The items that stand out for me in David's report are:

"The organization needs at least one more IT employee or contractor. Work should be divided up between Web services and internal IT services. Each area has a long developmental path ahead of it in terms of increasing value to a growing organization in a context of constantly changing technologies. Having more than one IT person goes a long way toward solving the problems associated with having only one person familiar with critical operations. "

"What is most desperately needed is expansion of our IT technical staff. I am doing triage. I cannot bring individual tasks to a refined level of completion because of the need to constantly be shifting my attention from one need to another. We continue to add more software, features, and services while not increasing technical staff. "

"I will repeat once again -- the critical need is for additional technical staff to apply to the growing challenges of day-to-day operations, not for more committees of uninformed individuals discussing things in the abstract. I have been repeating this for five years now as the workload has continued to expand."

"How is mandating a constitutional amendment going to compensate for a fundamental lack of resources?"

This seems pretty clear. David is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the website's technical demands. He feels the work is either not getting done, or not getting done as well as it should. The situation is critical. Effective resolution requires additional skilled technical assistance. A standing website committee does not solve the critical problem. It is, as is sometimes said, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

So what do we do? We could hire another IT professional, expanding our paid staff, or employ the services of an IT company. I wish to suggest a somewhat different approach. Perhaps it is time to set David free from this millstone and move all technical website functions to paid professionals. We manage it the same way we manage other matters requiring technical expertise - legal, accounting, plumbing. We don't need to bury one of the most experienced and capable students of The Urantia Book under this tedious technical load. Anyone with the requisite skill can provide for the technical needs of our website. We can pay for that. David has other talents that can serve the revelation in ways that money cannot buy.

The first step in evaluating the feasibility of doing this requires soliciting bids from reliable providers. We need to know what it would cost. These services are available from providers in the US. They are also available from non US providers, reportedly at much lower cost. I believe Susan Cook knows something about working with IT companies outside the US. You might also take a look at a site I found in a few seconds of internet searching - http://www.suntecindia.com/about-us.htm

If we did move in this direction we would no longer be paying David or anyone else for technical website services. Those amounts would be used to pay an IT company. Net costs could be more or less than they are now. There is no way to know without looking into the matter. But the quality and timeliness of the work would be better since it would be the product of a staff skilled professionals rather than the output of a single highly dedicated but impossibly overwhelmed individual.

This would mean that David would no longer receive compensation from The Fellowship for these services. Obviously that would affect his personal situation. That adds some difficulty to the matter. But there is no way to take that out of the equation, so both we and David will need to face it up front or we will not be able to effectively consider this option.

That is the essence of what I have to say right now. It does not speak directly to the matter of a standing IT committee; it rather responds to the critical needs David has identified in his report, and which, as he says, we have been ignoring for years.

What are your thoughts? (Also, please read David's report before our conference call)

Steve