CA Department of Fish and Wildlife

ECI Finalizes Vital Data Warehouse for CDFW

Estrada Consulting, Inc. (ECI) enhance the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS) Data Warehouse, an advanced, database-driven Data Warehouse which is a centralized repository of Marine Region Data from multiple sources.

Business Problem

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has built and currently maintains several data warehouses containing ocean fishing data, with data that is critical to many day-to-day operations at the Department. Specifically, the California Marine Data Warehouses serve to advance the dissemination of accurate and up-to-date information regarding state marine resources and increases access to marine resources management information. It also promotes transparency in Marine fisheries management, helps to foster public engagement, and focuses academic research on areas of management relevance.

One data warehouse that is currently in development is the California Recreational Fisheries Survey (CRFS) data warehouse. This data warehouse contains estimates of catch, and efforts derived from information from surveys of recreational marine anglers throughout California. Although a version of this data warehouse is currently in the production environment, CDFW was interested in making additional enhancements rapidly and sought a data warehouse specialist, with expert knowledge and experience with the design and creation of database-driven data warehouses, to work with CDFW staff to speed up development and improve the quality of the finished product.

Value

Although CDFW identified needed enhancements to these data warehouses, it was constrained by lack of needed IT staff resources. In order to accelerate the development, CDFW selected Estrada Consulting through the competitive bidding process, to assist with enhancements and finalizing development. Estrada consultants completed the CRFS Data Warehouse project in close coordination with CDFW and DTD key stakeholders and staff, providing support during two key phases of the project to accelerate development and deliver extended enhancements, helping the Department complete development on an important project.  Estrada Consulting provided the following:

• Roadmap of sources to augment in Data Warehouse
• Data Analysis
• Data Replication
• System to system interface development
• Source analysis; data profiling
• Metrics and calculations logics
• ETL load process identification
• Design ETL process
• Testing (SIT & UAT)

Aaron Del Monte, Information Technology Supervisor at CDFW stated “The contractor they offered us was the most qualified of those considered, so we chose Estrada. What a great decision that turned out to be! Our project was completed on time and on budget. Not only that, but the main objectives we set were reached a few weeks before the end of the contract, so we used the remainder of the time to add additional enhancements to the data warehouse. From start to finish, this was one of the smoothest and most successful contracts that I have been involved with”.