New CEC Tracking Software Launching in 3.2.1...

By Jerry Rousseau

Good news for hundreds of WCTA members whose pesticide CEC's are being tracked - an administrative project first conceived more than a decade ago is now in the final testing phase and will be launching to the general membership just as soon as a few bugs are sorted out, targeted for early August.

Background

In 2014, the WCTA Board of Directors started discussing potential for an improved system of tracking member pesticide applicator recertification CEC's (Continuing Education Credits).  A couple of years later, the framework for such a system, intended to manage upward of 1000 individual point records along with a complete archive of accredited educational offerings, was put together and a software developer was hired, the same firm who upgraded the Alberta government's tracking system.

With a custom build, project boundaries were initially like a blank canvas.  It soon became clear that narrowing down parameters was much more difficult than anticipated.  Working with the developer, staff put together a detailed list of system requirements and development began slowly but deliberately with the goal of minimizing interruption to other association operations.

An early beta version was available for inspection by June 2016 but further development was scaled back until mid-2019.  Albeit an important project and one of the last of our planned modernization goals, for a long time we were never able to give the software build full attention due to many competing priorities.

Steady work resumed by fall 2019 with plans to launch the software mid-2020 but the COVID disruption stalled progress.  Work resumed again in 2022 with staff going through the program item by item testing for functionality/glitches and the monumental task of individual point record data entry was completed in 2023.

It's been a long and windy road but we're optimistic the new software's functionality will impress our members while streamlining the point tracking process.  We will likely have a few Directors do some final beta testing before the full launch.