Environment Australia

The Client

Environment Australia advises the Commonwealth Government on policies and programs for the protection and conservation of the environment, including both natural and cultural heritage places. It also manages a number of major programs, the most significant of which come under the umbrella of the Natural Heritage Trust. These programs include Bushcare, Coasts and Clean Seas, the Endangered Species Program and Waterwatch. Environment Australia also administers environmental laws, including the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and a range of other Acts. It is also responsible for Australia's participation in a number of international environmental agreements.

In order to ensure that heritage legislation is not only regulated but heritage values are appreciated by the broader community, a key strategy of the Commission is to provide effective public representation at a national and regional level. This primarily occurs through informing the community to the presence of heritage values and assisting community groups to work within State and local government frameworks to protect their local heritage. Consequently, the ability to manage its interaction and liaison with stakeholders is a core requirement of the Commission's business.

The Challenge

To simplify the process of completing a Natural Heritage Trust application form by developing an application that presents the form and completion guidelines in a web-based format.

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The Solution

The NHT Online application assists both Commonwealth and State/Territory agencies by providing an electronic version of all form data that is accessible by State/Territory Natural Heritage Trust units and the Commonwealth over the Internet.

The benefits of this web-based approach are:

• Simpler, shorter appearance to the application, greater online interaction with help and links to other useful sites;
• Reduction of the need for transport of large amounts of paper forms;
• Provision of data in a simple standard format for import into the various State and Commonwealth databases;
• Reduction of the cost of, and errors incurred in, "keying in" data several times in different localities.

SRA examined the 2000/2001 Guide to New Applications (incorporating the application form) and the Continuing guide and application and redesigned it for web presentation and data entry.

The project also involved identifying what data could be extracted from the existing Commonwealth Program Administrator database to populate the continuing form for the applicant.

The design ensured questions followed the same order as the paper form where possible and that applicants were shielded from questions and reference material that were not relevant by selection of appropriate options. Applicants are only shown information relevant to the type of project they are considering. On-line help was made available on each page for both the operation of the form and the form input. Links to State and Territory NHT Units with additional information on external web sites were made available via a link to applicants from the relevant state.

Users can establish regular access to the form through a username and password established in the initial session. Four levels of access are possible:

• Applicant: allowed to enter and edit application until form is submitted;
• View Only: temporary access for 3rd parties to assist applicants;
• State officers: able to download relevant state application data from database, and provide/reset applicant password for limited time period to allow changes to the form - administrator and view only options are provided for this security type;
• Commonwealth officer: as per State officer but with national coverage and system administration capabilities - administrator and view only options are provided for this security type;
• The system maintains a record of user ids, dates and data changes relating to any access or revision to an electronic application after lodgement.

The NHT Online application initially supplements rather than replaces the paper application. The submission process includes printing of final copy of application with a header page of warning, that it is the paper copy and the attached documentation that constitutes the formal application.

In addition to the on-line form, users are provided the facility to fill in an application off-line by downloading an MS Word form. This document allows users to fill in and save the form at their leisure and submit it once completed. Data is automatically uploaded to a CLOB column as XML and parsed inside the database.

The application also provides a flag for users to waive their privacy rights so that State and Commonwealth users can view their application on-line prior to final submission, thus allowing facilitators to assist with the application remotely. Otherwise, the facilitators do not see applications until they are submitted. State and commonwealth users can download their search results as XML.

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The Technology

Oracle PL/SQL Web Toolkit
JavaScript
HTML and XML
VBA
Oracle 8i RDBMS
Oracle 9i Application Server

The Services

Project Management
Requirements Definition
Technical Development
User Interface Design
System Documentation
Testing
Training

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