SDWIS Prime Update: December 2018

Since the last update…

It’s been some time since the last update back in October, but rest assured there has been a great deal going on behind the scenes. If you’re looking for a comprehensive project update, I would highly recommend watching the November 2018 All Things SDWIS Webinar [https://www.asdwa.org/video-library/?mgc_90=123/sdwis-prime&mgi_90=14899/all-things-sdwis-november-2018], which is accessible on the ASDWA website [requires login]. ASDWA has urged EPA to use these monthly webinars for more robust project reporting – please be sure you’re hooked into these calls. Feel free to contact Anthony DeRosa of ASDWA for more information or to be added to our distribution list. Also, attached is EPA’s updated project document, which includes a new roadmap from what we last saw in July.

Renaming the Releases

In the past, the SDWIS Team referred to various releases of Prime by month – for example, “September release.” The name came from the month in which the developer/contractor [Attain] would have that release delivered to EPA/NCC. Concerning the actual timeline for reviewing releases prior to community access, there can be a fairly large time delay that seemed to cause a good amount of confusion. Part of the timing problem is that, once the contractor delivers the software, it needs to go through review at EPA’s National Computer Center (NCC) before it goes through a secondary review by OGWDW before it finally gets out to the community for their review. To address this confusion and better manage expectations, EPA will start referring to releases by number, so we’ll see something along the lines of CY19R1 [calendar year 19, release 1] moving forward.

Staff Changes

There have been some notable staff changes on the EPA-side since our last update.

First, Tina Chen joined the SDWIS Team in the role previously filled by Greg Fabian. Tina comes from the Office of Environmental Information at EPA and brings with her a wealth of IT project management experience that we hope will benefit the Prime project as we move ahead. Other personnel updates include Justin Wright becoming a permanent fixture in the Infrastructure Branch – Justin has been leading the SDWIS Team’s Prime Transition efforts, and will now assume the EPA IAWG Co-Chair role with Cary McElhinney’s term coming to a close (on request from Cary’s home office, EPA Region 5) – big thanks to Cary for superb co-chair efforts the past 6 years. Additionally, Deric Teasley is now leading the CMDP effort; taking over from Will Bowman. Lastly, with Kristen Gastner now on maternity leave, Elinor Keith has taken over as the acting Project Manager.

Successful UAT Meeting at Attain

The Prime UAT/Pilot states met in November at Attain’s offices in the D.C. suburbs for a planning session for CY19R2 to determine requirements and prioritization for the next round of development work looking at four categories: CMDP, API development, data migration, and SDWIS Prime functionality. Generally speaking, the prioritization focused heavy on state-specific values (“custom fields”) and the SYS ADMIN functionality necessary to support these functions. The states also agreed that EPA needed to increase its support for current CMDP users, as well as resume some level of support for states wishing to move to CMDP.  Based on the requirements and prioritization established by the group, the contractor provided EPA with a rough order of magnitude estimate for the proposed workload.  This package was presented to the Advisory Board – SIWG last week for their review and input. More information on next steps coming in January.

The next planning session has been scheduled for February and will focus on requirements and prioritization for CY19R3.

Update on Pilot

The Prime pilot states are meeting weekly. Currently, their focus is on developing training materials, gathering pilot states’ requirements for adoption – what functional priorities are necessary to allow their state to move to Prime.  They are also working on data migration preparation. EPA is developing data quality checks to assure that state data is clean and ready to migrate to Prime.  EPA has started looking at pilot state data to help refine the process.

Update on CMDP

The team is working with the Technical Support Center (TSC) to include any newly released, or missing, approved analyte pairings as part of the quarterly development/release cycle – release notes will include new pairings added to CMDP. The team is also looking to support state regulated contaminants, which would be manually added to CMDP by EPA on the quarterly schedule. If a state regulates an unregulated analyte, they should use the TSC managed EPA analyte code. Lastly, in mid-January EPA will resume with providing limited contractor support (in addition to continuing with EPA CMDP Team support) for states looking to move from pre-production towards production use of CMDP.

Update on Community Engagement [for non-pilot states]

ASDWA and EPA held a webinar on Dec 17 to walk non-pilot states through the software and provided instructions for collecting community feedback via ASDWA’s UserVoice. The feedback collected will be periodically reviewed by the pilot states/UAT to ensure that nothing is slipping through the cracks. Additionally, non-pilot users can submit technical issues through EPA’s Zendesk for more immediate support [user access, etc.]. Detailed information on accessing the Prime test environment and submitting feedback, as well as a video recording of the webinar, are accessible on the SDWIS User Community of ASDWA.org.

Looking towards 2019

Looking ahead, we hope to see the next quarterly release of Prime to the community in February, following the mid-January delivery of the release from Attain to EPA.  Finally, mark your calendars for the 2019 Data Management Users Conference (DMUC), which is scheduled for July 22-25 at the Hilton Garden Inn Downtown in Atlanta, GA.

ATTACHMENT: Prime-Fact-Sheet-2018-Nov