I’m a little late in posting this, but there’s still time to comment on the latest draft of the ARES Strategic Plan. To get a flavor of what’s being proposed, here’s the opening paragraph:
The Amateur Radio Emergency Service® (ARES®) has held to the same precepts virtually since its inception in 1935, encouraging participation by any licensed Amateur Radio operator with a sincere interest in Public Service Communications. With the advent of more uniformly functioning public safety organizations across the nation, more requirements imposed upon agencies and organizations assisting them, and the development of the Incident Command System (ICS) and The National Incident Management System (NIMS), ARRL was challenged to align the standards of ARES with current needs of our served partner agencies.
As you can see, the move seems to be towards a more formal organization that will require participants to get more training. This is probably not a bad thing. The more that ARES can align itself with its served agencies, the more accepted ARES will be and the more public service it will be able to provide.
It also notes:
This program introduces many changes that were asked for by our partner agencies. Notably, all have been included in the Strategic Plan, and from the mission statement itself, new ARES Guidelines were created, which appear in this document.
The article on the ARRL website notes that comments are being sought from section managers (SMs) and section emergency coordinators (SECs), not general members, but if you have any input I’d encourage you to contact these section officials. The deadline to submit comments and suggestions is October 31. This will give the Public Service Enhancement Working Group (PSEWG) time to review the comments and suggestions and make any changes to the document before the January 2019 ARRL board meeting.
Frank M. Howell says
The League might review what their former ARES team has done in New York City. They seem to have a good organizational model in a complex metropolitan environment. And, consider why this large group of hams abandoned the current ARES operational and leadership guidelines.
Goody K3NG says
I would like to see an objective third party study on the effectiveness of ARES and if it actually provides value to communities. It’s been several years since I’ve participated, but I’ve sensed that it doesn’t. This isn’t meant as a dig against the program and those who participate. Times have changed, and technology has changed. I think we promote emcomm more for the value it provides to amateur radio, in justifying its existence to the public and supporting arguments and petitions with the FCC, rather than public value. If it is indeed providing value for the community, then by all means devote effort to keeping it going and develop a strategic plan around where that value can be delivered the most in the future.
Joe Myers, W3NSU says
Dan,
This is especially timely in light of the amateur radio responses to Hurricane Florence. Our Emergency Coordinator was deployed into eastern NC- over 300 miles from home and returned after a week with a pile of lessons learned, only some of which we can fix here.
This is my first time trying to ge more EmComm proficient and have been reading a lot so I can be efficient whether at home or deployed. One thing that stuck out for me was that served agencies have said that they would rather have MARS members than ARES or AUXCOMM volunteers. They were more proficient operators and technically flexible.
Maybe a change in direction for ARES is warranted, including standards of readiness and performance. May improve how we serve our served Agencies.
Walter Underwood says
The plan reads like ARES is this pretty package that we offer to our partners, but that is just wrong. Communications is part of a bigger machine and meaningless without that.
Our city never has an ARES-only drill. We always are sending messages between neighborhood coordinators, CERT, the city EOC, maybe even the county EOC. An ARES-only sign up system just gets in the way.
We have some ARES-only training, but we also have CERT training, neighborhood training, etc. I took a packet radio class two weeks ago.