Written by Tom Hunt – ALERC National Coordinator
ALERC recently consulted its members and partners on a range of issues, with the aim of understanding better what people feel about the current issues and how these may change going into the future. The six questions aimed to assess how well LERCs feel they currently meet the needs of their partners at the moment, what their feelings are towards the notion of “free” access to data for all and what the potential benefits and pitfalls of new information technologies are. Many thanks to all of those who took the time to send in their feedback.
The main results of the survey were to suggest that LERCs are mostly able to meet the needs of local data users at the moment, but that help from other organisations would still be welcomed to make this situation even better. Naturally one of the main issues cited was funding, which may explain why respondents to the consultation were largely not in favour of the concept of biodiversity data being free on the point of delivery.
In terms of the use of future technologies for biodiversity recording, opinion was largely divided on the benefits of online solutions and also the benefits of a single centralised national database at this time. There are still technical as well as organisational difficulties to surmount before these would be widely accepted solutions.
The opinions in the survey are very useful and have been helpful in producing responses to consultations. Perhaps the most important example of this is a response to the JNCC’s post on the NBN Forum on 20th May this year. In the post, Mary Campling outlined the JNCC’s intention to investigate online recording tools as a replacement to the Recorder 6. Using information gathered from the consultation, as well as from other sources, ALERC is able to draft its own response to the JNCC announcement, which will hopefully ensure that the views from LERCs, a large section of the Recorder 6 user community, are taken into account. Interestingly views are mixed and whilst very few people appear to be against a move to online in general, there are a lot of things that need to be taken into consideration and a lot of questions answered. Hopefully, ALERC can help JNCC negotiate these hurdles and come up with solutions that are suitable for the large majority of LERCs who use Recorder 6, and possibly even some of those who don’t.
Consultations like this are only one way with which ALERC gathers the views of its members. Other routes include the forum, the conference and the regional meetings between LERCs. ALERC will continue to consult members and partners on a range of issues to try and find the best ways forwards.
