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Youth Protection

Protecting our youth is our first priority. The internet is an extremely useful tool to distribute information to the members of our units, but this information can be misused by those who do not have the best interest of our youth in mind. Without clear standards, we are left with the responsibility to interpret rules as best we can. BSAdv supports two methods to keep information about our youth private. Each unit can configure BSAdv in the folowing ways:

Password Protection

Joomla 1.6 offers increased levels of access controls. BSAdv releases 0.10 and higher require Joomla 1.6 to better control access to personal information about our Scouts. Access controls are implemented partially within BSAdv and partially by the unit web site administrator. The correct interaction of these two are necessary to implement strong protection.

BSAdv and the Unit web site

This diagram is a simplified example of the interaction of web site and BSAdv access controls. The green columns show how BSAdv defines categories of tasks. The tasks in each category share common access restrictions. The blue rows show how the site administrator defines groups of users, who share common responsibilities on the unit web site. The red crosses show how the site administrator assigns each user group the ability to access one or more categories of BSAdv tasks. This diagram is just an example and shows user group C as BSAdv administrators, whose users can access all BSAdv functions. It also shows user_1 assigned responsibilities to two different groups. Joomla allows the site administrator great flexibility in assigning users to more than one group. The site administrator controls user groups and access assignments through the Joomla web site back-end.

BSAdv task categories

BSAdv defines six categories of tasks:

• Read access - Read information. This would normally be set to allow all registered users to read the information. Since this includes sensitive information about Scouts, the unit may choose to limit the access to fewer than all registered users. This category mostly duplicates the Joomla capability to limit access to an entire component. The BSAdv capability may be of use in some web sites, as it is slightly different than the Joomla component access control.
• Edit Scout data - Edit Scout personal data. The unit should limit the users who have write access to this information.
• Edit adult data - Edit adult personal data.
• Edit events - Edit events and advancement.
• Edit accounts - Edit financial data.
• BSAdv administration tasks - BSAdv administration tasks. It is important to note that tasks in the other five categories are not included in this category. To allow a user group to have access to all BSAdv tasks, the site administrator must enable the user group for the administrators access to all five task categories. This is similar to group_C in the diagram.

Other components

These examples show how BSAdv interacts with the Joomla access control system. Most unit web sites are composed of multiple Joomla components. Each of these components can have their own task categories. The site administrator will assign users to groups to access these other components. Users will likely be assigned to both BSAdv user groups and to the user groups for other components. The security of the web site data depends on the site administrator properly managing these group memberships and their access to the categorized tasks.

Examples

• The users are grouped like this.
  • Two adults manage the web site and are members of the administration users group.
  • Six adults, including the two users in the admin group are involved in Scout advancement and regularly enter Scout event participation and advancement information into the unit web site. They are all members of the advancement users group.
  • The unit treasurer is the only member of the finance users group.
  • The Scoutmaster and one assistant Scoutmaster maintain the personal information of the Scouts and adults and are members of the scoutmaster users group.
  • The unit has many registered users, most of them parents of Scouts.
• In the BSAdv part of the web site back-end, the following task categories are assigned to the user groups.
  • All registered users have access to tasks in the read category.
  • The one user in the finance group has access to tasks in the accounts category.
  • The Scoutmaster and assistant Scoutmaster in the scoutmaster group have access to tasks in the scouts and adults categories.
  • The six adults in the advancement user group have access to tasks in the events category
  • The two adults in the administration users group have access to tasks in all six categories. To do this, the site administrator will need to enable all six task categories for this one user group.

• The users are grouped like this.
  • The web site administrator is the only member of the administration users group.
  • The unit has many registered users, most of them parents of Scouts.
• In the BSAdv part of the web site back-end, the following task categories are assigned to the user groups.
  • All registered users have access to tasks in the read category.
  • The two adults in the administration users group have access to tasks in all six categories. To do this, the site administrator will need to enable all six task categories for this one user group.

Data Elimination

If your unit is not satisfied with password protection for the personal data on your youth, then the alternative is to not have that data on your server at all. BSAdv makes this easy to implement. Each unit can configure BSAdv database access to eliminate any or all youth personal data from the database. When restricted, those data fields cannot be written to or read from. They effectively disappear.

There are two fields in the youth database that cannot be removed in this manner: id and name_public. These two fields are essential to the operation of BSAdv. The field id is an integer unique to each Scout and is used by the software to precisely identify the Scout in the database. The field name_public is used by the people entering and viewing data to identify the Scout. The name used in this field should not allow a person who is unfamiliar with the unit to identify the Scout, but should allow those familiar with the unit to do so. This can be a nickname, a first name and last initial, or can be a combination of numbers and/or letters that is used in place of a name. The only restrictions on the field name_public is that it be unique within the unit.

The list of Scouts' fields removed from the database is stored in Joomla component parameters. The unit web administrator can configure these fields through the Joomla back end. As the BSAdv program is updated, these parameters remain unchaged, so youth protection choices made by the unit will not be modified by BSAdv program updates.

Summary

However you protect information on your youth, make sure that you have the approval of your unit committee, District and Council. Take this matter seriously and err on the side of over-protection.

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