Are there any volunteer opportunities for software engineers/developers to help with the My Scouting Tools?

My Scouting Tools
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Hi All,

I’m a software engineer and also a leader in my local cub scout pack. Recently we’ve run into a few issues my.scouting.org accounts for our families (all resolved at this point) that I think probably could have been avoided with some different features/guardrails in place.

Since I know much of scouting is volunteer driven I was just curious if there were any opportunities to help contribute to the platform or if that is being reserved for BSA staff.

Thanks!

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@ToddUnderwood1 - development is limited to BSA staff development teams

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@Stephen_Hornak Thanks for the response. I’m sorry to hear that as I feel like there are a lot of opportunities to improve the platform but I do understand the logistical service of having a crowdsourced SaaS platform that is responsible for the PII of so many people (especially minors).

Just curious, is there a way to report security concerns that isn’t as public as these forums? Some issues that recently occurred in our den alerted me to some web security best practices that are not being followed and I’d love to share them with the dev team without bringing them up on the public internet.

Thanks!

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@ToddUnderwood1

Any issues with my.scouting.org need to be reported via your Council professional staff.

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@edavignon Ok, thanks. Is there a normal council position that is the primary point on contact for this kind of thing? I’m happy to report stuff to the council but this is also starting to get into the weeds on cyber security best practices so I want to make sure it gets to the right people.

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@ToddUnderwood1 - your council professional staff would be it

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@ToddUnderwood1,

I would recommend explaining the general gist of what the concerns are to whoever picks up when you call, and suggesting that you want to talk to whomever it is that files member care tickets for my.scouting with the national support team. That might get you pointed at least halfway in the right direction. You might have to lather-rinse-repeat on this process to burrow down to the right person, though.

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Or after finding out who submits the tickets, send an email with the text to include in the ticket.

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