A the General Meeting of the English Golf Union, held on 31st October, the Voting Members agreed that the EGU should proceed with the introduction of an English Centralised Database of Handicaps at the earliest opportunity.
The EGU now expects to develop, build and test this database during 2008, with implementation to coincide with the start of the CONGU year of 1st January 2009.
The EGU has taken up the offer from a number of CONGU Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to assist in the writing of the specification to achieve this aim. The EGU feels that the ISVs and the Union coming together to produce a Centralised Database of Handicaps in England, is a great step forward and can only be beneficial to the clubs and counties that are their “mutual customers”.
Carrying out the development and build in this way will also ensure that the functionality of the database will not compete commercially with club management software systems currently in the market place.
An initial meeting between the EGU and six ISVs was held at the GCMA conference last week. It was agreed that the EGU should contact those handicap software companies that have applied for a new 2008 / 2011 license and confirm to them that the EGU intends to have an open approach and is happy to give consideration to an ISV’s offer of involvement on the development group.
“I can assure all ISVs that there is a route for you to communicate with either myself or members of the development group throughout the system design, interface with all systems, beta testing, to roll out,” said Paul Keeling, EGU Club Services Manager. “The English Golf Union is happy to receive your feedback on this initiative, and look forward to working with you and your on-going support.”
English Golf Union www.englishgolfunion.org