Project Brief

Wostmann developed a public-facing website, called eFISH, for fishermen and processors in Alaska. Hundreds of commercial fish processors, quota-holding fisheries co-operative managers, and fishermen access eFISH, which provides more than 25 different web-enabled services to pay permit fees, register vessels, quota transfer and other services. The system provides online management of fishery accounts for cost recovery providing registered buyers and fishermen online access to their permit accounts to: check account and vessel balances and landing ledger reports, quota share holdings reports, and processor quota share holding reports from various fisheries; report IFQ/CDQ landings; conduct quota transfers; renew certain fishery permits; submit ex-vessel value and volume reports; pay cost-recovery fees for crab, IFQ, observer and rockfish programs; report their Guided Angler Fish (GAF) landing; and check their GAF permit balance.

The system has substantially reduced the NMFS personnel overhead involved in the permit & quota management processes. Our user-centric design approach created a user-friendly interface by including mobile browser support and incorporating gesture support (e.g., swiping). Our team performed feature testing with users to ensure satisfactory screen responsiveness and promote application adoption.

Our team developed the application with a Struts2-based Java EE 7 Web Application running on JBoss with an Oracle database, a HTML5 front-end, and with a reliance on REST-based AJAX services for enhanced responses. We implemented web services that expose functionality on the backend. The systems data layer uses PL/SQL to update the Oracle Database. We developed online user guides with detailed instructions and application visuals that showcase its major functions and capabilities. Our team designed and developed the application with maintainability, usability, and security as primary concerns. Monitoring is in place for all open-source packages to ensure that the latest releases are used. We immediately update any open-source packages with security issues. Security on eFISH is upgraded regularly, with the Federal agency conducting a web application security tool scan, and Wostmann working to resolve any issues until software scans demonstrate acceptable results.