October 2007 Issue
President’s Notebook
Communication and Consultation
Coming
of Age at APEGGA
BY JOHN McLEOD, P.ENG.
APEGGA President
______________________
For the last number of years, communication and consultation have been front
and centre in the APEGGA Business Plan. For 2008, however, things have changed
somewhat. In fact you won’t find an actual strategy section entitled Communication
and Consultation in the latest plan.
At first blush it might seem that communication and consultation have fallen from favour. Let me assure you, though, that these two areas are no less important than they were last year, or the year before, or the year before that. You can count on us continuing to seek your comments and opinions as we tackle the interesting and important challenges ahead for your Association.
Simply put, there’s no separate communication and consultation strategy because there doesn’t need to be. We’ve weaved them into every strategy. In fact our system of seeking your opinions and telling you what we’re doing is ingrained in all our work.
Communication and consultation at APEGGA have, in a very real sense, come of age. They’re now among the Guiding Principles of the Association, which are linked to our Mission and Vision statements.
The business plan itself, called Hitting the Target, is part of the cycle of communication and consultation. Your Executive Committee, Council, and directors and managers have worked hard to link the wishes of Council and the membership to actual, everyday duties in our offices.
I want to discuss how we came to this point, and then tell you a bit about some of the current and upcoming APEGGA consultations and communications.
Registration Changes
The Board of Examiners and Council have forged an improved relationship, which
has led to real and important change. The payoff has been the ongoing implementation
of a task force’s recommendations, designed to improve the way the board
licenses applicants for membership in APEGGA, without lowering this great organization’s
standards.
ASET and Us
Over the last year, we’ve managed to put behind us years of heated debate
with ASET and come up with a new category of licensure. The keys to the success
so far of the One Act, Two Associations model were many, and I’ve listed
them here before.
High up on the list, however, are communication and consultation — and what we have learned from the past. APEGGA and ASET kept members informed on the progress of discussions, distributed lists of frequently asked questions, and sought your comments — comments that were taken seriously and helped shape the discussions and eventually the Memorandum of Understanding.
What Now?
Many of you will be clipping this page. That’s not my ego speaking. I know
you’ll be pulling out the scissors to clip a climate change survey that
winds up on page 6, the flip side. We need your opinion and comments.
Climate change opinions have taken up a lot of PEGG space over the last seven or eight years, so I have no doubt the responses will be many and varied. You can respond electronically, instead, and some of you may have done so by the time you read this.
The climate change survey comes out of the excellent work done by the APEGGA Environment Committee, and I look forward to finding out what the committee learns.
New Proposals!
In the coming months APEGGA will be consulting you on two potential changes in
the way we do business.
Firstly, Council has considered the granting of full rights and privileges to members-in-training (except independent practice), including the right to sit on Council and serve on various boards and committees. These members are already very active, particularly in the branches, and deserve to have input into the policy-making process of APEGGA and in the election of our leaders.
Secondly, the creation of a single Professional Geoscientist designation (P.Geo.) to replace P.Geol. and P.Geoph. would bring us in line with all other Canadian licensing bodies. It might also reduce challenges that the Board of Examiners faces in determining who is qualified to practice geoscience in Alberta.
Sometimes it is difficult to fit qualified applicants into a geological or geophysical category, and the P.Geo. category provides a better fit. The plan would be to allow current members to retain their current designation if they wish.
The Tools We Use
The hardcopy PEGG is our traditional tool for reaching members, but
at least as important are the website and the e-PEGG. The regular e-PEGG comes
out around the 15th of each month, and on major issues we often distribute an
e-PEGG Extra.
The “e,” of course, stands for electronic. For the e-PEGG to reach
you, we need your current e-mail address. To update yours, contact APEGGA staff
at email@apegga.org. Be sure to include your name and your member number. Blanket
updates to every address in your e-mail box don’t work well —
unless you send all your contacts a member number.
Your feedback to me is important, too. If you’d like to pass along your comments, send them to president@apegga.org.
MORE INFORMATION
Business Plan Cycle
President’s Notebook and Council Briefs
July PEGG
... here
New and Past Business Plans
Fast Find, Publications ... here