Experiences at Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission

There were two challenges, one technical, one procedural. Some of Alaskas fisheries are tracked by the feds and some are tracked by the state. It isn't as neat and clean as that though because there is overlap. So neither agency has all of the data and you cannot just combine the data to get the total - you have to remove the stuff that is in both. However, they have totally different data structures so that is big fun. I worked for a non-profit agency that they reluctantly co-operated with and heavily mistrusted at the time so you can imagine the fun there. The technical challenge was in building the right structures, performing the analysis and providing the metadata that explained what went on. For the most part I succeeded in that. The structural challenge was to change the way we did reporting internally so that it was consistent with the new data architecture. This involved actually calling a moritorium on any new reports for a period while we transitioned them over. I was never ever able to achieve that so my technical accomplishments were all for naught....