----- Original Message ----- From: "ICS Officers"
To: "ICS Constitution Committee"
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 2:45 AM
Subject: ICS Constitution Committee Re: ICS WEBSITE DISCUSSION
The following motion has been received from the CBS, for ICS member
vote.
It is a multiple motion and so cannot be voted upon in its entirety.
It is therefore presented as worded, but by separate points :
• That the policy of charging an annual fee to access parts of the ICS website be rescinded
• and any payments already received be returned.
• And that the total costs of the ICS, including its website, be met from membership
• and registration fees to be adjusted as necessary.
• And that the ICS publish annual accounts
It is usual for ALL participants to debate the content of a motion,
which would then be seconded and voted upon. ALL participants would
have been present in that debate and would have had a chance to put
their own alternatives, prior to that motion being put forward for
vote.
For this purpose, therefore, we have placed all representatives on the
Constitution group member list and hope that all Societies will make
an immediate start to the debate so that this, or other mutually
agreed motions can be voted upon without undue delay.
The ICS would also like the following options to be brought into the
discussion:
• that a copy of the stud book should appear on the main
website with the more technical aspects to remain fee paying
• that it should continue as at present until the costs can be
properly assessed by this group after one year
Most people will have seen the case for having a free stud book, which
has been very publicly aired on the Yahoo list.
A brief history on behalf of the ICS appears below:
A document setting out the three phases of the database/website was
debated and approved by the ICS members in August 2006.
The first phase took into account the escalating amount of work that
would be heaped upon a volunteer registrar as numbers increased and
provided facilities for the National Registrars to enter their own
stock into Level one on the programme. This is then forwarded to
Level two, where it is checked and given an ICS number before being
sent to the live database. This database can then be downloaded by
the ICS registrar to a private computer where it can be manipulated in
any way without risking damage to the live information. When a
request for donations failed to raise any funds, £1,500 was raised
privately from the members of the CHS. These donations were made with
no binding agreement on the ICS but a moral understanding that if the
ICS ever had sufficient funds, they might be repaid. It was already
understood by ICS members that the site would have to fund itself.
During 2009, the ICS came under great pressure to produce a stud book
via the website. There were two alternatives, one of which was to use
a commercial programme and the other was to have a system built around
our database. Our software writers were consulted; various commercial
programmes were investigated, and we were advised that the best way
for our purposes was to add the facility to the one that we had
already built. This way the data would not need to be updated on the
website following entry by the national registrars into the database.
We can add facilities easily as we require them, for example, if we
wished we could add the facility for national societies to make their
own amendments. Facilities can be adapted to comply with the ever
changing individual national rules e.g. the X register, which recently
became a requirement of the EU. The software writers are on hand to
fix any problems and have an excellent grasp of our needs.
Database registration gives access to a printable stud book (updated
twice a year), a list of all stock and their details which is updated
from the live database as additions or amendments are made providing
completely up to date information, pedigrees, inbreeding co-
efficients, the ability to create a virtual foal, with inbreeding co-
efficient and pedigree. This is a far greater facility than simply a
stud book. It is a working database and it also provides an insurance
for all societies should their own database fail for any reason.
To have waited until funds were available through membership and
registration fees would have meant waiting up to four years and fees
can be slow to come in.
Again, a request for donations failed to acquire any further funding
and the ICS again acquired sponsorship funds to complete the work.
All three phases cost in the region of £3,500.
