Not Another Spreadsheet: Project Tracking in cbfish.org

Some days it seems we have more spreadsheets than fish. The more funds that get allocated to research, restoration and conservation, the more the funders and general public expect in terms of reporting results. For many that means doing time in Excel.

For the past seven years we’ve been working with the Fish & Wildlife program within the Bonneville Power Administration and overseen by the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, to find ways to improve how they handle data to realize:

• greater consistency (can the contracting process be streamlined and more predictable?),
• enhanced program intelligence & reporting (from 2005-2010, how many riparian acres were planted that benefit steelhead?), and
• transparency (where does all the money go?).

Often for us that meant working with folks who maintained disparate spreadsheets and Access databases to find a better way to sort and summarize the information using web and database technologies. Yes, our mission was to axe many of those XLSs; but not before replacing them with shareable, scalable, easier to maintain systems of record.

One such system that Sitka Technology Group started to design and build a couple years ago, and continues to evolve with BPA and its regional partners today, is cbfish.org. At heart, it is a tool that provides transparent access to the obligations, objectives, projects, and accomplishments of one the world’s largest mitigation and restoration programs ($300-400M annually). This presentation provides a brief overview of the drivers for the system, the process we used to design and build it, and what we learned along the way.