Problem Statement
The Department of Parks and Recreation Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) proposes to develop an enterprise system to automate and integrate business processes at OHP and at 9 regional offices (Information Centers, or ICs) that work for OHP under contract. All of the processes are part of federal and/or state-defined responsibilities of either the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO), who is the head of OHP, or of OHP itself. The existing processes and management of information about those processes involves a mix of paper and digital information submitted to and produced by the 10 offices. This includes spatial and descriptive data about cultural resources as well as documents, data, and correspondence regarding analysis, evaluation, and management of those resources. The system will automate submittal and processing of new information and requests for services, allow for the 10 offices to manage cultural resource inventory information, and allow for tracking of submittals to and retrieval of information from the system by external entities. There are many different types of CHRIS clients, representing a broad range of needs and uses. Native American tribes and government agencies have many and varying interests and concerns regarding the CHRIS Inventory and cultural resource management processes in which OHP is a consulting party. Development of the solution will involve dialogue and partnering with these key stakeholders.
OHP administers the California Historical Resources Information System (CHRIS), which is not a computer information system, but is an organization consisting of OHP and the nine ICs, and is responsible for maintaining the statewide cultural resources inventory known as the CHRIS Inventory. The ICs are located at universities throughout the state, and provide their services via Cooperative Agreements and contracts under the SHPO. The scope of the CHRIS Inventory is statewide, including both public and private lands. The OHP cultural resources inventory contains information on over 268,000 records stored in its existing inventory database, and the ICs maintain over 530,000 inventory records, with some overlap. Each Information Center maintains its own database on a separate instance of a standardized, spatially enabled computer application with an Access and ArcGIS desktop front end and Access or SQL Server back end, known as the Information Center Database (ICDB). OHP uses the OHP Tracking and Inventory System (OTIS) application to maintain its inventory data, manage data about its business processes (over 142,000 process records), and to link and manage the inventory and process data together. The CHRIS Inventory information is therefore maintained in ten separate databases, and is retrieved by traveling to or contacting one of the ten offices. Management of the collective information is inefficient, and developing and maintaining standardization of CHRIS processes requires significant amounts of staff time.
This results in:
- Inefficient and time-consuming processes, resulting in duplication of data and effort.
- Inconsistency in the amount of work and costs associated with maintaining the inventory across the CHRIS offices
- No online, self-service option for access, so users must contact one of the CHRIS offices directly and either request staff to conduct research or travel to one of the offices to conduct the research themselves.
- Variability in the percent of data that has been digitized at each of the CHRIS offices.
- Challenges in maintaining consistent access controls for the large amount of information in the CHRIS Inventory that is confidential under federal and state law and subject to federal and state information security and privacy requirements.
