Volunteer Systems 2.0 Tasks Me

Happy New Year!

On New Year’s Eve, I decided to knock some things off my To Do list with one being to register my daughter and I for an upcoming council event.  Fast forward forty-five minutes later, and all I had to show for my efforts were frustration and an epic email to my council’s Customer Care department documenting yet another major bug in GSUSA’s IT platform, otherwise known as Volunteer Systems 2.0 (and formerly known as CEI).  I’ve railed about it many times before and documented how much it’s cost so far in these posts:

• We’re Spending HOW Much on IT?
• Middle Tennessee Gets an Offer It Can’t Refuse
• I Wrote a Strongly Worded Letter
• Press Your Luck: IT Expenses and a Whammy
• Lawsuits and NCS Proposals Join Forces
• The Three Little Pigs and a Contract

I’ll reproduce the email to Customer Care here, and then afterward, I’ll update us on how much has been spent on this IT system over a period of NINE years (hint: $169 million). Sorry in advance for the blurry pictures.  I originally pasted them in the email but copying them back into a saved file didn’t help the resolution. The grammar isn’t great either but I was in a hurry to get this done because I had an appointment I needed to get to, and this took up way too much time.  Anywho:

Hello –

Here is a list of issues I ran into while trying to register my daughter Anna and me for the Pysansky event on February 11th. Here is my saga.

1. After adding a girl and adult spot to the cart, when I tried to register me as an adult first, it kept stating that I was missing info when it wasn’t obvious what I was missing when I tried to submit my info.  When I complained to a friend about it, she was the one that told me that it probably needed a second emergency contact (but it doesn’t tell you this at any point as you can see):

I don’t understand why some events require two emergency contacts and others don’t, but let’s go with it anyway.  She also warned me that when an event requires two emergency contacts, sometimes things go screwy. She is right as you will see.

2. But before she got back to me, I had already deleted myself from the cart and went to add myself again thinking maybe it needed to be refreshed.  However, it removed Anna’s spot from the cart as well, and I didn’t realize this until I got to the check-out screen. So I had to start all over.

3. I added two emergency contacts to my registration and was able to proceed. But when I started to register Anna, it listed her as inactive in the drop-down list even though she is active in myGS (and I confirmed this):

4. I selected her anyway. In the past, I was listed as an emergency contact in the drop-down list, but now I’m not:

5.  So I typed in both myself and my husband as emergency contacts (even though it didn’t state that we needed two, but better safe than sorry, I guess). But after submitting her info, I noticed it didn’t charge $5 for her like it should have:

6.  Since I didn’t want the council to be shorted $5, I logged out and cleared my cache (I’m using Chrome).

7.  I went back to the event page, added one girl and one adult, and clicked on Log In.

8.  My previous selections were still in the cart (wow!). But then I had 4 spots in my cart.  I thought I couldn’t get rid of the other two until I went through the entire process again to add us. Maybe I could but my eyes were crossing at this point.

9.  I added us, and I got a message saying someone with this name is already registered.  So I saw where I could remove the last two spots, but then I was left with the original two registrations which still said $0.

10.  Because I am a glutton for punishment, at the Review Your Cart screen, I tried to remove us from the cart so I could start completely over.  I clicked on the X for my spot and got a message saying “Are you sure you want to remove this event?” And I clicked “Yes, I’m sure” only for nothing to happen.  I was still in the cart and our two registrations were still there.

11. At this point, I said screw it and clicked Submit.  It looked like we were registered but for free.

12.  Because I don’t trust anything about this system even though GSUSA has spent $169 million over 9 years on it and I didn’t get an email confirmation, I went into My Events under myGS to see what it said.  Welp, it only says that one girl is registered:

13.  So I clicked on it, and not only am I not listed, it doesn’t list Anna under either the My household or Troop radio buttons like it should.

14.  I also went back to the event page and the number of available spots hasn’t gone down by one for either girls or adults, so I’m assuming we aren’t registered.  Can you please confirm?

Thank you for reading this through to the end.  I don’t know what to say.

Yours in Girl Scouting,
Amy Brown
Troop 2562

If this were an isolated case, I wouldn’t be complaining the way I have been over these past few years. But it’s been an ongoing battle of the big bugs years in the making, and it majorly aggravates us troop leaders and parents and adds to our workloads. And I know council staff have had it too. I would say it’s a pretty sure bet that the Greater ATL and Chicago National Council Session proposals wouldn’t have been written if VS 2.0 worked smoothly and bugs were fixed in a timely manner.

So now that you have seen just a very small sample of real-life frustrations when it comes to VS 2.0, let’s bring us up to date with dollar figures.  Each year, I’ve kept up with how much we’ve spent in building and operating VS 2.0.  I asked for the FY2022 numbers on the most recent GSUSA Stewardship Report, and here they are:

We spent much less this past year, but I anticipate that amount will go up sharply for FY2023 considering GSUSA stated multiple times on the Report that fixing and stabilizing the platform is their highest priority. Which it should be, but there’s a problem with that.

I’ve been saying it privately for a while now, but I’m going to go on public record and say that VS 2.0 can’t be truly “fixed.” It was built on the wrong architecture, and it’s filled with shoddy and patchwork coding.  So in my opinion, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Either ditch the whole thing and look to another solution which will cost even more money, or continue to limp along like we are now and toss money down the drain. Neither one of these decisions is palatable, but one needs to made, and soon.

I might not be able to get FY2023’s figures, because the 2023 Stewardship Report given during the National Council Session in mid-July will be a few months before the fiscal year ends (which is on September 30th).  This is yet another reason why I don’t think the NCS should be held over the summer, but I digress.

I’ll continue to track this topic as best as I can. I guess something has to replace my coverage of the membership dues saga, huh?