Self-Serve Vale Lists

Members,

At the meeting of the Retired and Former Police Association Committee of Management on 22nd March 2022 a decision was taken to alter the method of sending general messages to the Membership.

This was pre-empted several weeks ago and preliminary advice regarding self-service by Members through our website [retiredpolice.com.au] was given.  This is to reinforce that advice and to explain the decision taken, and its implications.

Firstly, email messages are not the best way to provide you with the advice we send out.  The cumbersome process of contacting some 4,000 of our Members with the same wording has  involved sending verified information, some through the 27 Branch Secretaries and over 1,100 to Members who don’t use a Branch for their Membership.  When this is double and triple handled by volunteers using many different programs and servers to Members who have even more of them, the integrity of the process is adversely affected.  Address limits on our own system further slow down the process and require no less than 12 separate transmissions  for each message.  The time has come !

With assistance from the Commander, Police Protocol (Chief Inspector Paul SMITH) and our Webmaster (Dave WHITEMAN) an arrangement to have the verified and most accurate information we can gather placed into your devices as soon as it becomes available to NSW Police and the RFPA has been determined.  Funeral arrangements and some further relevant detail can accompany each item of information.

Two email addresses, as used by various Members over the years, will still be operating, but not in ‘bulk message to Members’ mode.  Normal communications can be undertaken through either and to the Secretary, President or Webmaster.

All relevant information regarding the passing of Members and former Police will be posted on the Retired Police Website [retiredpolice.com.au] under the category of ‘VALE’ and go to ‘Death and Funeral Notices’.  You will note that the latest posts contain funeral detail.  This will be removed when no longer needed and the VALE list updated accordingly.

Please note the following:

All  information  on display on our website may be duplicated on others already and is public information in any case through newspapers and in other private websites.

Information will not be handled and processed by as many  people as is now the case.

The content will be available within a very short time on the website and can be accessed without the need for an email account for which you would have to pay a provider.

Hopefully, our website will not be capable of transmitting viruses into your device, and most external commercial servers can do that despite best efforts to prevent that.

If you set up a ‘favourite’ on your device, two or three clicks will get you to the information that used to come by email.  There may also be updates to ‘latest news’ which will eventually become more regular.  Contributions to this section are sought, particularly from Branch Secretaries.

News regarding today’s meeting will go to Branch Secretaries in coming days.  If you would like to become a Branch Member, please send an email to that effect with your up-to-date contacts to or to the office address, PO Box 201 HAWKS NEST 2324.  Note the change of address if using the ‘Branch Transfer Form’ from the website.

This message is being emailed to all subscribers a number of times in the coming weeks to alert all to the fact that self-service from the website is the communication method we have found to be the most inclusive, accurate, timely and up to date system for our purposes.

Regards

Ian LOVELL

State Secretary