Deep Dive - DCCEEW Environmental Databases

⁠⁠⁠SPRAT & SPEX Deep Dive requirements

The Species Profiles and Threats (SPRAT) Database is the authoritative source of data about Australia's EPBC Act listed species, ecological communities and key threatening processes. SPRAT is critical data within the Department underpinning regulatory decisions, investment decisions, conservation planning and nature positive outcomes. SPRAT data is also used extensively outside the Department by a wide range of stakeholders and applications.

SPRAT profiles provide: 

• threatened category 
• migratory or marine listing
• names in current and past legislative instruments
• when a species or ecological community were listed in their threatened category (date effective)
• whether a species or ecological community is under assessment
• current and superseded conservation advices, listing advices, recovery plans, threat abatement plans and wildlife conservation plans
• legislative instruments

SPRAT also provides compiled reports of: changes to the lists of threatened species, threatened ecological communities and key threatening processes; the migratory species list; adopted and made recovery plans, and; comparative threatened listings in Australian jurisdictions. 

SPEX is an internal workflow tracking system for threatened species and ecological communities listing process, it draws data from SPRAT and captures listing and conservation planning data via input forms, it also provides comprehensive reporting and dashboards on current and historic assessment processes.

Both SPRAT and SPEX are part of the DoEE IT environment and need to be migrated to new platforms that meet the needs of these applications and modernise the management and delivery of the critical conservation data and information held in those systems.

Following on from a report on all DoEE environment applications review SPRAT and SPEX are slated for priority migration, to that end, we require a deep dive into both systems.

This consultancy should focus on:

• Review of existing documentation on current state related systems, data and processes – augment as required
• Recommendation for a future state of systems, data and processes
• Review of, and recommendations for, governance, roles and responsibilities for SPRAT and SPEX
• Fit for purpose analysis
• Current state functional and technical fit
• Future state functional and technical requirements
• Data management, data architecture and integrations
• the current state including understanding relational databases and Oracle databases and to recommend future data management and storage alongside enterprise technical platforms 
• Integration to key systems - existing (e.g.Wildlife Trade permits, Enterprise GIS) and future systems (e.g PAS /Mara, Enterprise GIS and BDR)
• Front end reporting analysis and recommendations
• SPRAT profiles and reports
• Interim alternatives to existing Perl and Java forms/reports
• Ensuring SPRAT and SPEX are maintained and meet operational needs while in a multi-year transition period
• Activities and timing required in preparation for migration, including
• existing data & database refinement
• addition of structured data to existing database
• Recommendations for target platforms and applications with an analysis against requirements

Optional work (to be costed separately in response to ATM)

• Users needs analysis
• Stakeholder mapping
• Criteria