National Bell Database

[Andrew Wilby]

I recall that the Council at Llandudno voted against continuing John 
Baldwin's first steps in producing a National Bell Database.

John helped to sink the idea himself by pointing out what a mamouth effort 
it was to keep Dove up to date with the alarming number of amendments per 
day on average.
This was thought to have the potential to be worse and therefore to need 
significant long term revenue funding.......
..... that is, someone would need to be contracted and paid to maintain it, 
with back-up, basically for ever, and that is a huge commitment for any 
organisation.

Capital funding is easier (that is, the one off investment to set something 
up) but long term revenue funding is in short supply in this country 
nowadays and getting shorter.

To stand any chance of finding funding for a project such as this you will 
have to identify in very specific terms
- what advantages it will bring to the community,
- what purposes will the data be put to,
- how it will be built and maintained,
- who will own it and be responsible for its long term existence,
- who will control it,
- who will have rights of access to it etc.

However I suspect the hardest thing to demonstrate will be to prove that a 
comprehensive and therefore useful database can in fact be built in a 
reasonable timeframe and then maintained from then on.

To talk of Branch Secretaries and the like being your data collectors and 
maintainers will get you laughed out of the first appraisal meeting I'm 
afraid.

If you want the necessary investment you will need a more robust plan than 
that!

Andrew













That plan will be very expensive I fear