Challenge:
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) partnered with Kiefer Consulting, Inc. to implement the California Fisheries Portal project. This engagement primarily involved creating an advanced, database-driven public website which to act as the central repository and public interface for the California state-managed marine fisheries information.
As stated in the CDFW created RFO, “The purpose of this project is to create the California Fisheries Portal; the portal will initially host the 35 Enhanced Status Reports (ESR’s), which provide details to inform ongoing fisheries research and management, including an overview of state-managed species, with details on life history, fisheries characteristics, current management and monitoring efforts, and research needs. The 38 species covered by the 35 ESR’s represent the majority of commercial fishing landings, as well as commercial and recreational participation in California. The portal will allow for future inclusion of additional marine species and interactive data functions, in subsequent phases. The development of the portal will improve the management of the state’s fisheries by facilitating the implementation of the California Ocean Protection Act (COPA) and the Marine Life Management Act (MLMA) through providing up-to-date, species-specific information on state-managed fisheries. It will ensure fisheries data is accessible to the public and presented in a friendly format to inform sustainable use and conservation of California’s marine resources”.
Action:
Kiefer used our proven delivery methodology and worked closely with the team at CDFW to understand requirements, make technology recommendations, and leverage the knowledge and expertise of the Kiefer team. Highlights included:
- Bi-weekly sprint meetings with stakeholders
- Knowledge transfer and code review sessions with CDFW technical team
- Bug fixes
- Budget and schedule management
- Kiefer/client team synergy
- Cooperative management team with timely feedback and responses
Results:
The Kiefer team successfully delivered both the management tool and the portal on-time and within budget. The solution has been launched to production. In addition, the CDFW technical team is now able to maintain the Kiefer-built solution without further assistance from Kiefer.
One unanticipated challenge that impacted our cadence with the client was COVID-19. The pandemic made it necessary to support the client remotely as opposed to being on-site, full-time. We utilized Microsoft Teams to conduct meetings and to facilitate communication between Kiefer and CDFW.
Kiefer Consulting deployed a team that addressed all the aspects of our project from initiation to go-live and go-live support; the team was comprised of project manager, solution architect, business analyst and developers. Their level of professionalism was paramount to the success of the project. They addressed our requests and changed course when needed without impacting the overall project timeline, budget, and deliverables. The solution delivered for our project used the Microsoft Azure platform and it was very well received by our user community.
Tanhure Whiteaker, IT Project Manager (CDFW)
This engagement strived to “promote transparency in fisheries management, advance the dissemination of accurate and up-to-date information regarding state marine resources, increase access to marine resources management information, help foster public engagement, and focus academic research on areas of management relevance.”
Thanks to the work done by Kiefer Consulting, our rather complex IT project was successfully completed on-time and on-budget. Communication throughout the project was excellent, and obstacles along the way were quickly identified and dealt with. The team Kiefer Consulting provided to us was exceptionally professional, organized, transparent and an absolute pleasure to work with. We definitely made the right decision choosing Kiefer Consulting for our project.
Aaron Del Monte, Information Technology Supervisor II, Marine/Fisheries Unit (CDFW)
The Technologies and Tools:
The following technologies were used to deliver this solution:
- Azure SQL Database
- Azure App Services
- Azure BLOB Storage
- Azure Active Directory
- Azure DevOps
- Pipelines, repos, user stories, tasks
- .NET Core
- React JS
- CA State Template
We used the following tools to deliver this solution:
- SQL Management Studio 2019
- Visual Studio 2019
- VS Code
- GIT
- Microsoft Teams
- Apiary
- Postman
- Chrome, Firefox, Edge, IE