Arbiter Issues

[Nevadaref]

I will add a few words to this thread. My opinion is that Arbiter is not a good system now because they grew too quickly when the NCAA became part of it. The servers were not equipped to handle the capacity and activity, the programmers do not have enough options available for individual officials who work in multiple areas or for multiple assignors, assignors are often frustrated with the lack of detail in their options, the tech support is slow, the fees are too high, and the security cannot be trusted. (There have been two high profile breaches that I know about, including one involving NCAA basketball officials. Additionally, the system used to email your password to you when you joined a new group. I got them to cease doing that because email accounts are relatively easy to hack.)

I was the admin for our Arbiter group for eight years. I dealt with numerous issues from various angles: the assignor side, the school admin point of view, and the individual officials. Over that time the fees were raised four times and new fees were added. We eventually concluded that Arbiter was not worth the money and dropped it. We purchased a website and hired our own programmer to design an assigning system to meet our needs. For about 20% of the cost we have a system which is ten times better.