Assigning...The Lost Art

Now I should be the last one to really write this because I was offered the referee assignor position for my local club and I turned it down because I knew it was going to interfere with a lot of my other referee goals which I placed as a higher priority. As a result someone with less experience in both assigning and refereeing filled that spot. Actually two did. Problem is one had to bail out due to moving.
Still one who has done it for two seasons should know what referees to put on the higher level matches and which referees to avoid. They should know which referee if called on will help at a drop of a hat and which ones would be the last to call on because their showing up to the games they agreed to do are a bit spotty.
Problem is within the last 5 years or so, technology has come in great strides and has been used to aide the assignor in assigning games. Before it was utilized in one club I said to the coordinator at the time, you should use it, it would save a lot of assigning time. Well the next one listened to me and then there was a bigger problem. Too much reliability on the online assigning.
What? Just what are the pitfalls in assigning online? One, if you don't have fail safes installed, Joe Blow can just assign himself to do an U19 Boys class 1 match....when he isn't near ready. Motivation? Money? Yes it's happened before. San Ramon one year had the assigning and the pay was rediculously high. As a result on an U19 Class 3 game where there was a rivalrey involved involed myself and a married couple.....who passed my class that same year. Needless to day they were nowhere near ready for the full on assult the players were about to dish out to each other and to the entire referee crew. I know one of the two is not refereeing and thankfully the other chose to learn from it and grow to be one of San Ramon's chosen few. But this could have been avoided had the coordinator at the time had fail safes.
Another issue: Just today I got an email from my local assignor. He is asking for referees over the waves of email if he can get some help...for tomorrow's tournament. Good but, not good enough. Here's why: Not everyone uses email on a regular basis. I have a good friend and colleague who rarely checks his email. Therefore he is lucky to get a good assignment. Not everyone has a computer, but that problem is taking care of itself more and more as computers are getting cheaper. Remember, it used to be expensive to own a telephone at one time. When it get crunch time, the assignor needs to get on the horn and make calls.
Let me talk about the one who is a master at this. This guy gets availability from the referees on the 15th of each month for the following month. Talk about planning in advance. He uses the Internet, but his is very low tech email. No assigning yourself. You just give the availability and he gives you games based on the availability. When it's crunch time he makes calls.
Very rarely he ever has an open hole.
If assignors put a little less reliability on the Internet they would be a better assignor for it.