are now constantly in touch by CompuServe E-mail, allowing them to respond at odd times to one another's comments and to share information, their simultaneous presence is needed to iron out differences of opinion and priority so that decisions can be made in a timely fashion. Consider the added expense and cumbersomeness of a nine- or ten-person Executive Committee, and then how the same goals will be reached, and indeed whether they are still desirable.
The relationship of the other officers to treasurer Steve Firestein is something else I'd like to note, since it swings widely, between admiration for his steadfastness and chagrin whenever he calls us up short on expenditures he feels do not fit the rubric of “usual” and so have to be approved by the Executive Committee. One of our early efforts to codify the rules for expenditures by officers and committee chairs was distributed and is available upon request. Officers receive travel expenses and per diems for Executive Committee meetings, as do the chairs of Board and Council committees who attend those twice-yearly meetings. At the two major meetings, the president and the chair of BOPS receive courtesy accommodations from the hotel if members occupy sufficient rooms. The hotel rooms of the other officers are paid for by The American.
The usual awkward period accompanying a change in officers was exacerbated in 1994 both by the personnel changes at the Central Office and by struggles to adapt to the computerization that is continuing apace. Members have noted the kinks in the process, inevitably distanced from the twelve-person staff and the efforts they must make to learn and keep up with demands at the same time. Steve Firestein and I met with the staff in January both to thank them for their loyalty and excellent support over the past six months and to encourage suggestions for a more efficient, less stressful administration. We have survived the Central Office flood of 1994, and since then all the computers have been linked by a Local Area Network (LAN) so that all but confidential data can be accessed and worked on by several people at once. To what end? Certainly increased efficiency in carrying out meeting registration, tabulating responses to questionnaires, and preparing the Roster. Regarding this last, camera-ready copy was generated in-house this year for the first time, using desktop publishing software and a design suggested by the Task Force on Communication and Information (TFCI). In addition, our accounting system, now in place for over a year, can spew out reports at any point, obviating the need for costly and time-consuming mid-year audits.
Oddly, Central Office staff feel they are carrying more work than ever, a seeming contradiction we must understand. In part it is a function of the learning curve involved in computerization, and the work can be expected to become easier. But precisely because it is easier, and because computerization makes possible the performance of tasks that once were inconceivable, more and more demands are being made on the staff's time. They now routinely field a variety of research questions from committees—the number of candidates in our institutes, their degrees, patient loads, etc.—and I have added to these requests by asking for information such as the cost of our conference calls, the number of phone calls into the office on a typical day, or why TAP is late (or hasn't reached Pittsburgh!). Each request is accompanied by a note of urgency—even as I write, this column is past deadline—that sends several people to the files or telephones.
And speaking of telephones: complaints are rife about the system installed last August at the Central Office. Unfortunately, this was not considered a complex project, and TFCI was not involved. The transition to voice mail has been rocky. The system originally had limited ports that did not allow incoming calls while messages were being picked up or calls made out. To compound the problem, staff would come in to work and immediately begin to listen to voice mail. A catastrophe! Early callers, getting no answer, not even a busy signal, assumed no one was at work. Now, as I hope you already know, a new port has been added, staff pick up messages on a staggered basis, and the new program provides for sequential connections to different extensions. Is it important enough to the membership for us to spend money on a full-time receptionist, a live voice? Or can we accept the fact that staff need uninterrupted time to research answers to earlier calls, type letters and documents, and fax or call back with responses? Without it, they will be responding to the latest call, sometimes over 150 in a day, rather than to the overall priorities of the organization.
The Executive Committee will be reviewing several options in the coming months, based on the research of our computer consultant and the advice of TFCI and the treasurer's advisory committee. To aid us in evaluating these options, we need input from societies, institutes, and the membership at large. Members of the Committee on Societies will be calling to determine if computer
consultation support would enable more of our component organizations and committee members to join us on CompuServe E-mail (inexpensive both to start up and to maintain, and reachable via Internet for those in institutional settings). Our goal is ease of instant and inexpensive private communication between members, and subsets of the organization, as well as to and from the Central Office, with economies of cost through transmission of documents and revisions carried out without the endless flow of paper that now litters our floors and files.
In addition, we are considering implementation of a fax-on-demand system (FOD). Such a system would enable members with fax machines to call up and electronically select, from a menu, a document to be faxed to them immediately. Meeting registrations, Roster changes, office staff extensions, telephone listings of officers and committee chairs, committee newsletters, lists of new members or those recently certified, and a calendar of all society programs scheduled for the year and revised weekly, as well as current budget information, might all be available day or night. We are also considering accepting Visa and MasterCard for the payment of dues and meeting registration fees, and for publications such as the Index, the Roster, and TAP. This would save members and the organization postage and time spent processing checks, opening envelopes, and acknowledging receipt.
What do we need to know to make well-considered decisions? Callers will ask not only about access to E-mail and fax machines, but whether these options would ease the load of time-conscious members and society/institute administrators and officers. Would the freedom to request documents at any hour and to pay bills as if you were ordering catalogue merchandise be worth the effort and rather minimal expense of installing these systems? Please tell your society officers and the liaison who calls, and let me know as well. My CompuServe address is 73171,1305; my fax is 412–661–7006. I am waiting to hear from you.