Tech Hub
Tech Hub
FAQs
The Big Picture
What we’re doing, why it matters, and the principles guiding us.
For Scouts, Families, Volunteers, and Scouting Professionals
A resource from the Scouting America National IT Team and Technology Advisory Committee, committed to keeping our Scouting community informed and connected
What is the Tech Hub website
This website is intended to serve scouts, families, volunteers, and scouting professionals as a resource from the Scouting America National IT Team and Technology Advisory Committee. It’s purpose is to be committed to keeping our Scouting community informed and connected about IT vision, improvements, strategy, and planning.
What is the Technology Strategic Plan, and why does it exist?
Scouting America is investing in a comprehensive technology strategy to modernize how we serve Scouts, families, volunteers, and councils. The plan focuses on improving everyday digital experiences, strengthening youth safety, reducing reliance on aging systems, and making data-driven decisions that help Scouting grow. Simply put: our technology should be as reliable and inspiring as the Scouting program itself.
What are the key priorities of the Technology Strategic Plan?
The plan is organized around six priorities: (1) restructuring how our technology teams are organized so they can work more effectively; (2) designing technology around the needs of our members (Scouts, families, and volunteers) rather than internal convenience; (3) keeping youth safety at the center of every technology decision; (4) modernizing our infrastructure and strengthening cybersecurity; (5) retiring outdated systems that create risk and cost; and (6) building a data-driven culture where insights guide decisions at every level.
What principles guide technology decisions at Scouting America?
Every technology decision is guided by a consistent set of principles: delivering excellent service to our members; protecting the privacy and safety of youth and volunteers; making decisions based on data and evidence; choosing stability and reliability over speed; making improvements incrementally rather than through big-bang changes; maintaining compliance with legal and regulatory requirements; and being disciplined about when to buy commercial solutions versus build our own.
What does 'consumer-centric' technology mean for Scouting?
It means we design and build technology around the people who use it, starting with a deep understanding of their needs, frustrations, and goals through research and feedback. Rather than asking users to adapt to our systems, we design systems that work the way members work. This includes creating clear user journeys for key tasks like registering a Scout, completing a merit badge, or managing a unit’s roster, and measuring success by how well those experiences work.
What major changes in thinking are required for this transformation to succeed?
Successful transformation requires shifts across the organization: moving from siloed teams to collaborative ones; from one-size-fits-all solutions to personalized experiences; from reactive problem-solving to proactive, agile practices; and from gut-feel decisions to data-driven ones. It also requires being honest about technology risk, making careful choices rather than bold ones when the stakes are high.
What this means for you
How these changes affect Scouts, families, volunteers, and Council professionals.
How will this strategy improve the experience for Scouts and families?
Families will see simpler registration and renewal processes, more consistent digital experiences across devices, better customer service when they need help, and technology that respects their privacy and keeps their information secure. Scouts will benefit from digital tools that make tracking advancement and connecting with their units easier and more engaging.
How will this strategy help volunteers and Unit leaders?
Volunteers will spend less time wrestling with complex or inconsistent technology and more time with Scouts. The strategy prioritizes simplifying common tasks, like advancement tracking, training completion, and unit management, and making sure the tools volunteers rely on (like Scoutbook Plus and my.Scouting) work reliably and intuitively.
How will Councils benefit from these technology changes?
Councils will gain access to better data and reporting tools to understand membership trends, program participation, and operational performance. Technology modernization will reduce the burden of managing local workarounds and shadow systems, and new platforms will be designed with council workflows in mind, including customer service, registrar functions, and communications.
How does the strategy protect youth safety?
Youth protection is a non-negotiable foundation of every technology decision. This means ensuring that systems handling sensitive information about minors are held to the highest security and privacy standards, that digital tools support Safeguarding Youth requirements, and that data practices comply with relevant laws protecting children’s privacy. Safety is not a feature; it is a prerequisite.
How can members and volunteers provide feedback on technology?
Scouting America values community input as part of its technology process. Feedback can be shared through the Scouting Forums at discussions.scouting.org. The Scoutbook User Advisory Council (SUAC) formally represents user perspectives in product decisions. The Technology Advisory Committee provides strategic input to the National IT team on strategy and plans. Additional feedback channels and working groups are being established as part of the governance structure described in this plan.
Key Platforms And Projects
The major technology initiatives currently underway.
What is ScoutConnect?
ScoutConnect is the future unified platform for Scouting America, a single web and mobile experience built on modern architecture that will consolidate access for Scouts, families, volunteers, Councils, and National staff. Rather than navigating multiple disconnected systems, users will have one place to manage their Scouting life. ScoutConnect is a major multi-year investment and a centerpiece initiative of the technology strategy.
What is happening with Scoutbook?
Scoutbook Plus remains the primary advancement tracking tool for Scouts BSA and is actively maintained and improved. The Scoutbook team releases regular updates. You can follow those in the Scouting Forums. Long-term, advancement capabilities will evolve as part of the broader platform strategy, but there are no immediate disruptions planned for Scoutbook users.
What is the new data platform, and why does it matter?
Scouting America is building a modern data architecture that creates a single, trusted source of information across the organization. This includes a data integration layer, a centralized data store, and real-time analytics capabilities. Today, data is fragmented across many systems, making it hard to get a complete picture of membership, program participation, or operational performance. The new platform changes that, enabling better decisions at every level of the organization.
How will AI and analytics be used?
Artificial intelligence and advanced analytics will be applied in targeted, responsible ways. Priority use cases include predictive models to identify members at risk of not renewing before it’s too late to re-engage them, analytics to support youth safety monitoring, tools to help match volunteers to opportunities, insights to improve fundraising, and personalized program recommendations for Scouts and families. All AI use will be governed by Scouting America’s data and ethics principles.
What is happening with back-office systems like HR and finance?
Scouting America’s current HR (HCM) and financial (ERP) systems are not meeting the organization’s needs. The plan calls for evaluating and replacing these with modern platforms such as Workday. These back-office improvements are important because they affect how staff are supported and how the organization manages its finances, which in turn affects mission delivery.
What legacy systems are being retired?
A significant part of the technology strategy involves identifying and retiring outdated systems, sometimes called ‘legacy collapse.’ This is a deliberate, phased process: new platforms are stabilized first, then legacy systems are decommissioned. The goal is to reduce the cost, complexity, and risk of maintaining aging infrastructure that often creates workarounds and makes change harder. Specific retirements will be communicated as they are scheduled.
What is happening with business processes like membership renewals?
One of the clearest opportunities to improve member experience is simplifying how renewals work. The plan calls for aligning all unit renewals to a common date (February) and syncing individual member renewals to their unit’s renewal cycle. This reduces the confusion of staggered expiration dates and makes the renewal experience more predictable for families and unit leaders alike.
How technology is organized
How Scouting America’s technology teams are structured to support the strategy.
What is the Technology Operating Model?
The Technology Operating Model describes how Scouting America’s technology function is organized to deliver on its commitments. It is built around four areas: Service Design (understanding and designing for user needs), Service Delivery (building and running the systems), Service Assurance (ensuring quality and reliability), and the Office of the CIO (strategy, governance, and oversight). Together, these create a technology organization that is focused on outcomes for members, not just internal operations.
What does the Service Design organization do?
Service Design is the team responsible for understanding what members, volunteers, and councils actually need from technology, and translating those needs into well-designed services and solutions. This includes user research, journey mapping, product design, and process improvement. It represents a deliberate shift from technology designed for internal convenience to technology designed for the people who use it.
What does Service Delivery do?
Service Delivery is the core technology delivery team – the group responsible for building, maintaining, and operating Scouting America’s systems. This includes enterprise platforms, member-facing applications, data and analytics, and quality engineering. Service Delivery is also where innovation initiatives are incubated and tested.
What is Service Assurance?
Service Assurance is the team responsible for making sure technology systems work reliably, meet quality standards, and recover quickly when problems occur. This includes system monitoring, incident response, change management, and service-level oversight. In plain terms: Service Assurance is why the lights stay on.
What is the role of the Office of the CIO?
The Office of the CIO provides strategic leadership, governance, and oversight for Scouting America’s technology function. This includes aligning technology investments with organizational goals, managing risk, evaluating technology choices, and reporting performance to leadership and volunteer governance. The Office of the CIO also serves as the connection point between technology and the broader Scouting America organization.
What is Project and Portfolio Management, and why does it matter?
Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is the discipline of ensuring that technology projects are well-prioritized, properly resourced, and consistently executed. It prevents the common problem of too many projects competing for limited resources, which leads to everything being slow and nothing being excellent. With mature PPM practices, Scouting America can make clearer choices about what to work on, when, and with what resources.
What is Enterprise Architecture?
Enterprise Architecture is the practice of designing how Scouting America’s technology systems, data, and business processes fit together. Think of it as the master blueprint for our technology ecosystem. Without it, systems are built in isolation, creating integration problems later. With it, new systems are designed to work together from the start, reducing cost, complexity, and future technical debt.
What is 'platform thinking' and why does Scouting America need it?
Platform thinking means building shared technology foundations that multiple applications and services can run on, rather than building each system from scratch. It is the difference between building a highway network (which everyone can use) versus building a separate road for every destination. For Scouting America, platform thinking means investments in ScoutConnect, the data platform, and integration architecture pay dividends across many programs and services simultaneously.
What is design thinking, and how does it apply here?
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that starts with deep empathy for the user, understanding their real needs before jumping to solutions. It involves iterative prototyping, testing with real users, and refining based on feedback. Scouting America is embedding design thinking into how technology solutions are conceived and built, so we spend less time building things users don’t want and more time building things they love.
Governance and advisory structures
How decisions are made, and how the community has a voice.
What governance structures are being established?
Scouting America is establishing a layered governance structure to ensure that technology decisions are well considered and accountable. This includes an IT Steering Committee for day-to-day technology decisions, a Technology Steering Committee for broader organizational alignment, a Technology Advisory Committee that brings in external perspectives, and a Service Delivery Working Group for cross-functional coordination. Together, these ensure that technology serves the mission and not the other way around.
What is the Service Delivery Working Group?
The Service Delivery Working Group is a cross-functional body that coordinates decision-making across the technology and business teams. It prioritizes work, manages dependencies, evaluates risks, and ensures accountability for delivery. This group helps break down organizational silos that often slow technology progress.
What is the Scoutbook User Advisory Council (SUAC)?
The Scoutbook User Advisory Council is a community advisory body made up of active Scoutbook users ( volunteers, Unit leaders, and others) who provide direct feedback to the product team. SUAC members review features, surface issues from the field, and help ensure that product decisions reflect the real-world needs of the people who use Scoutbook every day. SUAC is one of the most direct ways the community influences technology decisions.
What is the Technology Advisory Committee (TAC)?
The Technology Advisory Committee is a national volunteer advisory body that provides strategic technology guidance to Scouting America’s technology leadership. TAC members bring professional experience from across the technology industry, including cybersecurity, data and analytics, enterprise architecture, cloud infrastructure, and technology strategy, to help ensure that Scouting America’s technology direction reflects current best practices and the real needs of the Scouting community.
Who serves on the TAC, and how does it work?
TAC members are volunteers with senior-level technology backgrounds who serve in an advisory capacity alongside Scouting America’s professional technology staff. The TAC advises on strategic priorities, reviews major technology initiatives, and helps bridge the gap between Scouting America’s technology direction and the broader technology landscape. TAC members may also contribute to working groups, content initiatives such as the Tech Hub, and communications efforts to keep the Scouting community informed.
How does the TAC connect to Councils and the broader Scouting community?
The TAC serves as a voice for the Scouting community in national technology decision-making, with an eye on how those decisions affect councils, volunteers, and families on the ground. Council technology leaders and volunteers are encouraged to engage through the Scouting Forums and feedback channels linked on this site. If you are a technology professional interested in contributing to Scouting’s technology mission, reach out through the contact information provided on this hub.
Looking Ahead
What we’re focused on now and where we’re headed.
What are the major technology focus areas for 2026-2027?
Scouting America’s 2026-2027 technology priorities include: refining work prioritization and governance processes; advancing data governance and data quality programs; maturing quality engineering and change management practices; establishing observability and monitoring capabilities; launching the new data platform; expanding ScoutConnect; revamping customer service technology; and advancing council technology modernization. These represent the concrete steps being taken this year to execute the longer-term strategy.
What is the long-term vision for Scouting America's technology?
The long-term vision is a modern, scalable, and secure technology ecosystem built on a small number of unified platforms, with integrated data flowing across them, simplified business processes that reduce friction for members, and technology teams organized to respond quickly to the needs of a dynamic organization. The goal is not technology for its own sake, but technology that makes it easier to deliver the Scouting program to more young people, more effectively, every day.
Questions not answered here? Visit the Scouting Forums at discussions.scouting.org to join the conversation.