NWCG Support to Wildland Fire Information and Technology (WFIT)

NWCG Committees

• Establish, maintain, and modify existing and desired IT capability requirements in respective mission areas.
• Identify new or changing capabilities. These changes may require major alteration to an existing application or the replacement of one or more applications with a new approach to providing the capability.
• Jointly with NWCG staff, consolidate and prioritize NWCG-wide IT capabilities as they arise.
• Establish and maintain relationships with business leads responsible for applications currently serving the committee’s mission area. Coordinate capability requirements activities with business leads.
• Identify potential changes to existing applications and coordinate with appropriate business leads to support their work with the project manager to request funding and make changes.
• Bring new and emerging technology ideas to the WFIT Innovations and Capabilities Group for enterprise-wide collaboration, assessment, and proposal development.

NWCG Staff

• Collect IT capability requirements from committees throughout the year.
• Jointly with NWCG committees consolidate and prioritize IT capabilities as they arise.
• Inform NWCG Executive Board of changes to IT capability priorities as appropriate.

NWCG Executive Board

• Assess, revise as necessary, and forward NWCG prioritized IT capabilities to Fire Management Board as requested.

Data Management Committee

• Provide support to committees in development of IT capability requirements.
• Provide support to committees and WFIT for data standards and integration.

Assemble, as appropriate, committee representatives, a Data Management Committee representative, NWCG coordinator, relevant application business lead, and other primary stakeholders and address the following:

• Purpose and Engagement
  • Develop, validate, modify or replace capability requirements.
  • Ensure the capability requirements are consistent with the committee(s)/subgroup(s) mission.
  • Identify related or associated capability requirements; seek opportunities to consolidate.


• Process Management
  • Define roles and expectations for each individual involved.
  • Establish timelines, checkpoints, and completion due dates.
  • Identify and engage other NWCG committees/subgroups who must be involved in vetting the capability requirement.
  • Ensure development process and prioritization criteria are understood.


• Resources Available
  • Recommended process and deliverables checklist [Coming soon, DMC is developing]
  • Data Management Committee. Primary contact: Roshelle Pederson, Chair, kimber_roshelle_pederson@ios.doi.gov (208) 407-6685
  • Requirements defined by other committees [NWCG Committee IT Capability Requirements below]

The NWCG develops standards of practice that enable seamless and coordinated interagency wildland fire operations.  Achieving NWCG standards is often enhanced, and sometimes accomplished altogether, by information and technology (IT) processes and applications.  IT capability requirements are statements that define the IT capability needed to achieve a particular standard of practice, product or service.   Effective IT capability requirements should address the following:

• Relevance: Is the capability relevant to the NWCG mission? Is it relevant to the committee mission? How will it improve mission effectiveness? 
• Scope: Does the capability benefit field level firefighters and fire managers? Will it improve national standardization? Will it enhance firefighter safety? Is it national, regional or local in scope? Is it interagency or agency specific?
• Purview: Is the capability unique to wildland fire? Does it sensibly fall under the purview of the NWCG?
• Sustainability: Will the capability have a long term impact? Will it address a significant and consequential issue or concern, even in the short term?
• Impact: Is the capability new, a revision of an existing capability, or a replacement of one or more existing capabilities?  What problems does the capability solve?
• Efficiency: Does the capability reduce data entry, leverage existing information and capabilities, address needs for multiple committees, or reduce costs?
• Time to impact: When is this capability needed?  When is it likely to be delivered, if funded?
• Existing workflow processes, if they remain relevant, or
• Newly defined workflow processes that make existing systems obsolete.
• What capabilities are needed to provide products or services essential to your mission?

• Data Management Committee
  • Fire Reporting Subcommittee
• Fire Environment Committee
• Fuels Management Committee
• Interagency Fire Planning Committee;
• NIMS Integration Committee

• NWCG Enterprise Data and Application Capability Model [link to this publication, in development]
• Link to WFIT Library: https://sites.google.com/a/firenet.gov/wfit/information/library
• Applications Inventory List - July 2017