BCS president pledges to battle bureaucracy

Speaking on silicon.com's Agenda Setters programme, Macdonald, president of the 37,000-member society, admitted that his organisation didn't meet the highest standards of customer service.

"In the past six months, the society has done a lot of work to see what its members think, interviews, surveys and focus groups, like any good political party. That has shown that we are much respected for the quality of our work, for professional and ethical standards," he said.

"But we are seen as very bureaucratic, slow to respond and not as proficient in dealing with our members as anybody else that you would deal with, whether it's EasyJet, amazon.com or the BBC's web service.

"If we are going to keep members' loyalty, we have got to be up to speed as well."

He said that a far-reaching change in the association's culture was needed to help to build membership and improve the effectiveness of the association's political and lobbying work.

"Everybody on the staff of the BCS should see that they have to react to issues, problems, day-to-day phone calls, in a way that comes across as a highly professional organisation," he added.

The society will also invest "a great deal" of money in its web capability. "We mustn't be like the cobbler's children," said Macdonald, "preaching to others about using the web and being very bad ourselves."