The autumn was an amazing time as we were spread all across the country giving presentations on what MAST was and how it could serve the needs of professional analysts, marketers and road safety officers alike. As demanding as that was it resulted in a remarkable take-up for the initial release, with around 750 users choosing to register from around 250 organisations. As exciting as this response had been the work still needed to be completed and MAST required further development to ensure that all of those users received the highest quality product that we could deliver.

With the user base came the need for training too and the spring was dominated by the need to ensure that a competent user community could be trained up to get the very best out of MAST.  Over just three months, and with only the main project team of 3 to lean on, we conducted training for around 230 users in every corner of the British Isles; many of whom have gone on to deliver training to colleagues across their own organisations.

The substantial change for MAST came in April when the grant funding came to an end.  Determined to secure a future for MAST, the original project team set-up the not-for-profit company that would support it in the future. Establishing the new model also meant that subscription fees would have to be charged; as much as we wanted to be able to continue to offer it freely to the profession! Around 70% if users who signed-up for MAST when it was free to use have transferred across to the new model, and that means that there are some 150 organisations operating at local, regional and national levels that are all using MAST Online to deliver some excellent analysis.

New functions have been added, new data will be coming on stream in the next few weeks, further developments are in the pipeline, so as we cast back over the year that has past it is amazing to see how far we have come; but there is a huge amount still to do to ensure that MAST continues bring great benefit to the whole road safety community.