Transition to SDWIS Prime– Response Needed by September 25
Good Afternoon Drinking Water Colleagues,
EPA plans to complete development of the Safe Drinking Water Information System (SDWIS) Primacy Agency (Prime) in March 2018. I’d like to thank all of you for the tremendous participation and team spirit of your staff in the detailed work on SDWIS Prime development over the past few years. We have engaged with well over 100 state and regional staff to understand how states and EPA Regions use the data system, and to get thoughts on how it can be improved. Your staff’s dedication is ensuring that SDWIS Prime will effectively support your drinking water program implementation and oversight data management needs.
With our SDWIS Prime v1.0 deadline less than 7 months away, we are actively working with state and regional representatives on transition issues and needs. To help us with our efforts, I am requesting that you identify your SDWIS Prime transition point of contact, your Primacy Agency IT program support office point of contact and your desired month and year for initiation of transition to SDWIS Prime. Please provide this information by Monday, September 25 to our SDWIS Prime Transition point of contact, Towana Dorsey, at dorsey.towana@epa.gov. My SDWIS Prime team will then work with your transition point of contact to draft a schedule for transition to SDWIS Prime.
At the ASDWA Data Management Users Conference (DMUC) in May, I confirmed the full commitment at EPA’s Office of Water senior management level to fund SDWIS Prime development. After consulting with the SDWIS Prime Advisory Board last fall, my Division finalized plans for delivering two versions of SDWIS Prime into EPA’s production environment. The first version (version 0.8) is scheduled for delivery at the end of September 2017. State and regional staff will be able to use this version for testing purposes. At the DMUC many participants expressed interest in migrating a sample set of their real data into SDWIS Prime v0.8 to facilitate their testing of SDWIS Prime. I am pleased to say that we are able to do this. Over the next few weeks, my staff will send out information describing how each state and EPA Region will be able to test SDWIS Prime v0.8 in October 2017.
SDWIS Prime v1.0 is scheduled for delivery in March 2018. This version will be available for use by all primacy agencies for program implementation and oversight, and states and EPA Regions can begin to transition upon its release. Attached is a SDWIS Prime Transition Planning Template that my SDWIS Prime Team developed with input from states and EPA Regions. This document is designed to help states and EPA Regions think through the steps they will need to take to transition. Over the coming several weeks, my team will be providing more information regarding tools and EPA support to help primacy agencies transition to SDWIS Prime.
Information on SDWIS Prime will continue to be posted on the SDWIS SharePoint site (https://usepa.sharepoint.com/sites/OW_Work/SDWIS/SitePages/Home.aspx) and announced through the ASDWA SDWIS Prime Blog (https://sdwisprime.asdwa.org/).
If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact Towana Dorsey, SDWIS Prime Transition Point of Contact (dorsey.towana@epa.gov, 202-564-4099), Greg Fabian, Information Systems Team Lead (fabian.gregory@epa.gov, 202-564-6649) or Michael Plastino, Infrastructure Branch Chief (plastino.michael@epa.gov, 202-564-0682).
Many Thanks,
Anita
Anita Maria Thompkins
Director, Drinking Water Protection Division
Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
SDWIS Prime Transition Plan Template v 2.1
