Ward Slacum—Pilot Project 2012
Rocky Rice provided a report out to the Team. He reported that Versar went through the pilot evaluation approach with members to get feedback. The approach includes:
- Regional feedback meetings from pilot participants (12/6, 12/10, 12/11, 12/12, 12/14). All pilot participants should have received communication from Versar about the 5 regional feedback meetings. All DT members are welcome to attend.
- Anonymous participant surveys on pilot project system
- Roving Monitor Debrief with Versar
- DNR Survey
- Summarized data from pilot system
- Final Pilot Project report developed by Versar
Then, Ward Slacum presented additional information on the pilot and the pilot evaluation. Ward summarized some project details:
- 70 volunteered; 58 trained; 52 participated July – Nov. Six elected not to participate.
- Good distribution of participants within fishery – some weekend crabbers up to daily reporters; diversity of gear types in pilot as well.
- About 1900 trips were reported by 52 participants. There were also roaming monitors operational in August – 4 on mainland, 1 on Smith Island.
Ward revisited the objectives of the pilot project:
1) To test the operational capability of industry to electronically report daily.
2) Determine the accuracy, timeliness and verifiability of data reported.
Versar will also be looking at the relative costs associated with elements of the project to evaluate costs moving forward. This evaluation will not yet compare the pilot costs with existing reporting system costs. That is the next question that the support team and DNR can investigate.
