March 27, 1999

Information Resource Management Working Team (IRMWT)
Meeting Notes
Fairbanks Alaska
September 1-2. 1998

Attached are the final notes from the IRMWT meeting held September 1-2, 1998 in Fairbanks, Alaska. Special thanks go to the Alaska Fire Service (AFS) for their hospitality, providing excellent meeting facilities, and their participation during the meeting.

Mission/Charter

Discussed possible minor changes to the Charter. Future IRM Program Manager position may necessitate changes, along with language regarding the IRM Strategic Plan.

ACTION: Change the title for the IRM Lead to the IRM Program Manager, and add role to the charter; also add Strategic Plan as the Operational Guide. Get revised document to Jim Stumpf.

'98 - '99 Budget

There is some money left from FY98 but we will not ask to carry it over in FY99. NWCG added Transfer of Station for the IRM Program Manager and some salary costs to 98 budget (around $60,000).

The use of nonrefundable tickets by non-federal members and guests is acceptable where there is potential advantage to the Government. The ticket purchase must still be coordinated through Jeanette Butler 208-387-5601 at NIFC.

ACTION: Describe the Non-Federal Travel Procedures and post them to the NWCG web page.

Administrative Messaging (NIFC/DOI)

Implementation to Lotus Notes is going to occur for BIA/NPS around May of 99. BLM conversion will not be occurring at this time. Martin Quinlan will check with Rick Mills on costs for proprietary software between open mail and Notes.

Receipt of electronic messages between IRMWT members need to be confirmed. Each member will be responsible for confirming receipt of any messages sent.

After some discussion, it was determined that emergency messaging and administrative messaging needed to be clarified. "Administrative Messaging" is the operation in Boise to allow prompt communication at the Fire Center.

ACTION: "Messaging" should be shown as "Administrative Messaging".

ROSS

Jon Skeels bought us up to date on the status. A couple of issues that need to be addressed: What does the IRMWT want/need to approve and how to do a better job of information sharing.

Some concern was voiced over difficulty in getting staffing commitments from NWCG member agencies and the imbalance in contributions, making it appear to be a Forest Service project. A distinction will be made that ROSS involves "emergency" (dispatcher) messaging rather than "administrative" messaging.

Home Page

There are currently 3 sites: non-public general information; non-public working team sites; and the public site. Access to non-public general information will be added to the working team sites. Non-public information is defined as "work in progress".

Discussed a change in web servers as FWS has stringent regulations for allowing access, which means that Dottie has to make all changes. Her workload is considerable. FTP is needed on the web server.

ACTION: Dottie will add links to objects that change frequently so she doesn't have to maintain that information on her server and any systems that require a password would then keep others out.

ACTION: Dottie will write up a paper giving alternatives for web servers or ways to deal with the current situation and a way to simplify passwords. Need by next meeting.

ACTION: John Gebhard will contact Linda Sanford for assistance in writing a paper about what could go on the public and non-public side. Propose loosening up the rules for what goes on the public side and also propose a 90 day trial period to determine traffic and give users a way to ask questions or ask for information. Need this by next meeting.

Windows 3.XX/Windows 95

Microsoft no longer supports Windows 3.XX and it is not Y2K compliant.

ACTION: Propose to NWCG that Windows 3.1 will not be supported after 1/1/99.

State IQS

One site left to beta-test; got an extension to the end of October. Product delivery is scheduled the 1st of December. Training in each region will occur in January-March. It was agreed that NWCG would endorse this application for States' use. Support will be for the States; if a state chooses to give it to someone else, they will be responsible for the support.  Looking at PMS handling distribution.

ACTION: Need to bring software distribution forward to NWCG.

Interior IQCS Project

This is a formal information engineering study to evaluate, revalidate old, and define any new business, information, and technical requirements; and to evaluate certification and qualification for the "all risk" function. It may provide an opportunity for centralized data for the states and federal agencies in the future. The IRMWT voted to sanction the project. The first team meeting is 10/7/98.

IRM Program Manager

Layed out work plan for the first year. The position will,

• establish IRM organization,
• oversee establishment of NWCG CASE repository and standards,
• become knowledgeable of ongoing NWCG Projects and related
• activities (ROSS, IQS, IQCS, etc.),
• establish mechanisms to update IRM Strategy and Framework,
• attend all IRMWT meetings,
• establish a library of agency IRM policies and procedures,
• coordinate meetings and information with other NWCG Working Teams.

The position will report to Les Rosenkrance (administratively), but day-to-day work/issues will be directed by Steve Haglund. It was decided that the position would not be utilized as "executive secretary"; instead that assistance would be sought elsewhere.

Fire Time Accounting

This application will provide a link for the Fire Time Report and/or Crew Time Report into the FS Paychek system, which then goes to NFC. After the Pilot, they intend to accommodate other business or agency needs. Concern was expressed that this project does not take in the whole picture?only a piece (such as taking out taxes, and the need for the information to be used for accounting purposes). Unless the project is following the IRMWT Strategy, we cannot support it, and a vote was taken to inform CA and the NWCG of this.

NFSIP/IFIRS

Jon Skeels gave us a status?the formal hand-over. The report is on the Internet. A system could not be built from the analysis that has been completed, as it is the logical design. Products delivered are the Business Process Model, Conceptual Data Model, Data Dictionary, and Entity Relationship Diagrams, although changes need to be made to incorporate the revised fire mgmt terminology, air quality issues, and fire cause codes.

Recommendations are to develop a charter for the IFIRS project, continue coordination with NFIRS, host on a single computer, and create a single interagency application.

ACTION: Jon will prepare a letter/amendment for the charter for the next NWCG meeting.

Mnemonics

The 4-letter identifier for positions will be maintained by the IOS Working Team. Applications need to use the same position identifiers as well as publications such as 410.

There are no more available organization identifier acronyms that have a logical pattern so new ones will not follow the same pattern.

New Systems

Discussed several potential new system requests including the "Lessons Learned" system proposed as part of the TriData final report. A discussion with AFS cache personnel regarding use of ICBS and effects on ROSS, which interfaces with ICBS. AFS will not be going to ICBS until it is at least as functional as the existing AFS system.

CASE Status Update

We need to know the impacts on the hardware to host CASE. ROSS is doing similar analysis that may overlap.

ACTION: Jon Skeels and Mike Barrowcliff will coordinate these efforts and get back to the WT at the next meeting or before if FS cannot host it.

Coordination with Other Working Teams

ACTION: MikeF will let the Incident Business Practices WT know the dates and locations for the next meetings and invite them to attend for « day. If any meetings occur in working team members' geographic areas, they may be asked to attend.

Conference Calls

Scheduled an IRMWT conference call about 2 weeks after the NWCG meetings. First one will be on October 6th at 9:00am MDT.

CIO Strategic IRM Issues

ACTION: JohnG and MikeB will prepare a list of IRM priorities for the next meeting.

Document Exchange Standards

NWCG approved the document.

New Technology/Applications

We need a way to identify what is going on, so this will be an item on the agenda for each meeting.

1. Incident Cost Accounting and Reporting System (ICARS) and its need to be a national application. This has been referred to Incident Business Practices Working Team
2. Joint Fire Sciences Project.
   ACTION: MikeF will schedule a presentation at the next meeting.
3. FICC, a CAD system from CA will be demo'ed.

Next Meeting

The IRMWT meeting timing and frequency are determined by the NWCG schedule. We try to meet 6-8 weeks in advance of every NWCG meeting. Meetings are located near one of the 11 Geographic Area Coordination Centers if possible. It is also desireable to locate one of the meetings in California annually to enhance opportunity to the fire management organizations there. The following is a schedule showing GACC's the IRMWT has/will visit:

The next meeting will be held in Riverside, CA on January 12-14, 1999. The meeting after that will be held in Salt Lake on April 13-15.