The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 50 No.3 | Dec 2023

HGS News

Chairman’s Report As I write this, my second Chairman’s Report for HGS, the country is still suffering the effects of “Storm Babet” and I do sincerely hope that our members around the country – especially in the north – were not too badly affected by the storms, the associated flooding and any damage caused by high winds. I certainly hope that no HGS member is among those who were hurt or even knows someone who had been hurt. Stormy weather is normal for this time of the year but it is almost impossible to believe it was already late October when I wrote this report and the shops were already full of Christmas food, chocolate, toys and decorations; Christmas really does seem to come earlier each year! It also means I am already six months into my formal Chairmanship of HGS. One of my first tasks as Chairman was to oversee the completion of an HGS Organisation Chart, which sets out all the roles and responsibilities that need to be covered by our Organisation. The finished Chart clearly allocates one post-holder for one role / responsibility, which should mitigate against any one person taking too much onto their shoulders in the future, bearing in mind we are all volunteers. The next task we had to complete was to ensure that all our document recording processes and IT systems are fit for purpose. When we moved from Portsmouth to

Winchester in 2021, it was realised that an enormous number of our records had been stored on paper in various box

files and ring binders but, during the past two years, we have been gradually digitising everything so that finding those records and documents will be a lot easier in the future. However, because individual volunteers carried out the digitising on their own laptops, it meant that some documents and files were saved on those laptops or associated Memory Sticks / Flash Drives. (I should emphasise at this point that no personal data held on individual persons was ever involved in this digitisation process. HGS Members’ details and HGS Customers’ personal details are held on different, HGS dedicated, laptops and cannot get into the public domain.) To ensure that all HGS records, files and documents will be available in one place in the future we are making use of Microsoft 365 / One Drive which is, in effect, one huge ‘virtual’ filing cabinet stored in the ubiquitous “I cloud”. Our Post Holders have each been

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