Project Brief

Alaska is home to three of the top five busiest U.S. fishing ports and produces two-thirds of the nation’s seafood harvest in a typical year. The state is home to nine of the top 20 U.S. fishing ports by value, and eight of the top 20 by volume. The success of Alaska’s fisheries is dependent on multiple regulatory agencies having credible, up-to-date information concerning 18 different fisheries management programs.

The Wostmann team has embedded with the National Marine Fisheries (Alaska Region) team for more than two decades on 50 fisheries-related projects. Our team has implemented technology advancements that support the region’s integrated systems and more than 2,500 users at 110 shoreside business operations and 95 at-sea factory ships, as well as other vessels, buyers and exporters required to report and process catch data. Our team has worked with NMFS to rapidly implement regulation-driven changes supporting a vast array of mission-critical systems, including Fishery Permitting, Catch Reporting, Catch Accounting, Quota Management, Cost Recovery and Observer fees for all Federal fisheries in the Alaska waters and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Our skilled team uses its knowledge and experience of fisheries laws and regulations to develop long-term modernization plans that allows NMFS to save time, money, and resources. Wostmann is currently in the process of developing a cloud-native application that will further modernize systems, processes, infrastructure, and databases. The new application is more than just a system—it is a strategic IT solution that will provide continued benefits throughout the development and implementation process.

This modernization of processes and systems includes:

• Gradually replace on-premises servers with cloud-based solutions, while ensuring legacy systems continue to function as new systems come online.
• Transform the region’s processes, including digitization and technological modernization of software and infrastructure that fishing industry stakeholders are reliant upon.
• Compatibility with future regulatory and technological changes, to include service decoupling to facilitate maintainability, scaling, fault isolation, and recovery.