Public
Consultation Tracking System
April
J. Wolstencroft
Northwest Region, NMFS
The
Public Consultation Tracking System (PCTS) is an online query
system allowing agencies
and individuals to track the status of National Marine Fisheries
Service (NOAA Fisheries)
consultations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as well as
the Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens
Act.
Federal
Agencies can query the status of ESA and EFH consultations conducted
since 2001
by the NOAA Fisheries Regional Office which include Northwest,
Northeast & Southeast Regions. Corps of Engineers permit applicants
can check on the status of the consultations on their permit application
by entering their permit number.
PCTS
cost-savings:
•
Prior to PCTS, the average time to locate the status of a permit
under ESA review with NMFS was anywhere from one to three days.
This was based on the fact that the permit applicant had to first
contact the Corps and then the Corps had to contact NOAA Fisheries
for a status update. It now takes seconds to check on the status
of the permit using PCTS. Approximate cost involved per request
was $400* for staff time, with a cost to the public of $240*.
PCTS removes the middlemen, decreasing the cost of most requests
to nearly zero. Even if the permit applicant does not have Internet
access, they can phone their local Corps District or NOAA Fisheries
office and ask any employee to access PCTS to locate the status
of their permit. Permit applicants have also contacted their local
Congressman, in particular Senator Crapo's office in Idaho, to
inquire about their permit. Senator Crapo's staff uses PCTS to
answer status questions within seconds of receiving a request
from the permit applicant, which saves time and money for the
public and NOAA Fisheries.
•
In addition, PCTS now allows other Federal agencies the opportunity
to run queries on
consultations. They can either drill down to an individual consultation,
or download all
information for consultations which meet their chosen criteria.
They can pull together these
reports in a few minutes that, prior to PCTS, would have taken
NOAA staff several weeks to
compile. Currently, there are approximately 3000 consultations
available via PCTS
(all consultations in NWR, SER, and NER since the beginning of
2001), 1000 of which are
individual permit consultations. The system has been accessed
about six thousand times
in the past year by agency staff and the public. This equates
to over $3 million saved,
without factoring in that a large number of these requests were
agency reports-- which
would have been much more costly than permit requests prior to
PCTS.
*
Cost calculation based on $25 per hour for NOAA staff and $15
an hour for the public, based on some recent studies done on public
time and value.
