Water Resources Division CPAC Home Page

Dear Bill, Charlie, and Pat,

Regarding CPAC action item #12 (NWIS DISTRICT DATA BASE MANAGER TASK DESCRIPTION AND POSITION DESCRIPTION ISSUES...), Bill faxed the document (on March 3) that he spoke of at the Columbia meeting. This document, titled "Recommendations on Organizational Structure: Hardware, Software, and Support; Ingres Administration; Policy; Training and Education", was written by a database committee representing the Western Region, the Northeastern Region, and NWIS-II. The committee met three times from September 1994 through January 1995. Although the document is dated, and tied heavily to the assumption that NWIS-II would become a reality, it still contains much useful information for the completion of this action item.

Early last week, I contacted both Richard Hollway and Colleen Babcock about the background information and position descriptions they had worked up from the previous CPAC meeting in Baltimore (for action item #5 from that meeting). Here's what I've learned --

1. The background information is an Oregon District document titled -- Policy and Procedures for the Management and Archival Storage of Data Collected for Hydrologic Investigations, U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon District.
2. The Oregon document deals with project data rather than all NWIS data, and it is very specific to their District, but it could still be useful for this action item.
3. Following the Baltimore meeting, Richard forwarded the Oregon document to Colleen and Alan (Lumb) so they could complete the action item. They didn't make any progress, according to Colleen.
4. There are no position descriptions written for a database manager as a result of action item #5 from Baltimore (as assumed in the minutes from the Columbia meeting).

Richard explained that the issue for the Oregon District is that there are many, many tasks related to NWIS data processing which go far beyond the normal duties of a database administrator. In Oregon, these duties are split up amongst the system administrator, various discipline specialists, and others. The Oregon District lost some key people who performed these tasks. District management quickly discovered that they didn't have the specific data management tasks performed by these people documented anywhere. This made orientation for newly accountable employees more difficult. Hence the document described above was written.

Richard felt that completion of this task could be accomplished by generalizing the Oregon District document such that it applies to all districts. I've given this a shot, and the resulting document is attached (Policy and Procedures for the Management and Archival Storage of Hydrologic Data, U.S. Geological Survey, 5/10/2000).

This is very rough with regards to both format and verbiage. The list of responsibilities, at the very end of this document, took the most massaging. The document Bill faxed was used liberally to complete this section.

Charlie -- unless you hear otherwise from either Bill or me, please pencil me in on the agenda for a 30-minute discussion of the above issues. Thank you.

Nelson Williams
Computer Specialist
U.S. Geological Survey
3916 Sunset Ridge Road
Raleigh, NC 27613
(919) 571-4099

"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."  - Japanese Proverb