How to Manage Your Agency's Fish Web Pages without the Webmaster Lifting a Finger

Web page and technology management is a continual challenge for natural resources agencies.  Staff familiar with technology are often ill-informed of natural resources issues and concepts, whereas natural resources experts are regularly disconnected from technological advances.  Staff with an understanding of both realms are uncommon, and as such are usually stretched thin because of the demands placed on their time and skill sets.  Beginning in 2004, agency fisheries personnel in Iowa began to record management activities regarding waterbodies in an online data system.  This effort was initiated as a mechanism to catalog historical, relevant data in advance of retirements that would cause a loss of institutional knowledge.  Subsequently, weekly fishing reports, fish survey data, and water quality data have also been integrated into online data systems.  Recent developments in web page management (content management systems) have allowed static web pages to be replaced with templates that dynamically create individual web pages from data warehoused in the aforementioned data systems.  These developments have moved the responsibility for maintaining current contents on web pages to natural resources staff, without adding to field staff workloads.  Planning and implementation of these data systems will be discussed in this presentation.