To: Assistant Chief Hydrologist, Office of Information
Assistant Chief Hydrologist for Operations
Chief, Office of Surface Water
Chief, Office of Ground Water
Chief, Office of Water Quality

Cc: Chief Hydrologist,
WRD Senior Staff,
CPAC

From: Chairperson, Computer Policy Advisory Committee (CPAC)
Subject: High Availability and Reliability in Serving Real-Time Data

Many cooperators and data consumers have expressed their needs for greater timeliness and reliability of automated data delivery from remote gaging locations. The draft document "Strategic Directions for the Water Resources Division, 1998-2008" states that the Division will "increase the percentage of stream gages that are equipped to deliver realtime data. The entire system for delivery of stage and streamflow data will be made more reliable." The draft further describes that WRD will take measures to ensure that data can be delivered on a real-time basis 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, especially during floods and other adverse conditions. Major infrastructure changes will be required to provide these services. Human resource, technological, and fiscal issues must be addressed. Human resource issues-assumed to be more complex and costly than technological issues-include, but are not limited to, changes to operational procedures to monitor and verify real-time data availability and quality; changes to operational procedures to service gages; changes in duty-hours and overtime costs; changes in expectations of a variety of positions; training of staff and cross-training of backup staff. Technological issues include, but are not limited to, the communication path between a gage site and its District, power redundancy, reliability of network communication, redundancy of NWIS and Web servers, alert notification methods including data "push" technologies, and related issues.
In addition to the costs implied above, fiscal issues include, but are not limited to, the costs to rehabilitate gages in a timely manner, costs for support equipment, increased maintenance costs, software development costs, and consistent cost recovery for real-time data delivery aspects of gaging services. Nationally-shared costs for software development and increased reliability must also be addressed. Currently known approaches or solutions should be identified for each issue. In order to be successful:

1. Users and their requirements should be defined.
2. Strategic opportunities should be identified.
3. Costs for implementing each requirement and opportunity should be estimated.
4. A report of the findings from steps 1-3 should be presented to Senior Staff in
anticipation of the need for a policy decision from that body. The policy decision
should clearly state Senior Staff's expectations and parameters for implementing a
highly available and reliable means for serving real-time data.

The three broad issues-human resources, technology, and financial-span the Office of Information, Office of Operations, and the three discipline offices. CPAC anticipates that a clearly identified point of ownership and leadership will provide the centralized coordination needed to effectively integrate analysis and implementation plans to meet the vision and challenge set forth in the draft WRD Strategic Plan
document. CPAC recommends that the Office of Information (OI) take ownership and a leadership role in developing a process for providing a high degree of availability and reliability in electronically serving real-time data. In addition, CPAC requests the opportunity to contribute to the process by addressing the computer-related technological issues. One of CPAC's six goals for 1998 is to "Develop policy and plans on serving real-time data in a reliable manner." CPAC will form a subgroup to pursue this goal. The subgroup's first activity will likely be to scope the broad set of technological issues that pertain to this goal.

Sincerely,




Carl R. Goodwin
CPAC Chairperson