Implementation of Electronic Fisher Logs: The Australian Perspective

In 2000 AFMA explored options for electronic logbook reporting and in 2001 commenced the Electronic Logbook Returns Project, planned for completion in December 2002. Delivery of the e-Logbook project, however, had been compromised, including, a lack of dedicated resources, inconsistent project leadership, poor industry uptake and a lack of incentives and a regulatory framework that reflected paper based business process. Project completion was delayed with deadlines regarding implementation and rollout across Commonwealth fisheries not being met and some of the original design principles made redundant by advancements in technologies and a significant directional change in fisheries management needs.

For AFMA, 2007 saw significant change as the agency went from a Statutory Authority to a Commission and with opportunities to better fund and resource key in-house business initiatives and IT systems upgrades.  A comprehensive re-examination of the agencies data needs was necessitated by the adoption of harvest strategies and the agency embracing more adaptive management. The new commission also embraced the concept that much of the business between the agency and fishers could be electronically based and as such there was a new energy that looked to make electronic log returns a key feature of a number of client accessible AFMA e-Business applications.

April 2008 to March 2009 saw e-Logs progress rapidly through business analysis, use case articulation, systems development build and testing phases to an operational release. This allowed e-Logs to be AFMA’s first client accessible electronic business application.

Early in the 3^rd quarter of 2009 the capability was extended by the development and testing of additional fishing method based schemas as well as an email submission option in addition to the initial web based service. Over the two years from the first operational release there has been the implementation of revised firewall and security procedures, the virtualisation of in-house servers and the release of other related client accessible electronic business functions.

With the software offerings of vendors and the AFMA in-house systems having demonstrated robustness and reliability for two years, the challenge for 2011 is to improve and encourage fisher take up and use. The software that is currently available to fishers should be suitable for 85% of AFMA licensed operators. With an increase in demand from fishers AFMA remains confident that software vendors will seek to include the remaining three fishing method options in their software offerings.