Perhaps I have misunderstood the situation but the labour-intensive aspect I've been talking about does not relate to maintenance of the AUK website, coding, etc but actually relates to what the events team needs to do to input, modify and transfer data. I don't argue that the website is a hell of a lot more efficient than individuals working solely at desktops but the events team seem to have a lot of drudgery that could be further automated. Perhaps someone from the events team could expand on this point?
Not addressing Events Secs specifically, but across the whole gamut of Events, Membership, Results, Permanents, DIYs, ECEs, AAAs admin and down to Organiser access, with the greatest respect to the many people involved I would suggest a few them may be bigging it up a bit.
Events admin and Membership admin - all the data is pre-entered by Organiser or Members, there is no 'input' in theory the admins have little to do except sit and watch. Of course this itself can be seen as a chore, involving frequent logins and checks for updated data, with the rolling Calendar it is a bit of a treadmill, but the alternative to that is no admin at all, and consequent anarchy among organisers. Prior to aukweb the Events Sec had to enter all the events information himself, including all controls/distances/times, in a yearly push from up to 500 handwritten paper forms received per year. How is having everything pre-entered on aukweb not an improvement for the admins? Just the same for Membership, if anything even more so for Results. The other admin categories mentioned above, yes, are open to a bit of improvement. DIYs are a particular concern because they are an unanticipated huge growth area but also both the pre- and post-ride processes are too labour-intensive for the DIY organisers.
If new organisers struggle with the online Planner - they are supposed to be mentored. And the Planner is dotted with 'help' popups.
There is the issue that after a certain point some of the event data gets locked and cannot be changed by the organiser (for example, a change of date) but that is a matter of "don't take the p**ss" policy and if the Event Sec would prefer a more relaxed regulation he only has to say so.