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B. C. Ministry of Forests and Range, Information Management Group
LEXIS - Log Export Information System
Collaboration Breaks a Logjam in Forestry Management
Challenge
Forestry producers in British Columbia applying for regulatory permission to export timber grown on land owned by the federal or provincial governments had to put up with a forest of paperwork. The paper-based approvals system was also an encumbrance to the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range and the federal Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
When a company wanted to export its harvest of timber, it applied for permission either to International Trade Canada - 70 per cent of applications - or to the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range. In either case the company filled out a printed form to send one copy to the federal department and another to the provincial ministry. Staff in both had to manually enter all the voluminous application data into separate systems for the verification/validation of information that is required by the Federal Export Control Online system (EXCOL).
This consumed the majority of the time of export staff. It could take weeks for data from an application to pass from one government office to the other for verification, to correct errors and anomalies and to generate public notices and statistical reports.
Solution
The administrative logjam was broken by a three-way collaborative project led by the Information Management Group of the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range, which created a system called LEXIS (Log Export Information System).
LEXIS is a Web application that runs on a secure server. It links to other systems of the Ministry of Forests and Range and to EXCOL. It essentially does two things:
- Receives export applications electronically from industry and shares the information online with International Trade Canada;
- Receives and verifies application data that has been submitted via the federal department. Now, 100 per cent of all federal jurisdiction applications come in to the provincial ministry electronically for processing.
Establishment of this electronic permit-processing system meant re-engineering the processes of two levels of government and about 100 forestry companies from the ground up. The Information Management Group formed a joint development team and, after many meetings and consultations, standard formats and procedures were devised and agreed upon.
All three partners have developed common systems that communicate using standard XML schemas and Web-service technology. Forestry companies enter their applications online through Web browsers. Even though this meant the adoption of new processes and technologies, the forestry industry moved to LEXIS quickly and it was launched in May 2006.
Results
LEXIS has eliminated 90 per cent of the Ministry of Forests and Range's data entry for export permits, shortened the overall processing time by 60 per cent for the federal and provincial governments and improved accuracy for industry export permits by 70 per cent. The time needed to verify an export application has been cut to minutes from weeks.
Staff at the forestry ministry has been reduced and remaining staff can spend more time in data quality and process improvement for their office.
One of the most significant results the project achieved was electronic collaboration and communication across all three business partners. The partners no longer need to keep independent tracking systems or have respective staff communicate to compare notes. Data accuracy is now consistently 100 per cent.
The forest industry has customers throughout the world who desire speedy delivery of goods. A faster system saves the forest industry money, improves profits and eliminates costly and embarrasing data transcription errors. It improves Canada's image to the world as a modern country employing advanced e-commerce solutions.
Innovative Use of Technology
LEXIS has accomplished electronic integration across the provincial forest industry, the federal government and the provincial government. It is the first application to provide a provincial Web-service data validation that the federal government can use directly in real time to validate applications entered into their system.
The design of LEXIS facilitates a high degree of collaboration among the partners and their existing systems. The application, developed in Java language, contains a business agent responsible for processing incoming submissions from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade's EXCOL system or from industry applicants. Web services, which reuse existing data from other corporate applications, are used by EXCOL to verify and validate data for new federal-jurisdiction submissions before sending them on to the provincial Export Management System for database storage through LEXIS on a central Oracle database.
A 2007 CIPA Winner!
For its exceptional application of information technology to transform processes and bring benefits to its stakeholders, the Information Management Group of the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range has been awarded a 2007 CIPA Gold Award of Excellence in the Collaboration, Not For Profit category.
Technology partners
Adobe Canada
CGI Group Inc.
Microsoft Canada Co.
Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
Vivid Solutions Inc.
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