Post
by JimW » Sat Nov 07, 2020 3:13 am
Hi Dee,
This is one of the issues that has been vexing me slightly, Your implementation of canoeslalomentries has basically allowed organising clubs to sidestep GDPR issues themselves by deferring them to your system. I really have not managed to get to the bottom of whether the now legal requirements for venues and events to collect contact information is temporarily excluded from GDPR and if not, if enough advice is being given to organisations that may previously have never had anything to do with personal data, on how/what they need to be doing to comply. But as far a I can tell we are in a position where either it will be possible to use canoeslalomentries to manage all that data consistently, and I presume compliantly although I realise you are probably some way from beign able to understand what that is going to entail, or all organisers are going to have to become a lot more familiar with good data protection practices than most of us are just now.
Talking with Peter last night I'm sure one of the things I took away that I hadn't been entirely aware of previously is that it is already mandatory for events to submit their contact lists (I'm not sure to whom, local health authority?). Also that there is currently, and will continue to be a hard cap on the total number of people that can access an event site in a day, and that the lists are the first port of call to check if we have stayed within the limits. Currently the limit is 200, and the default limit for most slaloms is 200, but the 200 has to include all of the officials, and non-paddlers accessing the site. I think Even if I limit my event to 120 entries, by the time I have included enough volunteers to run the event, and centre staff that will have to be present, and made an allowance for other clubs to access storage during the event, I would basically need to exclude all non-paddlers (unless they have volunteered as officials) from entering the event site. Hopefully the 200 will have been changed before my event, but even so this creates a number of knock ons. We would have a large number of under 18's on site without a parent or guardian to supervise them (which is going to challenge my normal RA) which may lead to increased welfare concerns. We are going to need to ask under 18's to cross a road carrying all their kit, which I don't like much. We are going to need someone to marshall the entrance to ensure no-one that hasn't been pre-authorised to enter, enters, and we will need them all day, not just a parking marshall for an hour or 2 until everyone is 'in'. There is a chance that they may encounter someone abusive - I would hope not parents, but it could be passersby wanting to come in and see what is going on, so should I put 2 marshalls for their own safety?
So for me it would be really useful if you could extend canoeslalomentries to include collection of necessary covid related contact details (noting that these may vary accross the devolved nations), and I for one would be most grateful if you could do that.
As regards collecting non-paddlers details, yes I beleive this will also be essential, but I would want to have control over who can enter their details into that section. In the first instance I need to make sure that all the officials I need to run the race and manage the site are able to be recorded in the system, so I can't just have a free for all where the first parents to sign up use all the slots and leave me unable to run a race. In fact, considering that there may on occasion be someone who has a particular special need to have a parent present, I think it would be useful if there was some mechanism that parents could contact the organiser explaining their good reason for needing a non-paddler to access the site, that I could then allocate them a place so they can fill their details in. All of which is starting to sound quite complex to me!
The rescue situation is also something I had considered, although not by means of a waiver. My intention was to make sure paddlers are aware when entering that as long as they are in no particular difficulty, if they come out of their boat they will be expected to swim around to the egress steps and sort themselves out (obviously not every venue has such an option, and even though HPP does, it is a hell of a long way to swim - don't ask me how I know or if the first ever NSR was part of it!). At the same time I thought perhaps I could brief my safety team to try to communicate with swimmers and confirm they did not want rescuing, and where communication was not possible to assume that they do, and in the event of any life threatening problem (such as entrapment) not to waste time trying to ask but just to go into action right away. Again this is venue specific, my safety team can follow each competitor at never more than about 8m away so they should be able to communicate, it would not be a possibility on a somewhere like Grandtully... In reality a rescue is not going to involve under 2m proximity for 15 minutes so the passing contact should be OK. First aid is entirely another matter, and I am aiming to enlist the help of various NHS workers in the club to work out how best to deal with something like that, and hopefully one of them would be available on the day to do the first aid role, but need to plan as if not.
Online protests
I think there is a whole lot more to be resolved before these even become a consideration!
Current rules, and I think these are whole GB but maybe not, prohibit publishing of results at and during an event. We are going to be limited by numbers that can be on site at any one time, so realisically we are likely to have to run paddlers in small batches - batch sizes are not going to coincide with class sizes so we are not going to be likely to have all the results for a class available to publish before the end of the event anyway.
So when does protest time start and finish? The idea of the rule is that competitors will be well away from an event site before they can access results, to avoid people congragating around results displays, but all paddlers have different journeys to get to their accommodation before they will be able to check the results. So there will be no results until well after the event, even if we can waive the 15 minute window for submitting protests to make it more fair, all of the judges and jury and time keepers will have left the site before the protests are in, so how are the jury going to co-ordinate researching protests and checking backup times etc.? Are the judges going to be able to remember if the whole process ends up taking place the following day?
I think we really need to look into whether or not protests are even feasible under Covid conditions, bearing in mind they are an essential part of governance to ensure fair play...
Taking another step back, we have been trying to think about how we can run slalom control maintaining physical distancing for the timekeepers and clerks. For div 2 and below we are still scoring on cards which are passed from starter, to clerk, to clerk to finisher (although often start and finish will be the same person), and then onto someone who transfers the results to the scoring program (simply slalom) which means they have to sit close together and be able to pass cards around. One possible mitigation which we have suggested, is to just have a timekeeper in control, and to have the judges keep all of their judging sheets to be handed in after the session, and then entered into the scoring program later on (with I assume a lot of handwashing between sheets). Are we going to do this on the day, or are we going to save on a volunteer on site, and have someone (99% likely to the organiser, i.e. me) do that at home after the event. If we do that, it could be days before we get results out, even assuming it is possible for the judges to keep all of their sheets safe and dry and not rained on, or blown into the river, and of course they would need to be legible for a 3rd party... I have seen plenty of judging sheets, this would be a really horrible way to do things!
Another problem that may have been overlooked is that simply slalom at present only lists your time and total penalties, it does not give a breakdown of which gates the penalties were incurred at tlike the div 1/P system - we normally get that by checking the cards at control. So if we have to publish results after the event and allow protests agaisnt them, we need the scoring software to be modified so that people can see where they picked up the penalties.
In fact a far better solution to the whole clerking situation would be if someone could design an implement a scoring system similar to the div 1/P system, but which the judges could access course-side from tablets or smart phones to input the penalties to the software as they go, maybe even type in the notes in the breaks between sessions (not between competitors obviously, that is hard enough by shorthand!). I guess if the device has a mic, an option to record an audio note might help - quicker than writing and the jury could play it back instead of asking the judge to remember. That all seems like a pretty big ask to me, especially if it is considered that the tablets should become part of the tutti kit rather than expecting judges to bring their own suitable device to install an app onto.
Sorry that this has become quite long winded, but wherever I see a problem, I also try to present one or more possible solutions, the problem of course is that my solutions are based on the event I hope to be able to run, and might only work at my venue, and might only work for some divisions, so we all need to be thinking about this, and thinking how it could be made to work at our own venue/event, but we also need to break the silence and start talking about it so we can collaborate on better solutions.