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This repo contains documentation describing our collaboration with the United States Forest Service focused on timber permitting. The wiki is designed to help the project team keep track of the overall project goals, progress to date, and learnings as we work. It is also intended to be a project landing page where stakeholders can access important and up-to-date project information.

• Sponsors and product managers might want to check out the sustainment plan and the product roadmap.

• Engineers might want to check out our proposed architecture.

• Designers might want to check out the Open Forest Design System, known design debt, first iteration mocks and wireframes, and future-state process diagram.

Background

USFS had previously engaged 18F in a Path Analysis with the goal of making recommendations to improve functionality currently provided by legacy systems that enable the sale of timber contracts and forest product permits. Timber sales are an important source of revenue for the USFS. Sales processes are currently enabled by the Timber Information Manager (TIM), a monolithic legacy system built on Oracle forms. USFS has the goal of building integrated, modern tools to streamline forest product delivery processes so that permitting and contracting staff can more efficiently serve the public and respond to changing demands and authorities while increasing active management of forest restoration.

After conducting research and analysis in the Path Analysis phase, 18F recommended that USFS strategically migrate data and business processes out of TIM, putting in place modern infrastructure and ways of working to support a flexible, adaptable, resilient system that is customized to the needs of USFS and USFS customers. As a first step in this broader strategy to migrate timber sales business processes out of TIM, 18F recommended that USFS begin by creating a new home for timber permitting processes outside of the legacy system beginning with fuelwood permitting. In addition to moving the USFS closer to its broader goals including modernizing TIM, this work will improve timber sales workflow for both internal staff and external users.

Overarching problem statement | Timber information management

We have observed that access to—and creation of—timber management information isn’t

• providing District and RO staff easy access to organized, meaningful data
• adaptable to new and changing contract needs of sale preparers
• easily learnable by new FS staff who have lessening access to senior mentors
• reliable for permit issuers serving FS customers
• placing information in context of a contract’s full lifecycle
• user-modifiable after normal human error or changing conditions

...which is causing

• confusion
• lost data
• incorrect data entry
• customer dissatisfaction
• slowed delivery on forest plans
• squandered diminishing personnel resources
• delays in service delivery to forest customers

A successful solution would

• capture and organize data for improved decision making, not solely for

• compliance

• support changes to timber contracting and agreements processes that improve and speed sales

• check for and respond well to human error and changing conditions

• allow training to focus on timber-specific knowledge to improve decision making

• increase timely access to forest products for the public

...before

• you lose the necessary time to migrate to a modern platform before support for
• the legacy system loses support
• you are unable to meet users’ need to adapt their workflows in order to comply
• with policy changes

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Firewood permitting problem statement

Currently, there are few ways for members of the public who wish to harvest firewood from national forests to get firewood permits. Most forests require permit purchasers to travel to remote district ranger offices during business hours to get their permits in person.

We’ve observed that the requirement to get a permit in person from a district office during business hours (1) makes it difficult and sometimes impossible for potential permit purchasers to get permits when they need them, and (2) causes frustration for frontliners who struggle to keep up with the demand for in-office permits during peak times. Many district offices have closed in recent years making the journey for permits longer and less convenient for some people. More office closures are planned, which will amplify the problem.

Firewood permitting product vision

We are building a convenient, interactive online service to give the public the information they need to plan safe trips to harvest firewood and get enforceable firewood permits without having to travel to a district office.

Success scenarios

• A member of the public decides they'd like to try getting firewood from their backyard forest for the first time. They're able to get the information and the permit they need to safely and legally get wood without leaving their home.
• A Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer is driving behind a vehicle that has a full bed of firewood. The officer can see that the wood was harvested legally and does not have to pull the vehicle over.
• A Forest Service administrator is asked to put together a report on timber sales in their region. They're able to easily pull data on online sales as well as sales processed via legacy systems into a single report.