**IRM and ALMRS Forum #3**

**A BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**April 22, 1998**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast. It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, the IRM &
ALMRS Forum, a Discussion of The Goals and Objectives of Future IRM
Activities. And Now, the Host of Your Program, Robin Stoebe.

Stoebe: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to the Third Edition of The IRM
and ALMRS Forum. We Have an Exciting and Innovative Show Planned for You
All Today. In Addition to the Panelists Here with Me in Phoenix We Have
Two Interactive Demonstrations That Will Be Aired Live from the
Albuquerque District Office. To Open the Show We Have Gayle Gordon,
Assistants Director for IRM in the Bureau\'s Chief Information Office.
Glad to Have You with Us.

Gordon: I\'m Glad to Be Here. I Am Looking Forward to Talking About the
Progress since the Last Forum in September. Activities Underway Now and
Some Of the Things We Have Planned in The Future.

Stoebe: Also Here at NTC Today Is Dave Little, Co‑director of the ALMRS
Program. Dave Will Give Us Information on The Current Schedule of ALMRS
Deployment. Good Morning, Dave.

Little: Good Morning, Robin. I Think We Have Lots of Information to
Share with Folks. We Have Made a Lot of Progress And There\'s a Lot of
Activities Yet to Be Planned for the Future.

Stoebe: Joining Us from the Washington Office and Representing BLM\'s
Realty Program Is Carl Gammon. Carl, I Understand That in the Second
Half of the Show You Will Be Talking about ALMRS and How It Will Affect
Our Daily Work.

Gammon: That\'s Correct. Let Me Take this Opportunity to Indicate How
Happy I Am to Be Here Representing the Washington Office Lands Program
and I Look Forward to the Group Discussions Later in the Afternoon.

Stoebe: Good. Ed Roberson Is Joining Our Program Live from the
Albuquerque District Office. To Welcome Our Viewers to One of New
Mexico\'s ALMRS Pilot Sites. Good Morning, Ed.

Roberson: Good Morning, Robin. I Am Standing Outside the District Office
in Albuquerque And Welcome You and the Viewers To New Mexico. We\'re
Having a Beautiful Earth Day out Here and as Robin Williams, Your
Namesake, Might Say, \"Good Morning, BLM!\"

Stoebe: I Understand You Have Arranged Some Interactive Demonstrations
of ALMRS for Us.

We Sure Have. We Have Leslie Cone Here. Even Show She Works on the ALMRS
Release 2, She Will Be Giving Us A Demonstration of Some of the Advanced
Capabilities of ALMRS Release 1. She Has Brought Rick Dickman From the
Montana State Office And I Think You\'ll Really Enjoy And Appreciate
What They Have to Show Us. In Contrast to That, We Have Cathy Cooney
Here with Some of The State Office Folks in Santa Fe. She\'s ‑‑ She Is
Our Data Administrator in New Mexico and She Has the Legal Instruments
Examiner and Land Law Examiner Who Will Run Through a Case Processing
Operation and Let the Viewers See What It\'s Going to Be like When We
Get the System Up and Running. I Would Also, Before We Get Started,
Would like to Say Hi to Carl Gammon. I Think and He I Used to Work
Together Back Before They Had Computers in BLM. But with That, and with
the Welcome Here in Beautiful Albuquerque, I\'ll Turn it Back Over to
You While I Go Inside And Make Sure the Demos Are Ready.

Stoebe: Thanks, Ed. We Will Be Looking Forward to The Demonstrations and
Be Getting Back to You in a Few Minutes. Before We Get Started, I\'d
like To Mention to Our Viewers That Throughout this Program We Want To
Hear from You. If You Have a Question or a Comment for a Panelist Here
at NTC or the Team in Albuquerque, Who Will Be Providing the ALMRS
Demonstrations, Please Give Us a Call or Send Us a Fax Here at NTC Using
the Numbers Provided To Your Offices. We\'ll Let You Know When We\'re
About to Begin Our Interactive Segments. Also, We\'d like to Ask All the
Downlink Sites to Fax Us the Total Number of Viewers from Your Office
Who Are Watching Today\'s Show. We Will Would like to Separate The
Totals for Managers, IRM Specialists and Lands & Minerals Viewers.
Please Fax Us Information to NTC Immediately Following Our Telecast. To
Help Set the Stage for Our Program Today, BLM Director Pat Shea Has
Prepared Some Remarks For Us on a Tape.

Dir. Shea: Welcome to the BLM Training Program on ALMRS. It\'s Very
Important That These Training Programs Go on as We Deploy ALMRS to Each
of the States. You Have Probably Heard That There Are Some Further Tests
That We Will Be Performing in New Mexico and the Impact That That Will
Have on the Schedule. But I Actually Think this Is an Opportunity in the
Best Tradition of BLM Where We Focus On Making the Product Work and Not
Meeting Some Artificial Deadlines. I Know, as Director and Working With
Gayle Gordon and Roger Whatley, That We\'ve Had Many Discussions about
the Importance Of Saying a Certain Date and Actually Have Gone the
Delivery Occur Then. What We Have Had Is a Problem of Data Conversion.
We Are Forming Some Special Teams to Work Both with Csc, Our Contractor,
with the IRM People In Denver and Washington, and With the Actual Users
of ALMRS To Correct These Data Conversion Program Problems. But it Is
Important for You to Recognize as the Users That We Are Working with You
to Make a Product That You Will Find Very Functional and Be Proud to Be
Part of as it Is Deployed in Your Respective States. The Training That
You Will Be Undertaking Today and in the Future Is a Key Component to
the Success of ALMRS. If We Don\'t Have People Who Know How to Solve the
Problems That Will Inevitably Arise as We Deploy this Complex System, We
Will Not Be Fulfilling the Mission of BLM to Make the Land Records
Accessible to the Public And Usable to the Public. So I See the Training
That You\'re Receiving Today as a Continuation of a Theme That Has Been
Important in My Life, and That Is to Find Means of Dealing With Outside
Circumstances That At First Blush May Seem Quite Confusing, and I Know
Particularly in the Lands Area, Where There Is a Very Strong Premium
Properly Placed on Having a Job Done in a Consistent Manner and Taking
That Methodology and Applying it Into a Digitalized Environment Like
ALMRS. But with Your Help And, and Particularly with Your Suggestions, I
Think We Will Be Able to Succeed at Doing That. We Also Have Some
Important Updates on Release 2 and its Progress. As Many of You Know, We
Are Looking at ALMRS Not as a Single Deployment, but a Deployment With
Modifications to Version 1, Taking into Account Suggestions That You
Will Make as You Get Better Trained and More Used to Using It. We Also
Are Looking at Version 2 As a More Exciting Format in the Sense of Being
Able to Have ALMRS on the Internet and Allow Greater Public Access to
It. We Also Inversion 2 Will Be Greatly Expanding the Kind of Data That
Will Be Accessible and That We Will Be Incorporating From National
Parks, Fish & Wildlife and Forest Service. So as We Move Ahead on
Release 2, We Have Released Some Additional Funds. I the Other Day
Signed a an Analysis That the Congress Required Us to Do Before We
Released It, but That Cost‑benefit Analysis Continues To Demonstrate the
Kind of Savings That ALMRS Has Always Predicted and I Believe Personally
Will Perform. So by Way of Conclusion, I Want To Thank You for Your Hard
Work. We Could Not Be Where We Are Today Without Your Dedication, And I
Think the Dedication of Both the Lands Staff and the IRM Staff in Making
What at Times Can Be a Very Frustrating Process Something That Is
Workable and That in Five or 10 Years People Will Look Back, I Am
Convinced and Say, You Know, When BLM Went to ALMRS, the Records That
Were Tucked Away in Their Files and Archives Became Accessible to Us,
and That\'s the Way a Public Agency Fulfills its Duty to the Public. So,
Again, Thank You for Your Hard Work, and Please Continue In Your
Endeavor to Get Better Educated about ALMRS. Thank You for Your Time.

Stoebe: We Appreciate the Director Taking the Time to Prepare Those
Remarks for Us. As Part of the IRM Community, I Am Very Interested in
Learning More about Our Current Deployment Schedule for Release 1 and
What to Expect with Respect to Release 2. These Are Some of the Topics
We Will Be Covering Later Today in Our Show To. Get Thing Started in
Phoenix, Gayle, I Believe You Have Some Opening Comments for Us That
Will Bring Everyone up to Date With What Is Happening with ALMRS in Our
New Mexico Pilot Sites.

Gordon: Thank You, Robin. I Am Going to Get Started on What\'s
Happening. I Think It\'s Very Important That Carl Is with Us Today,
Although IRM Has Had the Lead the Last Couple of Years in Overseeing The
ALMRS Software Development, The Actual System Is Really ‑‑ Rely Belongs
to the Programs, The Land and Mineral Program Today and in the Future
the Rest Of the Bureau\'s Resource Programs. Pete Culp, Assistant
Director For Minerals, Realty and Resource Protection, Has Played An
Increasingly Larger Role in The Actual Direction of ALMRS Over the Last
Couple of Months. Joe Chess or His Staff Has the Lead for ALMRS. Joe Has
Been Doing a Stellar Job Of Getting the Programs Involved With ALMRS and
Taking over What We Call the Ownership of the System by the Programs
Themselves. Ok. What Have We Accomplished since Our Last for Number
September? Well, Actually We\'ve Accomplished a Lot. In Late Fall We Did
What We Call Our Alpha and Beta Testing in New Mexico. These Were Formal
Tests That Were Conducted in All of the Field Offices in New Mexico.
They Went Very Well. They Did Demonstrate to Us That The System Is
Actually Working The Way It\'s Supposed to Be, or The Way it Was
Designed. I Won\'t Say the Tests Were Completely Smooth. We Did Have
Some Hick Ups along The Way. But ‑‑ Hick Ups. But That\'s Why We Have a
Test, To Find out How the System Will Work in an Operational
Environment. Following the Alpha and Beta Tests, We Began the Data
Conversion for the Actual Deployment in New Mexico and as Pat Noted in
His Introductory Remarks, We Did Encounter Some Data Conversion
Programs. That\'s the Data Conversion, Converting Data from the Current
Legacy Systems to the ALMRS Database. Over the Last Couple Months We
Have Been Working on Correcting Those Problems, and Actually What We
Have Done Is Expand the Sample Size to Ensure When We Actually Deploy
the System We Have the Highest Quality Data We Can Do. Dave Little Is
Going to Be Talking a Little Bit More about What Our Plans Are for
Converting the Other States\' Data a Little Bit Later in the Program.
What Else Have We Done? Well, Congressman Dated Several Years Ago That
We Have an Independent Evaluator of ALMRS Come in and Look at How the
System Performs in an Operational Environment Before We Deploy it to All
of the States. We Hired Mitertech to Play That Role and They Have Been
Working Closely with the ‑‑ with Us the Last Couple Years. We Can\'t Do
the Formal Operational Assessment until We Have the Database Completed,
but What We Did in the Beginning of March Was to Conduct What We Call
the Dry Run Operational Assessment. This Was a Very Revealing
Experience. It Was Very Positive, but it Also Did Identify Some Things
That We Need to Take Care of Before We Deploy the System. What We Did in
the Operational Assessment. We Had Users Across the State of New Mexico
Using ALMRS to Conduct the Activities in Their Day‑to‑day Work.
Previously the Tests Had Been Formal Scripted Tests. What We Did this
Time Was to Ask Use Theirs to Actually Identify Real‑life Activities.
And They Identified and Performed More than 300 Different Activities for
a Total Of 400 Hours During the Test. What We Learned Was That the ALMRS
Software Did Very Well. It Did, Again, What We Had Expected it to Do. We
Did Encounter Some Problems With What We Call Our Post‑conversion
Cleanup and We\'re Addressing Those Right Now. We Did Find That Most of
the Difficulties That Were Experienced Had to Do with Inexperienced
Users and with Support Staff Needing More Assistance When They Were
Using The System. We Did Find That the People Who Had Been Involved in
ALMRS During Earlier Testing and Developing the Training Materials Did
Extremely Well. But We Do Need to Have More Materials and More What
We\'re Calling Coaches Available to Support the People as They\'re
Starting to Use the System. Carl Is Going to Be Talking a Little Bit
Later about Some of The Things We Are Undertaking Right Now to Ease the
Transition To the New System. Several Other Things That We\'ve Done over
the Last Couple of Months, We Have Actually Installed the Hardware
Upgrades Needed in New Mexico and Arizona. We\'ve Ordered Hard Way
Upgrades For Montana, Nevada and Wyoming. These Will Be Installed over
the Next Couple of Months. Technical Training and What We Call the Train
the Trainer Training Has Proceeded Very Well Right Here in the Training
Center. We\'ve Already Had Training for New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho and
Colorado. We Also Have Continued Doing What We\'re Calling Our Site
Readiness Reviews. These Are Reviews ‑‑ Follow‑up Reviews to Reviews
That Were Conducted Several Years Ago ‑‑ Actually about a Year and a
Half Ago to Make Sure That the States Are Addressing Providing the
Environment We Need to Support Newt System. We Have Conducted Site
Reviews In New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Montana and Actually
This Week We\'re Going to Be ‑‑ We Are Conducting Our Site Readiness
Review in California. Robin, I Think You Had Yours Just Recently and
Maybe a Little Later We\'ll Have a Chance to Talk about It. So Those Are
the Things That ‑‑ Kind of an Introduction and We Will Be Having More
Details Coming from Dave and Carl on Some of These Topics.

Stoebe: Thank You, Gayle. Now We Would like to Go Live to He Had
Roberson in Albuquerque Who Is with Leslie Cone, Release 2 Project
Manager.

Roberson: Welcome Back to Our Remote Site in Albuquerque. I Do Have
Leslie Cone Here with Me. She Is the ALMRS Release 2 Project Manager,
but as I Mentioned out Front, She and Rick Dickman, Who Is Data
Administrator from the Montana State Office, Will Be Giving Us A
Demonstration of Some of the Capability with the Software. That Will
Include Some of the Capability to Deal with and Use Mapping and Thematic
Resource Data and Tie it Back to the ALMRS Database. Welcome, Leslie.

Cone: Thank You. It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here Today And Be Able to Give
You a Demonstration of the Release 1 Spatial Capabilities. We Want to
Show Kind of Two Modules. The First Module We\'re Going to Show Is the
Area of Interest Selector Done Spatially. Later You\'ll See it Done
Alphanumerically. We Will Show You How Can You Do That Spatially. By
Area of Interest, We Mean Limiting the Amount of Data the Computer Has
to Query. By Limiting That, That Helps the Computer Give You Your
Response Faster. So Let\'s Go to Rick and the Computer. Rick Is Going to
Bring up the Aoi Selector. As I Said This, Limits the Amount of Data
That the Computer Has to Query. If You See the Little Black Squares on
There, That Shows You The Data That BLM New Mexico Has Imported Their
Geographic Coordinate Database Information. Now, this First Part, the
Aoi Selector, Is Not Based on Gbcd Data, but this Shows You How Can You
Use the Aoi Selector to Show Which Townships Have Been Imported. This
System Was Designed to Give Our Public Several Ways of Accessing
Information. I\'m Going to Ask Rick to Highlight Counties. If We Have
Somebody That Comes Into the Public Room and They Don\'t Know a Township
and Range But They Know What County They\'re Looking For, They Can
Select That as Their Area of Interest. So If Rick Highlights the County
And Then Brings up the I Icon ‑‑

Dickman: What We Did Here Is I Selected the San Juan County In the
Northwestern Corner of New Mexico.

Cone: in Addition to County Information, Can You Also Do it By
Districts. In Case Somebody, a Person of The Public, Wanted to Be Able
to Find out Who Had the Authorizations for a Certain Area, We Can Bring
up the District Boundaries. And, Again, If Rick Clicks on That and
Highlights the District Theme and Then Gets the I Icon, It Will Bring up
a Die Box.

Now What We Have Selected in The Southeastern Quarter of New Mexico Is
the Roswell District, Which I Believe Ed Is Fairly Familiar with.

Cone: We Are Trying to Show You Several Examples of the Kind Of Data
That Is in this Kind of Automated Map Index That Allows You to Set an
Area of Interest. The next Thing We\'re Going to Show You How You Zoom
to a Theme. At the State Level You Can\'t See Townships. However, If
Rick Highlights the Township Theme and Then Brings Up the Zoom Tool, and
Again, Let\'s Zoom into the Roswell Area, Then this Will Bring up The
Township Themes, And, Again, If He Uses the I Icon, He Can Tell You
Which Township it Is.

Dickman: We Are Now Located In 6 South, 18 East as Identified Within the
Window.

Cone: the next Thing We Would Like to Show You Is Kind of an Automated
Map Index. A Lot of Our Publics Come into The Public Room and They Want
to Buy 100100,000, One to 24,000 Quad Maps and Have to Look at a Flat
Map to Figure out What Quad. We Have Also Attached That Information to
the Aoi Selector. So If Rick Clicks on the One to 100,000 Map Indexes
and Highlights That and Brings up The I Icon, it Will Tell You Which One
to 100,000 Quad Map.

Dickman: So I Have Selected The Salt Creek One to 100,000 Map, Which Is
Located Right North of Roswell New Mexico.

Cone: When We Deliver and Deploy ALMRS, the Area of Interest, the
Spatial Maps, Will Include Some of the Basic Functionality We Have Shown
You. States Can Also Attach Other Coverages They Have to this Index. The
Last Way We\'re Going to Show You Is If You Pull down the Select Aoi
Menu, Shows You Some Other Ways That You Can Select An Area of Interest.
You Can Load One That\'s Already Saved, Can You Pick it from the
District as We Said, or Resource Area Boundary, County List, and By
Serial Number. We\'re Going to Show You How You Can Also Input Fit You
Know the Township Range and We Will Use 11 North and 10 West. Because We
Know New Mexico Imported Their Gcdb in this Township. So Rick Will Type
in 11 North And 10 West. So If You Already Knew Your Township and Range
and Didn\'t Have to Go Through the County or District Information
Setting, You Could Have Just Typed in 11 North, 10 West and Went Right
In. There\'s Also an Alphanumeric Way Can You Load an Area of Interest.
This Will Zoom to 11 North, 10 West and If You Wanted to Find Out What
the Red Line That Goes Through That Township Is, Rick Can Identify That.
It\'s Interstate 40. Now That We\'ve Set Our Area of Interest, We\'re
Going to Show You the Display and Query Spatial Tool That\'s in
Release 1. Now, this Display and Query Is Based on Importing the Gcdb
Data And So Once We Deploy ALMRS in Release 1 with this Spatial
Capability, Each State Will Have Tine Put Their Gcdb Data in Order to
Display That. So We Will\' Show You a Few of The Capabilities of this
Display And Query Module. The First, If You See the 1 Through 36
Sections That Are in That Township, this Is All Real Live Data out of
the ALMRS Database from New Mexico. If There\'s a Change to the Database
the next Time We Query The System, it Will Automatically Display That
Change. I Am Going to Ask Rick to Show You by Highlighting Government
Lots and the Government Lots Come Up, and If You Wanted to Find out the
Number of the Government Lots and the Acreage In Those Government Lots,
Rick Can Do That. He Does That by Using the Label Tool. Again, We Are
Real Time on the System. The Application Is Loaded Here Locally and We
Are Going over The Network for the Data to a Server at the Denver ‑‑ at
the Federal Center. So What Rick Has Done and We Will Zoom in So That
You Can See, Is Label the Lots That Are In Section 5, and Rick Can Tell
You What the Acreages Are.

Dickman: it Says Lot 1 Here Has an Acreage of 39.27 Acres. This Would Be
Very Comparable to What it Would State on the Master Title Plat.

Cone: this Functionality Has All Be Designed in Arcview in Point and
Click. BLM Has Taken That off the Shelf Product and Customized it for
Our Use. So If You Put Too Many Labels on A Map, You Can Take Them off.
It\'s All Done in Point‑click Kind of a Windows Environment With English
Language Commands. So Rick Has Just Refreshed the Screen to Take off the
Labels For All the Lots. We\'re Now Going to Show You Surface Management
Ownership. This Is Information That Currently You Have to Have from A
Master Title Plat, and You Have to Be Able to Read the Weight of the
Line. When I Started with the BLM Many Years Ago, You Had to Take a
Class on How to Write Legal Descriptions, How to Read Title Plats. This
System Will Be Easier for Our Publics Because It\'s Color‑coded. You Can
See the Yellow Is BLM Land. The Grayish Tone Is Private. And the Green
Is Forest Service.

Stoebe: Leslie, Can I Interrupt You for a Second? I Would like to Jump
in and Mention to the Viewers We Will Be Opening up the Phones at this
Point for Our First Scheduled Question‑and‑answer Segment. So If You
Have a Question or a Comment for Our Demonstration Team in Albuquerque
or for Our Panel Here in Phoenix, Please Give Us a Call or Send Us a
Fax. Back to You, Leslie.

Cone: Sure. We Look Forward to the Questions, Robin.

Gordon: Am I Allow to Do Ask A Question, Robin?

Cone: No Fair, Gayle.

Gordon: You Mentioned in Order to Have the Spatial Capability, Weaver to
Import the Gcdb Data. How Long Do You Think That Will Take for Most
States?

Cone: We Have Been Working on Improving That Software So We Can Do
Importing Faster. I Think the Estimates Are Anywhere Between Six Months
and Two Years for the States, Depending upon Their Workload, How Many
Townships and What Kind Of Problems They Might Encounter. We Have it So
That the Gcdb Data Can Be Entered in a Matter of 15, 20 Minutes If
There\'s No Problems in a Township. If There\'s Things That Have to Be
Wig All Little Bit, Then it Will Take a Little Longer. But We Feel That
the States, Six Months to Two Years Is Probably A Good Estimate. And You
Don\'t Have to Wait until You Have it All Done. You Can Start Using it
as Soon As You Have Any of the Information Imported.

Gordon: Thank You.

Cone: Rick, Why Don\'t We Also Show Subsurface Ownership. Again, this Is
Information That\'s Currently on the Master Title Plats and the That Is
Sometimes Tricky for Our Public\'s to Read. You Can Also Display That.
It\'s the Vertical Hatch Lines That Have Come up on the Screen Now. You
Can See We Have a Couple Circumstances Where You Have Subsurface
Ownership but No Surface. We Call That Split Estate, Which It\'s Readily
Apparent When You See a Picture of It. The Other Information ‑‑ the Next
Information We Want to Show Is Some of the Case Information And One of
the Things BLM\'s Always Wanted to Be Able to Do With ALMRS Is Link the
Spatial And Map Information with Case Information, And, Again, the ALMRS
Database Is Very Important Because Without That You Wouldn\'t Be Able to
Show the Capability That We\'re Showing You Today. So Rick Has
Highlighted Land Leases, Right‑of‑way Grants and Conveyances Because
Those Exist In this Township. You Can See That the Blue Stipple Is
Conveyances, and the Violet‑colored ‑‑ or Magenta Colored Brick Pattern
Is Land Leases. And the Orange Is Right‑of‑ways. Now, this Is Coming
Right out of The Database F a Case Was Entered the next Time We Queried
The System, it Would Show You The New Case. We Can Show You a Little Bit
About How You Link Information From the Spatial by Highlighting This
Land Lease. If We Want to Find Out, Ok, BLM Has Lots of Land Leases,
What Kind Is This, Rick Can Highlight Land Leases and Then Go up and
Pull the Case Information, Which Has Been Abstracted from the ALMRS
Database and What Does That Give Us, Rick?

Dickman: Well, What We\'ve Identified Is That We Have a Recreation and
Public Purpose Lease Here for 640 Acres. It Was Established on February
2nd, 1993. It\'s Still an Application at This Particular Time.

Cone: So If You Wanted to Find out the Customer, Can You Do That as
Well?

Dickman: Oh, Certainly. Let Me Just Go Ahead and Close This Screen and
Then I\'ll Select The Customer Screen Right Here. I\'ll Open up this
Window a Little Bit More and You\'ll See That the Customer on this
Particular Rmpp Lease Is the North American Cultural Museum
Incorporated.

Cone: So That Gives You a Come Examples How You Will Be Able to Link the
Alphanumeric Database with the Spatial Display. The next Thing We Would
like to Show You Is Other Information, Examples of What You Can Do and
Overlay with That ALMRS Information. So I\'m Going to Ask Rick If He Can
Bring in a Digital Raster Graph Which Is a Digital Copy of A Topo Map.

What I Have Done Is Zoomed in On the Land Lease Area and Then I Am Going
to Go down on the Legend and Select the U.s. Geological Survey Topo
Sheet.

Cone: this Is an Example How Can You Take Any Digital Information, If
It\'s Gee ‑‑ Digital Information If It\'s Geographically Referenced and
Overlay That with ALMRS Data.

Little: Leslie, What You\'re Demonstrating Right Now We Might Mention Is
Not Dependent on Gcdb, Correct?

Cone: No, We Are in the Display and Query and it Is Dependent on Gcdb.
The Digital Raster Graph Is a Digital Copy Which Is Being Geographically
Referenced and The Magenta Lines Are Coming out Of ALMRS Data and They
Are the Public Lands Survey Grid.

Little: So We Can Import Data, but You Can\'t Overlay Data Until You
Have the Gcdb to Tie The Two Together.

Cone: Right. The Only Way We Are Able to Display this Is Because New
Mexico Has Imported the Gcdb Data for this Township Which Is 11 North 10
West. We Wanted to Give You Some ‑‑ a Couple Other Examples of the Kinds
of Information If You Have It Digitally in Your Gis Systems How You Are
Going to Be Able to Overlay with That ALMRS Data. So I\'m Going to Ask
Rick to Pull In Some Shaded Relief. In Order to Do That He\'s Going To
Click off the Themes. If You Get Too Much on a Map, You Can Click off So
That It\'s Not Too Busy. If You See ‑‑ this Is the Same Area, 11 North,
10 West, and the Magenta Lines Overlaid the Shaded Relief Is the Public
Lands Survey Grid Coming out of ALMRS. Now, We Can Show You Some Other
Information That We Happen to Have in this Township That\'s Digital and
Geographically Referenced and I\'m Going to Ask Rick to Highlight Those
Themes And Tell Us What They Are.

Dickman: What I\'ve Done Is We Do Have One Digitized Right‑of‑way
Location Identified. We Also Have the Hydrology Themes, Which Would Be
Your Streams. We Have ‑‑ We Have Your Elevation Contours. It Outlines
this Upland Area Here in the Eastern Portion of The Township. Then We
Have the Transportation Themes Right Here. What We Have Is We Have Two
Actual Towns, the Town of Milan And the Town of Grants Right Here in the
Southeastern Corner.

Cone: the First Time Rick and I Did this Demo for the New Direct Ore, We
Found out He Was Color‑blind by Using this Example. He Couldn\'t See the
Colors We Picked. So One of the Things Rick Can Show You Is It\'s Very
Easy to Change the Colors If Something Doesn\'t Show up Well, If You
Need to Change It, You Can Do That Quite Easily by Pointing, Clicking,
Bringing down a Color Pallet and Changing the Color. That\'s What He Is
Showing You How to Do Now. He Has Switched the Colors.

Dickman: What I Did Is I Just Deepened the Blue Color for the Hydrology
Theme Right Here.

Cone: the next Thing We Would Like to Show You Is an Example Of How You
Can ‑‑ Some Other Information That You Can Bring In with ALMRS Data, and
It\'s an Aerial Photograph for this Same Area. So, Again, the ALMRS
Application Does Not Come Loaded with All These Extra Themes. These Are
Just Information That New Mexico Had Digitally That We Are Showing You
Examples of How You Overlay That with the Capabilities That You Have in
Release 1, And, of Course, as I Said, You Have to Have Imported Your
Gcdb Data to Be Able to Do This. So, Rick, Do You Want to Explain?

Dickman: Certainly. What We Have Are Some 1 to 24,000 Aerial
Photography. It\'s Got 5‑meter Resolution for The Black and White Themes
and 15‑meter Resolution for the Color. So It\'s a Very Nice Image.

Cone: and Can You See Overlaid on Top of That Is the Magenta Line And,
Again, That Magenta Line Is the Public Land Survey Grid That Comes out
of The ALMRS Data and That\'s Just Overlaid on Top of the Aerial Photo.
Rick Can Click on the Case Information and Show You Where That Land
Lease Is on Top of the Aerial Photo. So Any of the Information That Is
Digital and Geographically Referenced Can Be Overlaid with The ALMRS
Data.

Little: Leslie, If I Wanted a Copy of That, Could I Print That Screen?

Cone: Yes, We Have Print Capability So That ‑‑ Although Today We\'re Not
Hooked up to the Printer, but When We Deploy the System You Will Be Able
to Print The Maps in Color and in Black And White. That Pretty Much
Concludes ‑‑ Ed, You Have Been Able to See The Kinds of Information We
Have Been Able to Overlay, Anything That\'s Digital and Geographically
Referenced We Have Been Able to Overlay with ALMRS. So I Think That
Gives Us a Lot Of Capability.

Roberson: That\'s Very Exciting for Me to \<Spell\> Z I Know the Viewers
out There Probably Have Questions That They ‑‑ as They See the System,
But I Can See How We Could Apply It Back Home in Roswell Today If We Had
it Loaded up in the System Running.

Cone: Again, this Is Release 1 Capability. It\'s Not Release 2
Capability Because as the Director Mentioned We Just Got the Funding
Clearance and Are Just Starting Development of Release 2. So this Will
Be Delivered to All States When We Deploy the System And Once the States
Import Their Gcdb, You Are Going to Be Able To Do this.

Roberson: Great. Robin, Do You Have Any More Questions?

Stoebe: Yes, We D We Got a Fax In. You Will Have to Pay Attention. This
Is a Long One. I Think this Is for You Leslie. This Is from Lindsey in
Casper, Wyoming. Here Is a Little Intro. We Currently Use the M‑12
Report To Get Reports on Authorized Leases, Unit Agreements,
Participating Areas and Communitization Agreements. That Report Is Saved
as a Text File and We Modify That Text File into a Database to Be Used
In an Automated Mapping Program. Until the Spatial Capabilities Of ALMRS
Is Well Established and Allowing an Export Be Made into A Gis Package We
Would like to Continue the Automated Mapping Efforts. First Question: Is
There Still Going to Be an M‑12 Report? If So, What Are the Export
Options of Such a Query, I.e., a Database, a Comma‑separated Text File,
an Ascii Text File?

We\'re Working Right Now, in Fact There Is a Team Working on Queries and
Reports on How We\'re Going to Provide Additional Reporting in Release
2. We Will Continue the M‑12 Reports, However, We Have to Figure out the
Best Way to Do That Importing and Exporting, And Those Teams Are Working
on That as We Speak.

Stoebe: Good. Second Part of the Question Here: What Are the Vector
Export Options Going to Be Once A Desired View Is Achieved, I.e.,
Arcview, Shape File, Arc Info Coverage, Arc Info Export File, Mif, et
Cetera? Any of These Export Formats Are Acceptable So Data Can Be Added
To Them for Projects for Further Analysis.

Cone: One of the Things We\'ve Done in Release 2 Is Try to Identify All
the Kind of Importing and Exporting Files That We Want to Be Able to
Make Available, and Those Have Been Identified in the Requirements.
We\'re Working On, Now That the Money Has Been Cleared Through Omb, We
Are Working on Providing That Capability but That Is Release 2
Capability.

Stoebe: I Think You Might Have Already Answered the Third Part Here: Are
There Going to Be Any Raster Export Options, Gif, Tiff, Jpg? These Are
Easily Imported into Many Word Processing and Spreadsheet Applications
for Reports.

Cone: Yes, We Want All Those Capabilities. You Can Now in Release 1
Import Some Information and Export Some Information and We Want to
Expand Those Capabilities in Release 2. We Also Want to Be Able to Do it
So That the Ordinary User Can Import and Export Files and Not Just Gis
Specialists.

Gordon: it Sounds like Maybe You Should Get Lindsey on One of Your Teams
to Maybe Address Requirements.

Cone: Yes, Absolutely. We\'re Looking for Recruits All The Times to Help
Us Work on Extra Functionality.

Stoebe: Another Fax Has Come In. This Is from the New Mexico State
Office Right Around the Corner from You. Would Grazing Leases Also Be on
This Application?

Cone: Well, as We Said, Any Information That Is in a Digital Format and
Geographically Referenced Can Be Imported and Displayed with the ALMRS
Information. So If States Have Their Grazing Information Allotments in a
Digital Form, They Will Be Aim To ‑‑ Able to Import That into And
Display with the ALMRS Data.

Stoebe: Another Fax. They Keep Rolling in Here. This Is from New Mexico
Again. What Type of Outputs Are Available from the Aoi Graphic, I.e.,
Coverages, et Cetera?

Cone: Well, the Service Center Is ‑‑ or the National IRM Center Is
Providing the ‑‑ Some Of the Examples That Rick and I Showed You, the
Quad Coverages, 1 to 100,000, 1 to 24. But States Can Attach Any Other
Coverages That They Have to That, and That Gives You Kind of A Map Index
That Will Allow the Publics to Know What Coverages They Have Where.

Stoebe: Ok. You Had Mentioned Some of These Things Are Coming in Release
2. Can You Give Us Some Estimates On When We Might Be Able to See That
in the Field, Release 2, That Is?

Cone: Well, We\'re Working on Release 2 Now, and the First Capabilities
for Release 2 Is The Ability to Upload and Download Oil and Gas to the
Pc‑based Sale Programs That the States Are Running. The Aoi Selector Is
Going to Be Attached to the Alphanumeric So You Will Be Able to Pick it
Spatially or Alpha Numerically. That Should Happen this Summer. We\'re
Working on Additional Spatial Capabilities So Can You Display below the
40‑acre Level, Irregular Surveys and Linear Features. We Hope That\'s
Available in \'\'99. Right Now the Capability Is in The State Offices
and Field Offices Can Do Telenet and Export Their Displays in Order To
Have Spatial Capability. In Release 2, We\'re Plan to Go Purchase
Equipment So That Spatial Servers Are in All the Field Offices and You
Will Be Able to Do That. Plus We\'re Working on the Internet Capability
So That the Public and Anybody Else Can Access Any of the ALMRS
Information, Including the Spatial, from Their Machines at Home.

Gordon: Rick, If I Remember Correctly, You Have Been Doing Some Work in
Montana on Some Other Overlays of Particular Interest to You?

Dickman: Yes, We Have. We\'ve Been Working on the Abandoned Mine Land
Themes. We Have Been Working on Wildlife Themes Through the Ssst
Program. We Have Been Getting Going a Little on Weeds. So We Are Also
Working on Reference Themes. We Would like to Connect Them in With the
Area of Interest Window As Well.

Little: So the Area of Interest Serves as a Bureauwide Vehicle, Not Just
an ALMRS Vehicle.

Cone: Right. Can You Kind of Attach Any Kind Of Coverage You Have. It\'s
an Automated Map Index. It Gives You the Ability to Add Information So
the Public Knows Where You Have Coverages.

Stoebe: We Would like to Thank Leslie and Rick for That Demonstration
and I Know Everyone Is Excited about What Is Coming, Particularly the
Power of the Software as it Relates to Spatial Displays.

Roberson: You Bet. As a Manager in the Field, I Can Seat Applications.
They\'re Rolling Through My Mind Right Now. Can\'t Wait to Get this
Thing up And Running. I Want to Thank You Both for Showing Us ‑‑ Taking
Us for a Cruise Around the Block, as You Might Say.

Cone: Our Pleasure.

Dickman: Thank You.

Stoebe: We\'ll Get Back to You, Then. As Far as the Panel Here, Any
Thoughts on What We\'ve Seen?

Little: I Think, as Ed Just Said, Those of Us Who Have Worked in the
Field for Years, Are Really Excited about the Possibilities and Some of
the Things That I\'ve Seen Rick Be Able to Do Using Some of the Other
Existing Databases and Being Able to Link Those. Bureau People Are Very
Creative And I\'m Just Confident as Soon As We Get the Basic Capability
Out There, and Particularly as We Go Through the next Series of Hardware
Upgrades to Provide Additional ‑‑ Ability for Processing Data, this
Thing Will Blossom. We\'re Really Building the Initial Foundation. We
Built it First with the Modernization Part of the Project, the Linking
of the Computers. Now We\'re Just Working on Linking the Use of the
Databases That We Already Have an Investment in plus the Foundation for
Building New Databases.

Gordon: Leslie Did Talk about The Importing the Gcdb Data. We Also Need
to Consider Recognize ‑‑ Recognize That the Data Is Not Ready to Go in
Every State Right Now, and So Some of The States Will Still Be
Collecting the Data over the Next Couple Years, Too.

Little: Their Collection Is Not Complete, True. But Portions of Every
State Is Available.

I Was Wondering about the Inference on the Internet. Is the Public Going
to Have Access to BLM Records or Just Small Portions of It? I Know Right
Now There Is Case Abstract and There Are Summary Pages They Can Come in
the Public Room and Get under ALMRS. But this Internet Thing Opens up A
Lot of Questions.

Little: Well, There Are Two Parts of That. One Is, in the General Sense,
a Big Part of the Effort in Release 2 Is to Try to Satisfy Those Kinds
of Issues. There\'s Some Very Serious Security Issues That Have to Be
Addressed, as You Well Know. We Have a Lot of Files That Have
Proprietary Data in Them. So We Have to Be Able to Assure The Public
We\'re Meeting Our Legal Responsibilities to Protect That Data. So the
Mechanics of Providing The Data Are Fairly Straightforward. It\'s How
You Mix That in with The Security. The Second Question ‑‑ or the Second
Part Is, in Terms of What We\'re Going to Be Able to Provide to the
Public, That Really Has a Lot to Do with the Way Which We Link Our
System, And Where Pieces of the System Exist. Initially We Only Have
Spatial Servers, for Example, in the State Offices. As We Move into
Release 2, a Part of the Hardware Upgrade That\'s Being Proposed as a
Part Of Release 2 Is ‑‑ Provides Spatial Server Capability at the Field
Office Level but We\'re Also Looking at Ways to Be Sure That We\'re
Using the Latest Technology, Most Efficiently, So That Some of the
Thinking That We Had a Couple Years Ago on What We Are Going to Be Able
to Do, We Have Already Learned There Is No Ways to Do It. We Can Do it
Faster. When You\'re Dealing with Spatial Data, You\'re Dealing with
Large Amounts of Information. So the Way That You Transfer That
Information ‑‑ If You Have A Serve Inner Your Office and I Have to Link
to It, the Way We Pass That Information Back and Forth Becomes Critical.
We Also Want to Be Sure We Don\'t Overload the System. Modernization Has
Designed and Constructed the Basic Network. We Have Network Improve Also
That Are Part of Release 1 Just For the Alphanumeric Portion as We
Expand Spatial Capability. We Have to Be Sure We Keep up With Everything
That Goes along With That So That Everybody Just Doesn\'t Suddenly Dump
Such a Vast Amount of Information in There That We Bog down the System.
So it Has to Be Very Carefully Integrated in Terms of How We Put All
That Together and Use It.

Gordon: Dave, You Mentioned The Changing Technology. For Those of Us Who
Provide Technology, it Can Be Very Frustrating Trying to Keep up With
the Rapid Pace of Change That We\'re Seeing Today. However, it Also Has
a Very Positive Part to It, and That\'s That, as You Said, Capabilities
That Weren\'t Possible Several Years Ago Are Now Right There For Us
Ready to U.s. We Do Have A Number of Activities Underway In the Field ‑‑
Activities That Are Experimenting with Making ALMRS Information
Available over Internet. California Has a Project Going And at the
National IRM Center We Are Using Some New Tools to Demonstrate Some of
the Ways We Could Be Extracting Data from The Database and Then
Presenting It over the Internet.

Little: and We\'re Working With Several Groups of Publics, Including
Industry and Just General Users, to Be Sure That We\'re Providing the
Information The Way That They Really Want It. We Don\'t Just Dump a
Bunch of Information into a Box Somewhere. In Fact It\'s Structured in a
Way They Can Go in and Access and Use It.

Gordon: I Think That\'s One of The Real Advantages of the Pilots We Have
in the States Right Now, Is We Will Be Able to Get Some Feedback and
Factor That into Our Plans for the Actual Deployment.

Gammon: I Know at the Washington Level We\'ve Got, Most People Have Unix
Systems at Their Desk, but a Lot of People Are Shifting to Pcs. I Was
Led to Believe That We Needed the Unix System to Access ALMRS. From What
You Said, Seems like We Can Use Pcs as Well.

Little: Some of That Is in The Future. The Situation as it Exists with
The Modernization Equipment Today, in Order to Access the ALMRS
Database, You Have to Be Able to Link into the Unix System. But When You
Get into the Network, I Think You Made the Observation, That It\'s
Platform‑independent, Doesn\'t Matter What Kind of Platform You Have.
You Have a Common Structure, and The Way in Which You Get That
Information Would Be Much like You Go into Your Pc And, You Know, You
Can Use a Browser, and There Is Just a Fantastic Amount Of Information
in There from All Over the World. I Think the Challenge, Again, Is To Do
it in a Way That Really Allows the Public and Industry And BLM People to
Go in There And Not Waste a Lot of Time but They Can Get Right to the
Nut That They\'re Looking for and Make it Operational and Functional.

Stoebe: at this Point I Think It\'s Time for Us to Move to Our Second
Demonstration from Albuquerque District Office Where Ed Roberson Is
Again Standing By. Ed, I Believe You Have Cathy Cooney and Some Other
Staff Members with You to Give Us a Closer Look at ALMRS Release 1.

Roberson: We Sure Do. We\'re Back Here. We Have Set up the Second
Demonstration for You. As I Mentioned Earlier, That\'s Actually Case
Processing Demonstrating Using Mining Claim Recordation. With Cathy Is
Matthew Lopez, a Legal Instruments Examine Inner Our State Office and
Also Natalie Dante Who Is a Land Law Examine Inner Our State Office And
I Would like to Point out That Today Is Natalie\'s Birthday. So We Have
Scheduled the Satellite Broadcast Just to Celebrate That Birthday. I
Hope She Appreciates It. Cathy, I Would like to Know What You Are Going
to Show Us Today.

Cooney: During this Segment We Will Show You How the ALMRS Users Will
Interact with the ALMRS Application and Other Users and How to Use ALMRS
on a Daily Basis.

Roberson: Great. I Can\'t Wait to See It. I Know That from Talking to
Leslie One of the Main Foundations That That Additional Capability Is
Built upon Is the Ability to Have Good Data in the ALMRS System and I
Think You Are Going to Show Us How That Starts.

Cooney: Let\'s Get Started. Before We Have Natalie Begin Working on the
Mining Claim Case, We Want to Emphasize to Everyone That We\'re Not
Going to Show You How to ‑‑ the Mechanics Of the Right Way of Processing
The Case. We\'re Going to Take You Through Some Case Entry Windows. But
Mainly We Warrant to Focus On Business Practices and How The People Will
Interact with The ALMRS Application and with The Other Users. So
Natalie, I Think We\'re Ready To Get Started.

Dante: Ok.

Cooney: by the Way, Happy Birthday.

Dante: Thank You. You Will Almost Always Begin by Setting Your Aoi to
Save Time I Already Have Mine Set.

Cooney: as Part of the Business Practices in New Mexico And Oklahoma,
the State Office Users Will Have Their Default Aoi Set to the State, and
the Field Office and ‑‑ Field Office Users Will Have Their Aoi Set to
The District and Resource Area Level. Ok, Natalie, Let\'s Keep on
Processing Our Case.

Dante: Ok. I Will Now Start Case Processing To Begin Entering My Mining
Claim.

Cooney: and this Will Be the Situation Regardless of the Kind Of Case
You\'re Working on as to How You Start a New Case. Natalie Is Going to
Work Within Mining Claim, Which Is Case Group 38, and Our Case Type,
Natalie, Will Be the Load Claim?

Dante: Depending on What Your User Access Is Will Depend upon The
Capabilities That You Have Within the ALMRS Application Itself. Natalie
Will Be a Mining Claim User, Therefore, Her User Access For Case Type
Will Be Established Only for 38 Case Group. Now, If She Wants to Access
Data For Other Case Types, Let\'s Say Rights‑of‑ways or Fluids, She
Would Have to Go in Through Queries and Reports and Find That
Information and Generate a Report. Ok. So Now We\'re Ready to Continue
Working on Our Case, and the First Process That We\'re Going To Start
with Is the Establish Case Process and We Can Actually Do Some Data
Entry Within this Window. Natalie, Our Case Establish Date Will Be
Today\'s Date, Right?

Dante: Yes, it Sure Will.

Cooney: Then the Time Natalie Knows Is 8:00. That\'s the Time That Was
Stamped On the Document That Came In.

Dante: I\'m Not Sure What the Reason Code Is, So I\'m Going to Access My
Pathway Data Standards.

Cooney: Codes Are a New Feature of ALMRS and If Natalie Isn\'t Sure of
What the Code Is, She Can Just Simply Access the On‑line Help, Which Is
the Pathway Data Standards, and the Pathways, Each of the Pathways, Have
Data Standards on Line. And on this ‑‑ in this Situation For this Data
Element, the Code That Natalie Needs to Use Is L.o.c. for Located. So
Natalie Will Go into the Domain List and Select L.o.c., Location Notice.
She\'s Completed the Data Entry For That Window. So She\'ll Update It,
and That\'s Saving the Data to the Database For this Case. And We\'re
Finished with That Part of the Process. Another Mandatory Process Is to
Enter the Location Information. So We\'re Going to Continue on With
Location Recordation, and Our Mining Claim Name Is Michelle 1 and the
Location Date, Natalie Will Use the Date Selection Window, Is April 1st,
And the Receive Date Is Today\'s Date. So That\'s Defaulted to Today.
That\'s All the Mandatory Information That She Needs to Include for this
Part of the Process. So She\'s Updated It, Saved it to The Database, and
We\'re onto the Next Mandatory Process, Which Is The Mining Claim Land.

Dante: I Will Now Be Selecting My Land. You Have Seen in Previous Demos
How to Select an Element Part. Today We Are Going to Show You Something
a Live Different, the L and M Land.

Cooney: We Have 8 Categories Of L and M Record Based Land That We Have
Developed. We Really Need Help from the National Program Leads in Order
For Us to Decide Which of the Categories We Use for the Various Cases.
Now, for Mining Claims, We Will Use the L and M Location Based Land, but
Do We Really Want to Continue That as We Go into ALMRS? For
Rights‑of‑ways and Pipelines, We Probably Want to Use the Linear L&m
Based Land. Matthew, You Want to Talk about The Land Maintainer
Functionality.

Lopez: as Far as the Functions in New Mexico, L&m Based Is a New Thing
for New Mexico. When You Go into Find Your L&m Land, If You Don\'t Find
It, You Need to Contact Your Land Maintainer to Show You How to Create
the L&m Land. And Another Feature Is Subdividing Land, Survey Land, And
If You Need Help in New Mexico, You Would Contact Your New Mexico Land
Maintainer and You Contact Your New Mexico Land Maintainer and They
Would Help You Learn How to Subdivide Land In L&m and Create Land.

Cooney: That\'s Right, Matthew, Because That Is a New Responsibility
That Will Come Along with the Implementation of The ALMRS Software.
Those Roles and Responsibilities Are Identified in the Business
Practices Document That New Mexico Has Been Working On. So to Come Back
to Natalie ‑‑

Gordon: I Just Want to Make a Point Here. This Is a New System. It\'s
Going to Be Doing Business Differently for Many People. We Need to
Encourage People to Ask Questions. You Were Just Referring to That, If
You Don\'t Understand, Make Sure You Ask. When We Deploy the System, We
Will Have Coaches Available to Be Helping. But It\'s Important ‑‑ People
Don\'t like to Admit That They Don\'t Know Something, but in This Case,
That Is Perfectly Acceptable, and the More Questions That the People in
New Mexico Ask, the Better We\'ll Be Able to Deploy the System in the
Other States.

Cooney: That\'s Right. Hopefully from New Mexico We\'re Going to Learn
What a Lot of Those Business Practices Should Be and We\'re Going to Be
Documenting Them So That When We Deploy ALMRS on Day One, the Users Will
Have a Lot of Information Available to Them So That They Will Be Able to
Interact with Us and Know What The Processes Are. So to Continue on with
this Case, Natalie Needs to Enter the Mining Claim Assessment Year,
Which Is 1998. As Soon as She Has Completed That, Then We\'ll Enter the
Receive Date, Which Is Today\'s Date, and Now We\'re Going to Create
That Information to the Database and Wave\' Finished with This Part of
Processing Our ‑‑ We\'ve Finished with this Part of Processing Our Case.
Another New Feature of ALMRS Is The Global Functionality. This Is Part
of the Application Where a Lot of the Data Common To Cases Is ‑‑ Is
Where it Resides. So Natalie Is Accessing the Global Functionality,
Because We Want to Add a Customer to Our Data, Make That Association.
Here We Have the Customer Information. So Natalie Is Going to Navigate
Down Through the Pray Says, Continue with the Information, And Now Here
Is Our Case Customer Interest Window. Natalie Will Be Able to Query The
Customer Database and Find Out Whether That Customer Is There So She Can
Start Making Those Associations.

Stoebe: Cathy, Can I Interrupt You for a Second? We Would like to Take a
Chance To ‑‑ a Chance to Remind Our Field Office Personnel to Call In
Again. If You Have a Question or a Comment for Any of Our Albuquerque
Presenters or for The Panel Here in Phoenix, Please Give Us a Call or
Send Us A Fax. We Will Get to as Many of Your Questions as We Can in the
Time Allotted.

Little: Can I Ask ‑‑

Gammon: under the Old System We Had Difficulties Getting Everybody to
Enter All the Information. Some People Entered and it Some Didn\'t. I
Notice under the ALMRS You\'ve Got Options down There That Are Optional
and You\'ve Got Some That Are Mandatory. What Does That Mean? Are They
Going to Get Shocked If They Don\'t Enter a Mandatory Item?

Cooney: Well, No, We\'re Not Going to Go to That Extreme, Carl, but
Hopefully Through Training and with the Pathway Data Standards the Users
Will Know What Information Is Mandatory, and Which Is Truly Optional. So
What You See on the Screen, If It\'s Mandatory, Do You Have To Enter
That Information. If That Event Has Occurred. However, If it Says
\"Optional,\" You Really Need to Refer to the Pathway Data Standards,
Because The Standards May Tell You It\'s Mandatory. Again, Through
Training, We\'re Encouraging the Users to Understand What Their Pathways
Are and the Data They Need to Enter and That\'s Going to Happen Through
Being ‑‑ Using the ALMRS Application and Becoming Familiar with the
Data.

Gammon: If Somebody Fails to Enter Information in the Mandatory Item,
Will They Get Some Kind of a Prompt That ‑‑ Indicating That They Forgot
to Enter Information That\'s Necessary?

Cooney: There Are Some Situations Where You\'re Navigating Through the
Pathways, If You Continue into Other Processes, You Might Get a Warning
Window That Says \"Oops, You Haven\'t Completed These Various Processes,
You Might Want to Go Back and Update Them,\" and It\'s Just a Reminder.
There Isn\'t Any Enforcement Within the Pathways That Tells You Have to
Enter Information Before You Can Go Any Further, And That\'s a Good
Feature, Because it Gives You a Lot of Flexibility. Because Events
Don\'t Always Happen Within a Set Period of Time or They Don\'t Always
Occur One after the Other.

Gammon: Thanks, Cathy.

Cooney: Back to Our Case and Natalie Is Ready to Query the Customer
Database to Find out If Our Customer Is There. Our Customer Is Mary Jo
Goldenrod, Right?

Dante: That\'s Correct.

Cooney: She Is Going to Search the Database and Uses That Asterisk as a
Wild Card, And ‑‑

Dante: There Is No ‑‑ the Customer Is Not There.

Cooney: Ok. That\'s All Right. Natalie Doesn\'t Have to Worry Because
She Has Business Practices Which Tell Her What She Should Do in this
Situation.

Dante: I Am Going to Send a Mail to My Customer Maintainer Requesting
the Customer Be Added.

Cooney: Nationally Has Already Put Together a Groupwise Message and
These Procedures Are Documented in Our Practice Guide As to What
Information She Needs To Send to the Customer Maintainer. For New
Mexico, We Have Four People in the State Office Who Will Have Customer
Maintainer Responsibilities, and We Have a Groupwise Account Set up for
Those People. Natalie Will Send it to Them. One of Those Four People
Will Process Her Request. So Natalie Is Going to Send That. But That
Doesn\'t Keep Her ‑‑ You Know, She Has to Wait a Little While Before She
Gets a Response Back from the Customer Maintainer, but That\'s All
Right. It Doesn\'t Keep Her from Continuing to Do Her Job. She Can Keep
Working on Her Case, or She Can Be Doing Other Work Within ALMRS. So Now
We\'re Going to Go over to Matthew. For Today He Is Going to Be the
Customer Maintainer. In His Real Life He Is Going to Be the Land
Maintainer. So Matthew Has Received the Groupwise Message from Natalie.

Lopez: in New Mexico, It\'s Going to Be Our Practice to Go Ahead and
Double Check That the Customer Isn\'t in There Already Before We Enter a
New Customer.

Cooney: Again, this Is a Standard Practice That We Have Identified
Within Our Business Practices Guide. So Matthew Is Going to Use the Same
Query That Natalie Did Although He Is in the Customer Maintenance
Portion of the Software.

Lopez: the Name Isn\'t in There, So We Will Create. So Now I\'m Going to
Go Ahead and Create the Customer.

Cooney: and He Has Natalie\'s Groupwise Message in the Background, So He
Can Go Back And Forth Between it to Verify With the Name and What the
Address Is.

Little: You Might Mention Why You Didn\'t Just Allow Natalie to Do this.
Why Do You Have to Involve a Second Person?

Cooney: That\'s a Good Question. We Control That Access Today. We Have a
Few People in the State Who Actually Clean up Our Customer Data. We Want
to Continue That, Because We Found out That\'s a Good Policy. Now, Each
State Can Handle it Differently. But for New Mexico We Feel like Our
Four Customer Maintainers Can Handle That Workload Because We Want to
Keep the Customer Database Clean, Accurate and up To Date. We\'ve
Identified That We Believe We Can Respond Back to the Users In a Maximum
of Four Hours. So Although Natalie Might Have To Wait a Couple of Hours
for Her Response, Again, That Doesn\'t Keep Her from Doing Her Job.
Looks like Matthew Has Created That New Customer Now in the Database.

Lopez: after We Have Created The New Customer, We Will Reply Back to Her
Message, Giving Her A Confirmation That We Completed That for Her.

Cooney: as Soon as Matthew Has Completed That, Natalie Will Get the
E‑mail Message Through Groupwise, and She Can Continue Processing That
Case at Whatever Step She Wants To. Now, Understand, Matthew Is Not
Updating Her Case for Her. He\'s Just Simply Created That Customer in
the Database. Again, That\'s Part of the Business Practices That New
Mexico Has Adopted. He Does Not Update the Case Data. So Matthew, I
Think You\'ve Sent That Groupwise to Natalie. So We Will Go Back to
Natalie Now.

Dante: I Have Read My Mail. I Have Seen Matthew Has Added My Customer
and I Am Going to Try Querying it Again, and Mary Jo Goldenrod Is Now
Available for Me to Select. I Am Going to Establish Her Interest as a
Claimant.

Cooney: and That Code, Natalie Could Check the Data Standards, Which Are
Online, but She Has Worked These Cases Quite A While and She Knows this
Is a Claimant and That\'s Code 58. She Makes That Selection. Now She Is
Going to Go to the Effective Date. Today\'s Date Looks Good. Again,
She\'s Just Selecting Data. Now She\'s Going to Create That Customer to
the Case, Actually Making That Association. You See How Fast That Came
Back To Natalie. The next Step We\'re Going to Work on ‑‑ She Is Going
to Minimize Globals, by the Way. The next Process Will Be to Serialize
this Case. There Are Three Mining Claims Involved and as You Have Seen,
She Has Updated the Case with Minimal Information. Because She Is in
Mining Claims, She Is Allowed the Functionality To Change the Range of
Numbers. You Probably Haven\'t Seen this In a Lot of the Demos. Again,
this Is Why We Chose a Mining Claim Case. The Land Office Code Reflects
The Administrative Area Where The Case Is Located. Now, You Notice That
Natalie Just Typed in Nm In. She Didn\'t Put the Mc Extension On That.
That\'s Another New Business Practice. We Are Going to Be Filing Those
Like We Do Our Normal Cases. Like I Said, We Are Going to Generate Three
Serial Numbers. Now, It\'s Real Important That Earlier When Natalie Was
Selecting Her Case Type That She Chose the Correct One. If She Gets to
this Stage When She Is Serializing and She Made A Mistake, She Is Going
to Have To Contact One of the Two People In the State Office Who Have
the Permissions to Void out the Cases. Up to the Point of Serialization,
Natalie Can Delete Any Information She Wants. And the System Is Actually
Creating Three Serial Numbers And It\'s Saving the Information She Just
Created to the Other Two Serial Numbers So She Doesn\'t Have to Type it
Again. This Really Saves a Lot of Time For the Mining Claim User. So in
Just a Few Seconds We Should Have Back a Listing of The Three Serial
Numbers That Natalie Has Been Working On. Ok. So ‑‑ Shortly We Will Have
Our Serial Numbers, as We Wait. Do You Have Any Questions, Ed?

Roberson: Yes, Cathy. What I Can See Here Is That this System Is Going
to Be Actually Operating, Whenever It\'s Deployed, this Is the Job These
Folks Are Going to Be Doing, This Is Real Time Data. I Think I See the
Numbers Coming On the Screen Now, but I Can See As a Manager That I Need
to Go Back and Talk to My Folks about The Kind of Work That They\'re
Going to Get to Do in this New Environment When it Is Deployed.

Cooney: and That\'s Hopefully What We\'re Trying to Portray to The
Audience, Is These Are the Issues That the Users Are Going To Be Dealing
with When ALMRS Comes to Their Office and I Know Your Users Have Talked
to You About Some of the Issues and We Have Been Identifying Them. Ok.
So the next Step Is to Show Some Of the Mass Update Capabilities, And,
Again, Because Natalie Is In Mining Claims, She Has Permissions to Go
into Segment Administration. Only, Though, to Do Mass Maintenance. So
Natalie Is Going to Go into Mat Maintenance and We\'re Going To Update
an Assessment Year for 1999. Now, Right Now with What New Mexico Will Be
Getting for Functionality, Mining Claim Cases Will Have this Capability,
And All the Other Cases Will Be Able to Update Anything That\'s In Case
Globals. Now, We Know That There Are a Lot of Concerns about Transfer Of
Interest in Mass Updates, Especially in Fluids Cases. There Is a Team
Working with NIRMC to Work out Those Procedures and Come up with the
Processes That Need to Be Developed. So Hopefully That Will Be Coming
Along Pretty Soon. A Lot of Progress Has Been Made Within a Real Short
Period of Time. So Natalie Is Now into the Mass Update ‑‑ Mass
Maintenance Area, And She Can Actually Make the Selections of the Data
She Is Going to Mass Update. So I Think We\'ll Let Her Just Continue
There and We\'re Going To Go to Matthew for a Few Minutes to Show You
Just a Couple of the Reporting Capabilities Within ALMRS. The First Is
Through Queries and Reports Within the ALMRS Application Itself.

Lopez: What I Am Going to Do Is Go Ahead and Run a Case Abstract for One
of the Mining Claims That Natalie Created. I Would Go to Queries and
Reports and Click on Report and Do a New One, Click on Case Abstract and
‑‑

Cooney: and the Case Abstract Gives You the Capability to Make Certain
Selections of Just the Information He Wants to Display. A Serial
Register Page Gives You Everything That\'s in the Case. But We Think
That the Case Abstract Will Certainly Give You The Ability to Pare down
the Information That You Need. Matthew Has Made Those Selections. And He
Can Determine What the Output Criteria Is Going to Be, Display It, Print
It, or Save to It a File. So He Is Making the Selection Criteria.

Lopez: the Difference Between A Case Abstract and a Serial Register Page
Is the Case Abstract Allows to You Select Portions of That Case, Whereas
Serial Register Page Gives You Everything That\'s in That Case.

Cooney: We\'re Just about Done. There Is Another ‑‑ as Matthew Continues
That, There Is Another Reporting Capability Within ALMRS. It\'s Called
the Aaqrs ‑‑ Not Land Acres ‑‑ and That\'s the ALMRS Ad Hoc Report
System, and If There\'s Any Questions about That Later, We Would Be Sure
Glad to Show Everyone What That Looks like. We Have about 35 to 40
Templates That Have Already Been Developed That Gives You the Users a
Lot Of Functionality in Order to Retrieve the Data from the Cases That
We\'ve Created Within ALMRS. So That Report Will Be Showing Up Here in a
Few Minutes.

Lopez: While We\'re Waiting For That We Can Show Them the Aaqrs.

Cooney: There\'s Our Report From ALMRS. This Is the Case Abstract. He\'s
Going to Change the Fond So It\'s Going to Be a Little Easier To Read.
So, Ed, That\'s How You Are Going To Get Reports out of ALMRS as a
Manager.

Roberson: That\'s Outstanding. I Appreciate What You All Have Shown Us
and the Fact That it Worked in Realtime and with Real Data. Thank You So
Much. Robin, Do You All Have Any Questions Back There in Phoenix?

Stoebe: Yes, We Do. We Have a Few Faxes That Came In. I Have One Here
from Eastern States, Regina. Her Question Is: Will this Show All
Patented Land out of U.s. Private and Federal Such as Color of Title,
Section 209, Flpma, Sets.

Cooney: Yes, Any Information Collected into ALMRS, Any Data That\'s Been
Converted Can Be Retrieved and Displayed.

Stoebe: Ok. Another Fax Here from California, Larry: Did the County Area
of Interest Data Come from Lld or Was it from Another Source? Same
Question for the Resource Area or the District Office Aois.

Cooney: We\'re Going to Let Matthew Answer That.

Lopez: the Information for Aoi and Everything Comes from Lld, and for
Some State Offices Have Changed to Field Offices. New Mexico Hasn\'t
Been Able to Do That Yet. We Still Have Resource Area and Districts, but
as Soon as All The Other States Are Coming on Line, They Should Be as
Field Offices.

Stoebe: Ok. Next Fax Here Is from Wayne in The Medford District Office.
It\'s Regarding Data Conversion: I\'m Concerned about the Potential Risk
Associated with Encountering Additional Data Conversion Problems. You
Mention We\'ve Done Some Sampling. My Question Is, Have We Looked At a
Statistical Sample Every Cases?

Cooney: We\'re in the Process ‑‑

Gordon: Why Don\'t I Start and That, Cathy, Why Don\'t You Add To That.
We Have Been Concerned about That Very Question since We Uncovered Some
of These Problems Several Months Ago. What We\'ve Done Is We Have an
Outstanding Statistician on Our Staff and We\'ve Asked Him to Go In and
Look at Exactly What Our Sampling Is and to Make Recommendations as to
Whether or Not It\'s Sufficiently Adequate. The Validation We\'ve Been
Doing So Far Is Primarily to Make Sure That We Are Checking All the
Different Pathways, the Case Types and the Action Codes. The One Area
That We May Need to Be Doing More and We\'re Going to Be Counting on
Mike to Give Us That Advice, Is in Random Sampling. Cathy, I Think You
Were Working With Mike Last Week on this Subject?

Cooney: That\'s Right. We\'re Concerned We Do Have the Right Data
Sampling So That We Can Have Confidence in the Level Of Quality for Our
Data. So Mike and I Are Continue to Go Work on That.

Gordon: I Think That You Also Have Been Expanding the Number Of Cases
Within New Mexico to Take a Look at Also?

Cooney: Yes, Every Time We Go Through Data Validation There at NIRMC, We
Expand So That We Can Get a Broader Perspective of the Kinds of Cases
That Are Being Converted and a Greater Assurance That Conversion Is
Going Correctly.

Gordon: Ok, in the Second Part of Our Program, Dave Little Is Going to
Be Talking about Our Plans for Converting the Data For Other States, and
I Think That the Approach That We Are Adopting Will Help Address this
Validation Question.

Cooney: I Think So. It Will Give the States More Confidence That the
Data Is Converting Correctly.

Stoebe: Ok. Here\'s Another Fax. This Is from Jim in the California
State Office: in Light of the Stated Interest in Making ALMRS and
Related Spatial Information Available over the Internet, What Plans Does
the Agency Have in Place to Provide Metadata Collection Tools and The
Resources to Collect the Very Large Task of Information Prior to Making
ALMRS and Related Spatial Information Available to the Public over the
Internet.

Cooney: Wow, That\'s a Long Question. I Think a Lot of That Is ‑‑ We Are
Collecting the Data and a Lot of it Goes into What Leslie And Rick Were
Showing Earlier, I Think, as to How That Data Is Going to Be Portrayed.

Little: Doesn\'t this Also Die Into Our ‑‑ Tie into Our Collection of
the Corporate Data Dictionary?

Cooney: Yes in the Data Dictionary We Have the ALMRS Data, a Lot of the
Resource Data. So We Are Beginning to Collect That into the Cdd.

Gordon: I Have a Question for Natalie, If We\'ve Covered this
Sufficiently. Natalie, this Has Been a New Tool for to You Learn. How Is
the Learning Curve Has Been for You?

Dante: I Find it to Be Relatively Simple to Learn. It Takes a Little Bit
of Practice to Get Familiar with The Pathway, but I Don\'t See Any
Problems with People Picking it Up Readily.

Stoebe: Another Fax Here from ‑‑ Let\'s See ‑‑ Here it Is. From Larry in
California State Office Again: Can Customer Maintainers Query by
Address?

Lopez: Yes, the Customer Maintainer Can Query by Address. They Can Query
by Last Name, First Name. They Can Query by the State, the City.
Anything That\'s in the Customer Fields.

Stoebe: Ok. The Last Fax I Have in Front of Me Here Is from Medford,
Oregon: Is ALMRS Release 1 Year 2000 Compliant? You must Be Reading Some
Memos Coming down from the Department.

Cooney: the Answer Is Yes.

Gordon: Yes. That\'s an Easy Question. Can We Have More like That?

Stoebe: Any Other Questions From the Panel for Those Folks?

Gammon: I Have One. I Want a Little Bit More Clarity On That Case
Abstract. Is That Report More or less for Pulling Information on One
Particular Case or Can You Pull, For Instance, in an Aoi All the
Right‑of‑way under Case Group 2800, the Activity Going under The Case
Abstract?

Lopez: on the Case Abstract Report You Can Actually Query by Case Type.
You Don\'t Have to Settle it by Just Serial Number. You Can Do a Case ‑‑
by Case Type, Then You Would Do a Case List and Then Can You Generate
Reports on That Case List That You Create by the Aoi.

Stoebe: I Have a ‑‑

Little: I Have a Question for Natalie. The Data You Are Entering under
ALMRS, How Does That Compare With What You Currently Enter With the
Legacy Systems? Is it the Very Same Data?

Dante: Yes. There\'s a Lot More Data to Enter Now than There Was Before,
but It\'s Basically the Same Data We\'re Entering, Just in a Different
System.

Little: Thank You.

Stoebe: Ok.

Roberson: Robin, Do You Have Any More Questions There?

Stoebe: I Have Run out of Faxes and the Panel, it Looks Like You Have
Answered All Our Questions Very Well. So I Appreciate Your Answers and
Your Demonstration, and Thank You Everyone There in Albuquerque Who Has
Helped with The Demonstration So Far.

Roberson: We Certainly Will. Thank You Very Much. I Hope this Has Given
You an Idea of What We Can Do Creatively and Spatially and Also What We
Do Datawise with The System When ALMRS Release 1 Comes Rolling out.
Thank You from Albuquerque.

Stoebe: Thank You. I Believe at this Point We\'re Going to Be Taking a
10‑minute Break and When We Come Back, Dave Little Will Be Giving Us
Information about the ALMRS Release 1 Deployment Schedule And Carl
Gammon Will Discuss the Business Side of ALMRS. Once Again, You Will
Have Another Opportunity to Call or Fax in Your Questions or Comments.
So Stay with Us. There\'s a Lot More Coming up After the Break. We\'ll
See You in a Few Minutes!

Stoebe: Welcome Back to Our IRM/ALMRS Forum. Right Now We Have Director
Shea On the Phone, and Let\'s See If I Can Bring Him on Line. Pat, Are
You There?

Dir. Shea: I Am. How Are You?

Stoebe: Good. Glad You Could Join Us.

Dir. Shea: I\'m Glad to Be Here. I Want to Remind Everybody That Today
Is National Administrative Assistant\'s Day, Formerly Called National
Secretary\'s Day, and If Nothing Else, Please Tell Everybody \"Thank
You\" Who You Work with. They Do Make Things Happen and Work Together.

Stoebe: Thank You, Pat.

Gordon: It\'s Also Earth Day, Isn\'t It?

Stoebe: Yes. Is There Anything Else You Would Like to Mention to Us,
Pat?

Dir. Shea: Well, Certainly Gayle and Everybody Who Has Been Working on
the IRM Projects Understands How Critical the Work You\'re Doing and the
Training You\'re Receiving Is. Yesterday Mike Dombeck and I Were with
the Vice‑president at A National Performance Review Where the
Recreation.gov Was Rolled out. It\'s a Seven‑agency, Including Forest
Service, National Parks, Rcs, Noaa and Others Project Which Allows
Individuals to Go Onto the Internet and Find Recreational Sites That Are
on Government Land and Get Road Maps and Other Information. The
Vice‑president Sun Devil Something I Wanted to Repeat Because It\'s So
Applicable to The Training You Are Receiving. He Said: \"We\'re Living
in a Time of Revolution. Revolution Is the Means by Which We Get
Information, the Accessibility to All Sorts of Information That Formerly
Was Not Accessible, and Most Importantly, Being Able to Act On That
Information.\" As the IRM People Put You Through the Training, it Seems
To Me That What You\'re Learning Is Not Just Applicable to the ‑‑ In the
Workplace but Obviously Will Be Used by You in Many Different Contexts
of Your Family Life or Other Professional Life That You Might Have. So I
Want to Stress Again That One of My Highest Priorities as Director Is to
Get ALMRS up and Running and I\'m Only Going to Be Able to Do That with
the Able Leadership of Gayle and Mike Nedd and Roger and Everyone Else,
David, Who Are There Working Together. Please Consider Your Time Today
Well Spent and with Your Help, The BLM Will Succeed in Becoming True Lit
First Digitalized Public Land Agency. I Know Mike Dombeck Has a Real
Interest. They Will Looking for Applications for What You\'re Learning
in Their Agency. Gayle, Is There Anything Else That Would You Suggest or
‑‑

Gordon: No, Just, Again, Thank You, Pat, for Your Continuing Support. I
Think it Really Makes a Difference. We\'ve Never Had a Director Who Has
Been So Actively Involved. Although, Some Days, I Wish You Were a Little
less Involve. But the Bottom Line Is Very Positive.

Dir. Shea: You Have a Real Deep Commitment but Also a Great Interest
Because It\'s Exciting To Be Involved with an Agency as It Goes Through
a Change That Will Have a Very Lasting Impact On How We Do Business. I
Was Also in a Meeting with the Secretary this Morning. He Was Talking
about Different International Programs and Mentioned That He Was Going
to Be Briefed on ALMRS on Thursday. So He\'s Looking Forward to That As
Well. So I Think We\'re Going to Have An Impact Far Beyond the Bureau,
But We Will Only Have That Impact If the People Who Are Participating
Today Take Heed And Learn the Lessons That That The IRM Staff Is Putting
Forward. So I Wish You Well and Remember My E‑mail Is pshea@blm.gov. I
Am Happy to Talk to You via E‑mail. Have a Good Conference.

Stoebe: in this Half of Our Program We Are Going to Spend Some Time
Discussing the Business Aspects of Release 1. A Lot Has Been Happening
with ALMRS and the Role out in New Mexico. We Would like to Begin Our
Panel Segment Discussing the Changes That Our Program Staffs Will Be
Experiencing the Deployment of Release 1. Before We Pick Things Up, I
Would like to Mention Some Upcoming Telecasts on the BLM Satellite
Network. On May 14th, BLM Director Pat Shea Will Host the First Telecast
in a Series Called \"Public Lands Public Trust.\" This Roundtable
Discussion, Which Will Focus on BLM\'s History and Traditions, Will
Feature Former Secretary of the Interior and Idaho Governor Cecil
Andrus. On May 21st, \"The Road to Successful Weed Management\" Will Be
the Subject. On May 29th, NTC Will Broadcast Director Shea\'s Second
Broadcast In the \"Public Lands Public Trust Series.\" This Forum,
Called \"Checks and Balances,\" Will Focus on the Relationship Between
the Executive and Legislative Branches of the Government in The Area of
Resource Management. Pat Shea\'s Guests Will Include Senator Dale
Bumpers of Arkansas And Senator Robert Bennett from Utah. We\'ve Had a
Number of Faxes Which Have Come in That We Didn\'t Get a Chance to
Answer During the First Half of Our Program. I\'d Also like to Mention
We Have Some Additional Time at the End Of the Show for Another Series
Of Questions and an Answer Segment. We Will Let You Know When That\'s
Coming Up. First of All, I Would like to Get Started on a Couple of Our
Faxes That Have Been Piling up For Us. This One Is from Glen in El
Centro, California. His Question Is: What Output Capabilities Does the
System Have? This Is an Often Overlooked Part Of Describing the System.
Is Leslie Still There? We\'ve Lost Her.

Gordon: Several Have Been Referred To. First of All, We Have, Obviously,
the Reports, the National Reports That Are Part Of the ALMRS System and
Then the Aaqrs Report. That Would Be One. Leslie Did Talk about the
Export Capability That\'s Being Developed in Release 2. And We Also Have
the Ability to Print out Any Graphical Displays As We Saw Earlier. So
That\'s a Start of an Answer, And If There Are Additional Ones That I
Haven\'t Addressed, We Will Put Them out on the Home Page with the Other
Answers to These Questions.

Stoebe: One Thing They Had Mentioned Earlier Was That New Mexico and
Some Folks from Denver Have Been Working on the Reports on Aaqrs and
Expanding The Number of Reports. I Think They Had Mentioned in That
Albuquerque this Morning.

Little: Both for Release 1 And Additional Reporting Capability for
Release 2, Working on Both of Those.

Stoebe: Ok. I Guess We Have Albuquerque on Line Now, Too, So We\'ll Try
to Pull Them on the Questions. The next Fax I Have Is from Carol in the
Alaska State Office. See If I Can Read This: Curable Defects Should Not
Be Mandatory At this Time of Serialization. I Don\'t Know If That\'s a
Question or a Statement There. The next Part Here Is: Are We Able to
Change the Case Type? Curable Defects Should Be Mandatory at the Time of
Serialization.

Little: Sounds like a Question for Cathy Is She Is Available.

Gammon: I Think Cathy Answered Once the Case Type Is Set it Can\'t Be
Changed by the Realty Specialist or Individual Doing the Data Entry. It
Has to Be Done by Individuals At the State Office. Once the ‑‑ Selected
Individuals.

Little: but There Is a Process That\'s Available to Go Back in and Do
That and It\'s Just Not as Easy to Do.

Gordon: Intentionally.

Little: That\'s Correct. A as Part of the Security Arrangement We Built
into the System.

Stoebe: Part of the Problem Here Was My Phone Etiquette Here. Leslie,
Are You There Now?

Cone: Yes.

Stoebe: Did You Hear the Question? Did You Have Anything to Add?

Cone: No, the Answer Is You Can\'t Change It.

Stoebe: Ok. I\'ll Go On. She Had Some More Questions on The Fax Here.
She Says the Curable Defects Are Claim Name, Location Date, Legal
Description, Should Not Have to Enter Bogus Data While Waiting For a
Curable Defect to Be Provided by Claimant with an Amended Location
Notice. Can You Address That?

Cone: Robin, this Is Cathy. I\'m Not Quite Sure What the Question Is
Getting To. What We Were Showing this Morning Was Just an Illustration,
but That Kind of Information on How You Process a Case Will Be Provided
During Training and Through the Business Practices. There Isn\'t
Anything That\'s Contrived about How We Enter the Data. You\'re Entering
the Data in ALMRS Just as You\'re Doing it Today.

Stoebe: Last Part of Her Fax Here Was: Money Transactions, Where Are
They Shown?

Cooney: it Depends on the Pathway as to How the Financial Information
Has Been Captured or Will Be Captured in ALMRS.

Stoebe: Ok, Thank You. Next Fax Here Is from Wayne in Medford District
Office: We Have Been Hearing Reports about Changes That Are Necessary to
Our Business Practices That Are Related to the Way the New ALMRS
Software Works. Is this True?

Gordon: this Sounds like Something We\'re Going to Be Getting into in
Carl\'s Segment. Why Don\'t We Hold off on That.

Stoebe: That\'s a Good Idea Because Carl Does Talk about Business
Practices.

Gammon: I\'m Not Sure I Understood That Question. I\'ll Tell You ‑‑
I\'ll Let You Look it over.

Gordon: Carl, it Also Sounds Like it Fits Right in Line with The Work
New Mexico Has Been Doing on Their New Business Practice Manuals, Too.
So Can You Drag Cathy in to Answer That with You.

Stoebe: I Have Got One Here From Wendy Bullock and I Think This Is a
Clarification.

Gordon: this Is Not ‑‑ Oh, It\'s a Clarification.

Stoebe: Resource and Background Data Provided for Aoi Is from Usgs Gldg
Data. However, States May Substitute More Accurate Data as it Becomes
Available. So a Little Clarification There. Easy Question. Another
Clarification or Correction from Wendy. Spatial Data Segments Were
Waived for Release 1. The ALMRS Project Is Exploring Existing Spatial
Metadata Collection in Tools for Incorporation into Release 2.

Little: We Probably Also to Mention Folks That Do Not Know Wendy, She Is
Our Spatial Lead In the National IRM Center in Developing ALMRS.

Stoebe: Those Are the Faxes We Have to Date. Any Other Comments on What
We\'ve Covered So Far? Did You Still Want to Wait on The Answer to That?

Gammon: I Think So. I\'m Not Sure I Can Answer the Question, Anyway, but
I\'ll Do My Best. I Think We\'re Red for You, Anyway, Carl. You Have
Some Comments about the Business Side of ALMRS Would You Like to Share
with Everyone and We\'ll Let You Take the Ball from Here.

Gammon: Ok, Thank You Robin. As Gayle Previously Mentioned, I\'m the New
Kid on the Block. I Represent the Washington Office Lands Program. My
Experience with the ALMRS Program Is Not as Extensive as My Other Fellow
Members Here. I Have Been Involved in the Pathway Somewhat. I Helped
Cathy Cooney When They Were Developing the Pathways for Some of the
Lands Program and Also the ‑‑ Some of the Modules For Rights‑of‑ways.
I\'ve Also Attended Numerous ‑‑ In the Last Few Months Ufat Meetings and
the Pca Workshop, Mostly to Get an Idea What Type Of Impact We Would Be
Having on The Field People. So I\'m a Lot like Most of Our Audience in
the Sense That I Probably Have More Questions and Concerns than I Do
Answers. I Hope That by Being on this Panel, That Asking Some of Those
Questions, Maybe I Can, You Know, Represent the Field Office Realty
Specialists and Users Much Better. As Most of You Know, and as Gayle
Again Has Indicated Previously, the Washington Office Has Been Fairly
Low‑key In the ALMRS Project up until Recently. That\'s Because They\'ve
Had the Direction for the Development of ALMRS up until Now. But as
Implementation Comes Near, Washington Office Is Becoming More and More
Involved. On March 25th of this Year, the Director Issued Instruction
Memorandum 98‑79. This Instruction Memorandum Identified and ‑‑ That
Pete Culp, the a A.d. for Minerals Resource Protection and Realty, I
Know I Have That Screwed up ‑‑ Gal Gayle I Think You Have it All There.

Gammon: but in the Wrong Order. Pete Is the System Owner for ALMRS
During the System Implementation. The I.m. Also Initiates the Formation
of Several Comprehensive User ‑‑ What Do We Call Them ‑‑ User Support
Groups And Development of Some ‑‑ a Network to Help Individuals During
the Implementation Stage. The I.m. Also Transmit to the Field a Charter
For, You Might Help Me on this One, Gayle, Since You\'re More
Interested, What I Called the Ahug, Automated Help Users Group.

Gordon: I Think That\'s Right.

Gordon: We Seem to Be Coming Up with Great Names, Great Acronyms, Ahug,
Ufat.

Gammon: I Think It\'s Appropriate in this Case. We Are Going to Need It.
The I.m. Also Transmits to the Field the User Support Plan Developed by
Anymore See. So If You Haven\'t Had an Opportunity to Review the I.m., I
Strongly Recommend That You Obtain a Copy of and it Review It. If it
Wasn\'t an I.m., it Was in Book Form, I Would Say it Would Be
Appropriate to Be Titled \"Everything You Need to Do Know About ALMRS
but Were Afraid to Ask.\" So Get a Copy. The Ownership ‑‑ or the Owner,
Pete Has Also Developed and Established a Team to Help Him In the
Coordination. This Is Called the Ownership Liaison Team, and it Consists
of Joe Chesser, John Broderick, and Tom Hewett, All Residing in the
Washington Office. We Have Also Recently Put out an Action Plan for the
Implementation to Assure That it Goes Smoothly. We\'re ‑‑ They\'re Going
to Be Looking at the ‑‑ What Sit, the Miter Tech ‑‑

Gordon: Right, the Results From the Operational Assessment Dry Run.

Gammon: Some of the Weaknesses Identified There.

Gordon: That\'s Right.

Gammon: So We Have Been Doing Quite a Bit. There\'s Also as Part of the
Action Plan ‑‑ We Are Developing What We Call a User Implementation
Team, and it Consists of Several People. I Believe That Cathy Cooney,
Who You Have Seen Here Previously, Russ Cavanagh, Adrian Caufield, Gary
Stuckly and I Believe Joe Rasmussen Will Be Team Members On That and I
Am Sure That While Joe Chesser Is Not a Team Member, He Will Be Working
with Them Extensively. This Team Has Also ‑‑ Will Be in The Very near
Future Developing What We Call a Task Group and This Task Group, Each
One of Those Individuals on That Team Will Be Serving as a Coordinator
On a Task Group Representing Fluids, Solids, Lands and Spatial and They
Will Be Looking Again ‑‑ to Reiterate What I Said Before ‑‑ the User
Implementation, Make Sure That\'s Done Correctly and Also the Weaknesses
Identified in the Miter Tech Walk Through. Am I a Little Nervous Here?

Gordon: You\'re Doing Fine. One Thing That Is Striking Me as You\'re
Going Through This, Though, We Have a Lot of Teams And a Lot of
Activities Underway And I Think We Need to Find a Very Clear‑cut Way to
Communicate to the Field All These Activities That Are Taking Place. So
We Need to Work on That.

Gammon: the Task Group, Also, By the Way Is Going to Have a Lot of
People from New Mexico Represented on There Because They\'re the Ones
That Have the Experience up to this Date. And the Washington Office
Leads Are Going to Be Soliciting and Recruiting from the Field. Other
Individuals Who May Have An Interest in Participating on These Teams. So
If You Have an Interest, I Suggest That You Contact the Washington
Office Lead in the Program That You\'re Interested In. That Information
Is Also Found In I.m. 98‑79. Is There Anything Else ‑‑

Gordon: Carl, One Other Point I Would like to Make, One of the Things We
Did Learn, as I Mentioned in the Operational Assessment Dry Run, Was the
People Who Had Been Involved in ALMRS Earlier in the Testing and The
Training Material Development Were the Ones That Were Able to Be More
Productive Immediately When They Started Using the System. One of the
Advantages of the Teams That We\'re Forming Is That We\'re Broadening
the Base of People with Hands‑on Experience. The First Couple of Days
That The Group Gets Together in New Mexico, the Second Week in May, Will
Be In‑depth Training. So it Really Is a Great Opportunity. Then These
People Go Back to the States and Will Be Able to Pass On the Information
That They\'ve Learned and by the Time That the System Is Deployed in the
State, We Will Have a Lot More Experience and Deployment Will Go a Lot
Smoother.

Gammon: in Post, Most of My Experience Has Been in Washington Level in
Pulling Reports Through Queries. So I Have a Lot of Concerns on That. As
You Said Earlier, There Are Several Teams Operating Now, in Fact, this
Afternoon I Fly to Denver and I Will Be Working With Several People and
the Denver Service Center to Identify Some of the Reports and Queries
That We Might Be Needing In the Release 2. I Have Been in Contact with
Denver and We Are Also Trying to Develop Some of the Templates That
We\'ll Be Using under the Aaqrs System, And, You Know, There\'s a Lot of
Templates Available Now and Most of Those Are Oil and Gas Because
That\'s What New Mexico Has Mostly Been Involved In. But Cathy Cooney
Got a List of The Templates and There\'s Very Little in the Way of
Lands. So I\'ve Been Working with Gary Schleggel on Your Staff There And
One of the Other Individuals, Mike Sawyer and They\'ve Been Very Helpful
in Helping Me to Develop Templates. As You Had Indicated Before. Now, We
Don\'t Want to Continue Redeveloping the Wheel, and That\'s Why We Have
this Support Group That We\'re Developing So That as Problems Are
Solved, We Can Pass Those onto the next Individual. So, Again, That\'s
Probably about All I Have. As I Said, I\'m Fairly New to the ALMRS
Project and Real Excited About Being a Part of this Panel And I Hope to
Learn a Whole Lot More from You Individuals During The Day.

Stoebe: Thanks, Carl. We Still Have Cathy on the Line. I Thought Maybe
You Might Have Some Comments to Add to What Carl Said, Cathy.

Cooney: Yes, Robin. I Wanted to Reiterate That the Meeting That Will Be
in Santa Fe Will Be the Weeks of May 11th Through 22nd and We Will Have
Approximately 60 People Working On the Business Practices and The
Overall Concept of User‑readiness, Which, Again, Was One of the Results
of the Miter Tech Walk Through. And Then to Talk about Concerns About
the Aaqrs Reports, That in Itself Raises a Lot of Issues And Concerns
How to Manage That Software and Those Templates. So We, Too, Are Working
with Gary and Mike Sawyer and Joe Wright to Come up with a Process To
Manage the Development of Those Templates, Because this Is The Best Way
That the Users Will Get the Information out of the ALMRS Application. So
There\'s a Lot of Work Going On, Not Just Within the ALMRS Application,
but Also for Aaqrs.

Gammon: Yes, Cathy, Thank You. I Understand You\'re Going to Be One of
the Members on this Task Group. I Think You\'re Representing Lands, If
I\'m Not Mistaken.

Cooney: That\'s Right.

Gammon: Could You Tell Us a Little More, I Failed to Mention It, What
You Guys Are Going to Be Doing There May 11th Through The 22nd in Santa
Fe?

Cooney: Sure. Again, the Focus Is on the User‑readiness, and We\'ll Be
Looking at Issues ‑‑ You Know, We\'ve Trained People. We\'ve Been
Testing. We\'ve Been Intimately Involved With the ALMRS Process, And,
You Know, with the Application Itself, but Now We Need to Be Looking at
the Other Aspect, How To Get the Users Prepared, How To Get Them Ready
So That Day One When We Turn on the Application, What Are the First
Things You Do? How Do You Interact with the Application? What Does it
Mean in Order to Do Your Job? Those Are the Kinds of Issues That We\'ll
Be Looking at There In Santa Fe for Those Two Weeks.

Gordon: Cathy, I Think it Would Be Very Useful to Get the Agenda for
That Effort out on The ALMRS Home Page and Then Even More Importantly,
Get the Results of All the Work That Will Be Taking Place out There,
Too, So People Can Track in Real Time What\'s Going on to Ease the
Deployment to the Users.

Cooney: I Agree and I\'ll Work With Joe on That. We Have a Lot of
Momentum That Came out of That Walk Through And this Meeting in Santa Fe
Continues That Momentum, and Because New Mexico Is Looking at Deployment
Fairly Soon, We Need To Be Sure Our Users Are Ready, And It\'s Not
Focusing Just on New Mexico, but at the Bureau Level, What Does User
Readiness Really Mean.

Gammon: Cathy, While You\'re On the Line, Can I Ask Another Question? I
Noticed That Various Reports Are Going to Be Available under Release 1
under Aaqrs. The M‑11 Report, Which Most of The Feeble Office People Are
Familiar with Is Identified as Being Available under Aaqrs. Can I Assume
That We\'re Going to Be Able to Do All the Things Under Aaqrs That We
Currently Can Do under Case Recordation When it Concerns ALMRS, Although
‑‑ I Mean Not ALMRS, but the M‑11, Which We ‑‑ You Know, We Use Very
Extensively?

Cooney: You Can Definitely Do As Much As, but the Great Thing Is You Can
Do a Lot More. With the Current Systems That We Have, Reporting
Capabilities Are Very, Very Limited. With Aaqrs, It\'s Such a Powerful
Tool, We Do Have an M‑11 Functionality, and Mike Sawyer Has Been
Illustrating That to Us, and it Is a Terrific Way to Get the Data out of
the ALMRS Application. So We\'re Going to Be Working With Mike on How to
Use That Part of the Aaqrs Software, and You\'ll Be Able to Get More
Data Than You Can in the Current System. From Aaqrs Using That M‑11
Functionality.

Stoebe: Thank You, Cathy. Dave, I Understand You Have Some Information
for Everyone Regarding the Data Conversion, The New Schedule for ALMRS
Deployment?

Little: Yeah. Let Me Say, First, That Things Are Going a Little Slower
than We Expected this Time Last Year. But the Things That We\'ve Been
Talking about Today I Think Illustrate Very, Very Well That ‑‑ I Think
It\'s a Good Thing We Didn\'t Rush this out the Door. We Want to Be Sure
That When the System Is Deployed It\'s Deployed In a Way That Not Only
the Data Is Accurate, We Have the Functionality Built into the System,
but the Users Have to Be Prepared to Deal with the System Once We Give
it to Them, and the Fact That There Have Been Some Delays Have Allowed
the Washington Office to Get More Involved, Such as Carl Has Been
Talking About, and Field People To Get Much More Involved. It\'s Also,
Because of That That Involvement, We\'ve ‑‑ It\'s Already Affected the
Basic Structure of the System. We Have a Maintenance Build That I Think
Is Going to Be Completed To the Application Software this Week to Be
Delivered to New Mexico next Week That Has a Number of Enhancements That
Were Not Available a Couple Months Ago. And It\'s All the Kinds of
Things That Users, as We Go down to New Mexico in the Pilot and See Eye,
Gee, It\'s Pretty Good, but Couldn\'t You Do This, this Would Really
Make Our Life a Lot Easier. We\'re Also Looking Forward to Another
Maintenance Build Which Would Be Early Summer So That Those States That
Are Deployed Following New Mexico Will Be Able to Take Advantage of the
Continued Pilot Testing and Some Of the Work That the User Groups Are
Doing During May. We Can Build Some of the Enhancements and Improvements
Into the System. So as We Continue Through the Deployment Schedule for
the Subsequent States, I Think They Are Going to Have a Much More Usable
System than Had We Just Rushed into it Last Fall or Even As Early as
January. Let Me Talk for a Moment First About Data Conversion. There
Have Been a Number of Comments That Were Made about Data Conversion.
It\'s Going More Slowly than We Had Hoped. And, Again, That Isn\'t All
Bad. One of the Reasons Why We Slowed Down a Bit Is We Expanded the
Sampling We Had Done to Be Sure That Case Types, Survey Types And So
Forth All Were Meshing Together Appropriate. In Some Cases We Were
Finding That They Weren\'t. So We Spent a Lot of Time on Both the
Analysis, Cathy and Her People from New Mexico Have Been Up in Denver
Numerous Times, Each Time We Do a Trial Run on Their Data. They Go
Through That Data in Detail Looking at the Legacy Data and Comparing
That to What Appears in the New System to Ensure That, in Fact, it
Translates Properly. One of the Things That Has Made That Process
Somewhat Slow Is it Takes about 34 Days, Each Time We Go from Begin to
Go End, on One of Those Cycles of Conversion, and So We\'re Looking At
Improving the Way That We Do That. The Basic Philosophy Will Remain The
Same, but We Will Do it with Build a Little, Test a Little, Build a
Little More, to Be Sure Each Time We Leave a Segment of The Conversion
and We Have it Right, We Won\'t Have to Go Back To That Piece. So We
Start with the Internal Process with BLM, Which Is Preparing the Data
for Transmittal over to Csc and Then The Conversion Through Their
Software. Then the Legal Land Description, The Lld Portion, Frankly That
Has Not Given Us Much Problem. There Has Been a Couple Minor Things
We\'re Working, on but That Has Been Pretty Stable. Then We Go into Case
Land, Which Is a Little More Complex Because It Begins to Bring in the
Case Data. We Have a Few Errors That We\'re Working on There, but We
Have Rerun the New Mexico Data Against That Segment. I Believe That
Analysis Has Been Completed and We\'re Working on Making Those
Corrections to the Software. Then What We\'re Trying to Do Is Bring
along Another Block of States. We Think We Can Bring Four More States
into the Mix, Which Will Be Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, and It May Be a
Surprise to Montana, But as Recently as Yesterday, in Going Through the
Mix of States And Where They Are in Their Data Processing, and Some of
the Things That We Need to Sample Against Which Includes the Multi‑state
Jurisdiction That Montana Has, We Might like to Bring Them into this
Process as Well. Then We Do it in Segments. We Do That Group of Lands,
We Do All of the Lld Conversion, We Would Sample All of Those Four
States, So by the Time We Go Through New Mexico plus Four, We Should
Have a Very Good Representation of the Kinds of Cases Survey Types, et
Cetera, That We Experience in the Bureau And We Can Make the Corrections
To the Software and Then Hopefully We\'ll Be Done with Lld And We Can
Move onto the next ‑‑

Gordon: Dave, in this Validation, You Gave Montana as An Example, Would
Staff from Montana Be the Ones That Were Actually Validating That
Particular Phase of Data?

Little: That\'s a Good Point. Yes. It\'s Really Important That the
People That Are Familiar with The Data, They Understand Their Data, They
Know What to Look For, They Participate Very Heavily. The Continuity
Sort of from State to State Is Provided by Our Data Staff at NIRMC
Because They Have Been Through the Process for Several Years. It\'s a
Mix of NIRMC People and Bringing People in from the States. So We Build
Case Land, We Test It, We Be Sure That We Have it Right, and There\'s
Really Two Phases to Testing, One Is What Our Data Analysts Do, and the
Other Is What the Program Testers Do from the Contractual Standpoint. As
We Have Attempted to Do this With One Long Continuous Sequence, One of
the Thing We Found Was by the Time We Got to The End of the Sequence, We
Have Done Some Regression Testing in The Lab That Says Because of a
Correction We Made, We May Have Had an Unexpected Result. So We Had to
Go Clear Back to The Beginning. Now We Won\'t Have to Go Back to The
Beginning. We Will Only Go Back to the Beginning of That Segment. So We
Think this Will Make the Process a Lot More Efficient Than it Currently
Is. ‑‑ Process a Lot More Efficient Than it Currently S the Impact On
the Data Conversion Has Been You Can\'t Really Complete the Pilot Test
in New Mexico until You Have a Good Valid Database Because You Are
Testing the Overall Functionality of the System, and We Think, as You
Mentioned Earlier, Gayle, That The Basic Application Software Has Been
Very Stable. We\'re Making Improvements to It. But We Haven\'t Gone Back
Through Self Iterations of Testing since Beta Testing to Be Sure it
Functions as We Expect it to Function. So That Piece Is Waiting There.
And as Soon as We Bring the Data Piece into It, Then We Have a
Functioning System Combined. So with New Mexico as I Mentioned We Have
Been Through The Lld Conversion, We\'ve Been Through Another Iteration
of the Case Land, and as Soon as We Complete the Analysis and the
Software Corrections Necessary, We\'ll Be Getting ‑‑ We\' ‑‑ We Will Be
Beginning with the Case. Unfortunately We Can\'t Project a Completion
Date Because We Don\'t Know How Many Iterations We Might Have to Go
Through Each of Those Modules, and We Want to Be Sure When We Get Done
We Have a Database That\'s Deployable, Something We Can Deal with. So
New Mexico Is Continuing. We Will Bring in Four Additional States. Then
as We Complete Those States, We Will Begin the Conversion Process for
Five ‑‑ Another Block of Five States. Alaska and Eastern States Are Sort
of Special Situations. Each of Those States Has Some Unique Properties
about Their Data That Make Them Not Fit Real Well into this Group
Process of Trying to Do a Conversion, Do a Test. The Eastern States Data
Primarily Relates to Mineral Estate And, Carl, I Know You\'re Familiar
with That, but It\'s Mineral Estate under the National Forest Service
Where They Are Reacquired Lands and We\'ve Had to Do Some Additional
Preparation of That Data Before We Can Insert it into the Normal
Conversion Process, and That\'s Delayed Them. We\'re Anticipating Now
Perhaps By September We Will Have Done That Preconversion Process So We
Can Begin the Normal Conversion. Alaska, We Don\'t Have a Specific
Schedule Yet. We Need to Do Some Additional Work with Alaska Should Be
Sure We Understand Their Issues. They Have an Interim Land Information
System That\'s Just a Little Bit Different than the Rest of the States.
We Want to Be Sure That Alaska, And Alaska, Wants to Make Sure They
Don\'t Lose Current Functionality. So We Have Additional Work to Do With
Alaska to Make Sure as We Bring ALMRS on Line We\'re Adding
Functionality, Not Taking Away. That\'s Why You See Alaska, Any Schedule
We Have Published, Eastern States and Alaska Are Pushed Toward the End.
It\'s Not That We\'re Ignoring Them or They\' Not Important. It\'s the
Fact We Have to Do Additional Work on Those and We Want to Get the Other
States Through the Pipeline Before We Get Too Intensively Involved in
Those.

Gordon: Dave, I Have a Question. This Data Conversion Process Will Take
Place over the next Few Months. Now, I Mentioned Earlier That Hardware
Upgrades Are Already in Place in New Mexico, Arizona and Idaho and the
Hardware Upgrades Will Be Installed in the next Few States in Addition.
Once These Hardware Upgrades Are Installed, Is There Anything to Keep
Those States from Bringing Up the System and Doing Some Testing and
Experimentation with It.

Little: No, There Really Isn\'t. We Have Been Using the Arizona Database
as the Training Database. When People Come to the Training Center and Go
Through Their Training, That\'s the Database That\'s Being Used. So That
Database Can Be Loaded In Their State on Their Servers Once That Is
Available. We Would like to Make the Transition as Rapidly as Possible
from the Arizona Database to Their Own Database Because Then They Can
Begin to Recognize Their Own Cases and Somebody in the Field Can Say,
Yes, That\'s My Case, I Entered That Two Years Ago and Now I Really Want
to Go See under the New System, Is it Really There The Way I Put it In.
There Is a Capability Very Soon After.

Gordon: the Advantage of That Is I Know the Training Schedule, Although
It\'s Changed Somewhat, A Lot of People Are Being Trained and it Will Be
Several Months Before it Will Deployed In That State but They Will Have
A Chance Once the Hardware Is Installed, for Example, in Colorado, to
Actually Duty Training and Then Go Back and Keep Reinforcing Training
Once They Got Home.

Little: That\'s Right. And That\'s a Good Point. This Isn\'t a System
That You Just Go to Training and Then Set Aside for Two or Three Months
And Then Say, Aha, It\'s Here, And Now You Start Operating Against It.
You Have to Sort of Get Back to The Feel of the System. I Want to
Mention There Are Really Several Factors Influencing the Overall
Deployment Schedule. We Have Got to Complete the Pilot Testing in New
Mexico. We Can\'t Give People a Specific Date for When That\'s Going to
Be Completed until We Have the Data Conversion Issue Settled. So We Can
Project Some General Time Frames, but We Can\'t Be Really Specific about
the Impacts on the Other States. The Other Is a Requirement That\'s
Written into Our Appropriations Act That Says That We Have to Do this
Independent Validation or Evaluation by Miter Tech Systems And Then Our
Director, Director Shea, Has to Certify That the System Then Is
Appropriate for Deployment to the Rest of the Bureau. So Those Are Two
Critical Things Before We Do Anything Else. There\'s Also a Limitation
on How Many Dollars We Can Spend on That Hardware Upgrades. Omb Included
in the Apportionment Letter to the Department of Interior a Limit Of \$5
Million. The Total Cost for the Hardware Upgrades for Release 1 Is in
the Neighborhood of 11 to \$12 Million. We\'ve Had to Do Some Adjustment
Of the Hardware That\'s Being Ordered for Individual States So We
Maximize the Amount of the Operational Hardware That We Can Get out
There as Rapidly as Possible So That the Hardware Installation Does Not
Become an Impediment to the Schedule for Deployment. We Have Been Able
to Do That, as You Say, Gayle, Through the First Three States. We\'re
Now, I Believe, Beginning This Week to Do it in Colorado. The Hardware
Has Been Ordered For the next Four States, Which Would Take Us Through
California, Nevada, Wyoming and Montana. Don\'t Forget Montana. Now, I
Do Appreciate That Those Of You Who Are in Oregon, Utah, Eastern States
and Alaska Are Somewhat Concerned about You Don\'t See a Schedule for
Your Hardware Ordering. We Are Going to Proceed with Preparing the
Orders. We Will Have Those Orders Ready To Go ‑‑ in Fact, We Meet with
Eastern States in the Washington Office Last Week, for Example, And
We\'ll Have Those Orders to Go as Soon as We Get the Clearance for the
Money, and I Don\'t Know Whether Pat Is Still With Us, But, Pat, I Might
Say That One of the Things That You Did for Us Was When You Went Back to
Omb, the Initial Limitation on the Appropriations Act Was That We Could
Not Purchase Any Hardware Except That Needed for the Pilot in New
Mexico, and That Would Have Really Had an Impact. And Director Shea Was
Able to Persuade Them That We\'re Making Good Progress with the Program
And He Got That Ceiling Lifted To 5 Million. That Has Given Us a Lot of
Flexibility We Have Had in Previously. The Other Thing That Affects Our
Implementation Schedule Is the Limitations of Resources, and Those of
You Who Have Been Working with Kurt Ballentine of My Staff on the
Resourcing of The Schedule, Even Though the Schedule Dates May Change,
It\'s Very Important to Know What Kinds of Resources We Can Commit To
Supporting the Schedule. All of the States, as Far as We Know, Have Been
Very Responsive To Those Requests. We\'re Very Close to Having a
Consolidated Run of Those Resources Where We Can Demonstrate Clearly
What Our Capabilities Are and Whether or Not That Will Have Any Impact
on Our Schedule. Just as an Example, from the Hardware Installation and
from The Software Installation Standpoint, We\'ve Always Assumed That We
Could Only Field Two Installation Teams at a Time and We Probably Needed
a Sequence That Involved No More than Two Weeks for Each of Those Pairs
of States. Until We Complete the Resourcing Analysis and I Know Gayle,
and You\'ve Been Working with Gao and Others and There Are a Lot of
People That Are Asking Questions About What Our Capabilities Are, And
While We Have Made Some Preliminary Assessments, It\'s Really Important
That We Be Able To Document to People\'s Satisfaction We\'re Prepared to
Do That. One of Those Limitations Is the Limitation Here at the Training
Center. There Are Really Two Major Segments ‑‑ or Three, I Guess I
Should Say, of Training to Prepare the Users for the System. One Is the
Technical Training That System Administrators, Database Administrators
and Others Go Through So That They Understand the Nature of the Hardware
Upgrades That They\'re Getting and Are Prepared to Manage Those from a
Technical Standpoint. The Other Is the Bureau Has Done As in Many Other
Programs, We\'re Using the Train the Trainer Approach for the Users.
Which Means Each State Sends a Cadre of People to the Training Center
for Two Weeks, and During That Period of Instruction, They Learn How to
Present Training Materials. They Also Are Given Training on The System
Itself So They\'re Prepared to Go Back to Their State and Provide That
to a Broader Group of Users. The Training Center Naturally Has Some
Physical Limitations in How Many Training Rooms They Have, but an Even
Bigger Resource Limitation Probably Is The Number of People That Are
Available for Instruction During That Train the Trainer Session. Two
States\' Schedules Have Already Been Impacted by Some of The Recent
Decisions on ‑‑ Involving the Users. The User Group, Carl, You Talked
About That Was Going to Meet in New Mexico, Well, Many of the People,
Including People like Cathy Cooney, and Adrian Caufield\'s Name Was
Mentioned, Some of Those and Others Are the Core of People That Have
Been Providing the Training Here at The Training Center. So We Have Had
to Work a Couple States, Including Nevada. We Were on a Phone Call with
Them Yesterday. And I Think Montana Is Potentially Impacted by That as
Well. So We Are Adjusting the Training Schedule Once Again, and That
Causes Some Logistical Problems, But I Think in this Case It\'s Very
Positive, Because One of The Things That the Group Is Going to Be
Working on down There in New Mexico Is the Training Materials We\'re
Going To Use, and So the Improvements That We Can Make in Those, I
Think, Will Make the Training Much More Effective. So We\'ll ‑‑ but We
Want to Be as Aggressive as We Can on Those Things Not Dependent on the
Pilot and That\'s the Hardware Installation, the Upgrades, and The
Training. And So as We Get the Data Conversion Done, We Don\'t Want
Either of Those to Be the Controlling Factor. It Becomes the
Availability of The Database That Probably Will ‑‑ That Will Dictate
What the Rest of the Schedule Looks like. So under this New Deployment
Schedule, It\'s a Much More Open Schedule and for Some People They
Really Welcome That. The Last Published Schedule We Had, We Asked for
Comments from The States. The States Were Very Concerned By the Impact
on Their Resources In How They Could Integrate the ALMRS Deployment
Schedule with All Those Other Work Loads And, You Know, We Do, in Fact,
Recognize That There Is Something Beyond ALMRS. I\'ll Have to Confess
from My Standpoint, You Know, My Role Right Now Is Get ALMRS out There.
But We Are Not Overlooking the Fact There Are a Number of Other National
Priorities That the Bureau Is Committed to and must Meet this Fiscal
Year. This Approach, I Think, Gives Us A Little More Flexibility for
Working in Those Other Priorities So There Isn\'t ‑‑ We\'re Not on a
Collision Course. We Would Expect by the End of This Fiscal Year, Then,
to Have At Least Completed the Pilot. We Don\'t Have a Specific Schedule
for That. But We Hope That Would Be Early Summer. If Our Data Conversion
‑‑ the Process That We\'ve Been Talking About Is Successful, We Have
Should Have at Least Four Other States from a Theta Side Ready To Roll
out. For Most of Those Four States Within Several Week We Will Have
Their Hardware in Place. We Will Adjust Your Schedule and Training and
We Have to Get Back To Say We Still Need to Provide That Training Before
We Deploy The System but I Think There Is Still Time in the Summer to
Work That Back In. The Difficulty I Know That Individuals Have Is How Do
I Schedule My Time for the Rest of The Year? I Have an Annual Work Plan
I Am Trying to Meet. If You Can\'t Give Me a Deadline, Then It\'s Very
Difficult for Me To Adjust My Schedule. While We\'re Sympathetic to
That, We Don\'t Have an Easy Solution To It. That\'s Something We Just
Need to Continue to Work On.

Stoebe: Gayle, Before We Get To the next Question and Answer Period, Do
You Have Anything Else to Add?

Gordon: I Would like Just to Cover a Couple of Topics. I Think Leslie
Did a Good Job Highlighting the Capabilities We\'re Seeking in Release
2. As She Said, We Are Getting ‑‑ We\'re to the Point Where We Can Go
Ahead and Develop the Software for the Oil and Gas Module and for the
Cartographic Products and Enhanced Spatial Capability. As Pat Said, We
Completed the Investment Analysis, the Justification for Release 2,
Which Was One of the Thing We Had to Do, and Then Completed The Overall
Planning Documents. We\'re Working Hard to Address What Additional
Security Requirements We Need to Have in Place as We Open up Access to
The ALMRS Information for Release 2. Then, Finally, Looking at What Type
of Queries and Reports We Need, and That\'s, Carl, I Think One of the
Thing You Are Going To Be Working on When You Get to Denver this Week.

Gammon: Major Concerns.

Gordon: Major Opportunities. Pat Mentioned in His Opportunity Comments
That We\'re Doing Quite A Lot with Other Agencies. It\'s Long Been the
Department\'s And the Bureau\'s Intent to Have ALMRS Not Just a Tool for
the Bureau of Land Management, but Also Have it a Tool for Other
Resource Management Organizations, Both Federal, State and Local. We\'ve
Made Particularly Good Progress with the Forest Service. As Many of You
May Be Aware, the Forest Service over the Last Few Years Has Been
Developing Their System. It Is a Land Inventory Management System
Similar to a Part of ALMRS. We Have Officer the Last Few Months Put
Teams Together ‑‑ We Have over the Last Few Months Put Teams Together
from Both BLM And Forest Service to See How We Can Take Advantage of the
Technologies That We Are Both Doing, and the Teams Have Agreed That
Rather than Going Ahead With Two Systems in the Future, That it Really
Makes since to Have a Single System Supporting Land Management
Responsibilities In Both Organizations. We Have a Demonstration Underway
Right Now to ‑‑ an Effort Underway Right Now to Demonstrate What this
Capability Would Be. And, Again, We Have Not Just the IRM People
Working, but We Have The Program People from Both Organizations. One
Item Related to That I Would Like to Mention, Because I Think It\'s Very
Encouraging, as an ‑‑ A Part of Starting this Look at What a Common
System Would Be, We Put a Team Together That Looked at What the Business
Processes Are for Land Exchanges For Both Organizations. Each
Organization Had Somewhat Different Approaches, and in a Very Short
Time, Just a Matter Of a Couple of Days, the Seem Was Able to Come One a
Single Approach for Land Exchanges than Simpler than Both the
Organizations. I Think this Was a Very Encouraging Result. Other
Organizations We\'re Working With, the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
Certainly There Is Applicability of ALMRS to Help Them Support Their
Land Management Responsibilities. The Fish & Wildlife Service, National
Park Service and Then Some of the State and Local Governments We\'ve
Been Working Closely with Naco and We Will Be Meeting with the Western
Land Commissioners next Week. We Also Are Doing Work with the Utility
Companies. As Many of You Know, We Do Not Have Many of Our Rights‑of‑way
Digitized and We Think That There Are Real Benefits to Us to Be Able to
Get Digitized Rights‑of‑way from the Utility Companies So We Don\'t Have
to Go Through That Effort. It Also a Good Opportunity for Us to Start
Electronically Doing Business with the Rights‑of‑way People That We Deal
with. So We Have Some Real Good Efforts Underway There. And Actually We
Have Imported Some of the Rights‑of‑way Information from Northwest ‑‑
Lets Me See If I Can Get this Right ‑‑ Northwest Pipeline. Uswest Is
Also Very Interested In and Is Meeting with Us.

Little: You Might Mention Southern Cal Edison.

Gordon: Right. I Think These Cooperative Agreements Do Offer Something
For Both the Private Sector and It Will Help Us Get More Extensive
Database than We Have Right Now. Dave, You Mentioned That There Is
Something Else than ALMRS Going on in the Bureau and That\'s One Cry I
Get from the Field. \"ALMRS, ALMRS, ALMRS, Don\'t You Know There Are
Other Things Going on We Have to Deal with?\" That\'s Very True. There
Is an Awful Lot of Really Good Work Going on in the IRM Community
Besides ALMRS. What We\'re Doing Is Working on Upgrades to Wordperfect.
We\'re Bringing in Upgrades to The Aix Operating System. We Will Be
Installing a New E‑mail System That Sounds Very Encouraging. As I
Mentioned Earlier, We\'re Looking into and Trying out Internet Query
Tools. We Have Other Work Going on with The Forest Service Integrating
Our E‑mails and Also Integrating Our Intranets. These Are a Couple
Thing. I Want to Make Sure I Recognize All the Work IRM People Are Doing
Not Only in NIRMC but in The Field Also. In Closing I Want to Reiterate
Several Points That Pat Made in Both of His Comments. Because of the
Hard Work That So Many of You Have Done, We Really Have Moved Forward on
Achieving Our Objectives for Release 1. That Objective Is to Have a
State of the Art Information System with a Single Access to The Vast
Amounts of Information, The Land and Minerals Information, That We\'ve
Collected over the Years. We Want to Be Able to Provide This Access Not
Only to Our Own Employees, but to the Public. Pat\'s Comment When He
Called In, I Thought, Was Really Important, The Quote from Have That
Gore Yesterday, That We\'re Having Not Only Access to Information, but
We Are Given the Opportunity to Act on That Information, and Surely
Having More Accurate and Available Information Will Improve Our Ability
to Make Land And Other Resource Decisions in The Future. The Work We\'ve
Done and the Work That You All Have Done Has Moved Us Ahead but We\'re
Still Not There Yet. To Really Achieve the Objectives And the Potential
of this Technology We Need Your Continued Support, and as Pat Said, We
Need Your Continued Suggestions on How to Make it Better in the Future.
So, Please, We Are Trying to Talk to You and We Expect and Need
Desperately for You to Come Back and Tell Us What Needs to Be Done in
the Future. Ok?

Stoebe: Thank You, Gayle. At this Point We\'ll Be Moving Into Our Last
Question and Answer Period. If You Have a Question or Comment for Us,
Please Give Us a Fax or Give Us a Call or Send Us A Fax. We Also Have
Our ALMRS Specialists in New Mexico Standing by on the Phone. I Do Have
a Fax I Would like to Jump To, and this One Is Going To Be for Cathy.
This Is from Bill in Wyoming: Will Customer Maintainers Be Able to Query
Other States\' Databases to Avoid Duplicate Entries for Common Entities
Such As Large Organizations?

Cooney: the Customer Databases Are Maintained Within Each State. They
Can ‑‑ the Users Can Query Across State Lines of for Example, Wyoming
Can Query the New Mexico Data, but Our Databases for Customers Are
Separate Because They Reside Within Each State.

Gordon: That Is a Good Point, Though, and That May Be Something in the
Future We Want To Look at Comparing Our Different Customer Databases to
See If There Are Some Commonalities We Need to Achieve.

Stoebe: Ok.

Gordon: Put That in the to Follow‑up Pile.

Stoebe: They\'re Separate but Readable from One State to the Next.

Gordon: Right.

Stoebe: Another Fax from Carol in Alaska. She Had Sent One in Earlier, I
Believe. She\'s Talking about a Curable Defect Is a Missing Claim Case,
Is Data Missing or Is Incomplete On the Location Notice or Certificate
of Location for a Mining Claim. A Notice Is Sent to the Claimant
Requiring the Data Be Provided By Filing an Amendment Within 30 Days of
Receipt of the Notice. Her Question Is: If Data Is Unavailable for a
Mandatory Input Field, Will You Be Able to Complete the Serialization
Process and Get the Serial Numbers from ALMRS If You Leave The Mandatory
Input Field Blank?

Cooney: Yes. The Only Requirements to Serialize a Case Is to Select The
Case Group and Case Type and Then Can You Serialize the Case Any Time.
There Aren\'t Any Restrictions as To the Order or Hierarchy of How You
Enter Data. It Gives You a Lot of Flexibility, More than What We Have
Today.

Stoebe: One More Here. This Is from the Washington Office, Because I
Recognize the Area Code, but There\'s No Name Attached to It.

Gordon: this Goes to Carl.

Stoebe: What about the Washington Office? You Keep Talking about Other
Offices. We Want to Know about Us. Thanks. So What Is this Going to Do
for The Washington Office, Carl?

Gammon: the First Question Is, and as Dave Was Indicating, Deployment
for All the States, I Don\'t Think He Mentioned Washington. Initially We
Were Scheduled to Come on Close to Last, I Think, With the Eastern
States Office, But There Has Been a Recommendation That We Go Further
Toward the Beginning. So I Never Have Seen Anything Since That, but I
Assume We\'re Going on Rather Soon. Is That Correct?

Little: Yeah, I Think I Can Provide a Little Information. I Don\'t Have
a Complete Answer, But I Do Nope Our Systems Engineers Were Meeting with
the People in the Washington Office Last Week. They\'re Visiting with
the Eastern States and They Spent a Day at the Washington Office to Talk
about the Configuration of The Equipment That\'s Needed for You to
Access the System. There Were a Couple of Options That They Were Looking
At. I Don\'t Remember the Details of All of Those. But I Would Hope That
We\'d Resolve That Here Within a Matter of a Week or Two and Then We Can
Order Whatever Hardware Upgrades Are Needed for the Washington Office.
And Because No Data, No Database, Is Being Converted for The Washington
Office, the Limitation Is How Quickly We Can Get the Equipment to You.
It\'s about a 90‑day Period. After We Order the Equipment, Before It\'s
Staged, the Application Is Loaded and We Can Install It.

Gammon: the Other Concern, I Believe, That the Caller Might Have Is
That, You Know, with the Washington Office, We Don\'t Enter Data. Our
Major Objective Is to Retrieve Data in the Way of Reports and Queries.
Most of the Information ‑‑ Reports I Have Seen up to Date Are Very Time
Consuming, Aaqrs, I Believe, I May Be Wrong, but I Think That That\'s ‑‑
You Have to Pull a Report by State. You Can\'t ‑‑ You Don\'t Have an Aoi
for the Entire Western States. So Our Concerns Are, You Know, What
Effort Is Being Made to Make the Running of Reports Much Quicker? And
Also I Was Wondering, Just The Other Day Myself, If it Takes as Long as
the ‑‑ That I\'ve Seen Some of Them Take to Pull Aoi, Does That Freeze
up Your Computer, or Can You Do Like You Do with Wordperfect, Can You
Make it Small and Go Onto Something Else? I Don\'t Know the Answer to
That. Maybe Dave Does.

Little: I Think We Can Answer The Last One First Because It\'s The
Easiest. The Answer Is, Yes, You Can Have Multiple Windows You Are
Operating in at the Same Time. Do We Have Leslie from Albuquerque?

Stoebe: Leslie Is Gone but Cathy Is Still There.

Little: Cathy, Have You Have You Been Working with the Group On the
Centralized Reporting Capability We Have Been Investigating for Release
2 That Would Try to Take the Multi‑state Databases and Place Them on One
Centralized Server That Would Cut down That Reporting Time?

Cooney: I\'m Familiar with What Is Going On, and We Have Several People
from New Mexico, Not Just in the State Office, But Some of the Other
Field Offices, Who Are Involved in That Activity.

Gordon: I Would like to Make A Suggestion. Carl, You\'re Going to Denver
This Afternoon, and the Real Experts Are There, and You Know, Why Don\'t
You Talk to Them and If There Is Time, Try Running Some of These
Reports, and Then Follow‑up Activity, You Have Asked a Number of
Questions this Morning and I Think We Need to Make Sure We Capture Those
and Get Those up on the Home Page, Too. So after You Get Some of the
Answers to Your Reporting Questions, I Think We Need to Post Those So
Other People Can See What the Results Were.

Stoebe: Speaking of Posting Questions, There Has Been a Lot Of New
Acronyms Flying Around Here. For Any of You out There That Feel the
Acronyms Flew over Your Head, Those Will Be Posted on The Home Page with
the Definitions.

Gammon: They\'re Also in the Instruction Memorandum That We Sent out.

Gordon: That\'s One Thing That Did Surface During the Operational
Assessment Walk‑through or Dry‑run in New Mexico, Was That, You Know, in
Addition to this Being a New System, It\'s Got a Whole Nouveau Cab
Larry, a New Way of Operating and ‑‑ a New Vocabulary and It\'s One We
Have To Get Started Getting Used To.

Stoebe: Any Other Comments From the Panel Here or Cathy in Albuquerque?

Gammon: I Have One for Cathy. Cathy, as You Indicated Before, You Will
Object in Task Group in Santa Fe. If You Haven\'t Already Done So, Would
You Do Me a Favor and Take A Look at The, for Alaska, the M‑31 Report,
Which Is in ALMRS. Would You See Just ‑‑ Take a Look at and That See If
the Data ‑‑ If There Needs to Be Some Change to That Report to Include
Some of the New Information Coming in from Alaska. That\'s the End of
the Year Report, and My Gut Feeling Is That Some of the Thing That
Alaska Does Are Not Going to Be Shown on That Report Unless Somebody
Takes Some Initiative And Checks That out.

Cooney: We Will Be Glad to Start Looking at That, but I Was Hoping You
Will Be in Santa Fe, Too.

Gammon: I Probably Will Be.

Cooney: And, Robin, We Would Like to Thank You from New Mexico, and
Specifically Albuquerque, for Having Us Participate on this Broadcast. I
Wish We Had Had More Time to Show Other Functionality, but Hopefully the
Viewers Got a Taste of Some of the Business Practices That New Mexico
Has Been Trying to Document and Actually Test out as We Get Closer to
Deployment. So Thank You for Having Us Included.

Stoebe: Well, We Appreciate Your Work, Cathy and Thanks to Leslie and
Rick and the Rest of The Crew. I Guess They Had to Catch an Airplane and
They\'ve Taken off. Also Thank You to Ed for Hosting On the Other End.
That Was a New Experience for Him, and I Appreciated His Enthusiasm.

Roberson: You\'re Welcome, Robin. I Enjoyed and it I\'m Still Watching
You. I\'m Sitting Here with a Coke Right Now.

Stoebe: I Envy You.

Roberson: We Really Enjoyed Participating Here. We Look Forward to Doing
this in The Future. Bye‑bye from Albuquerque.

Stoebe: That about That Wraps It up for this Edition of the IRM and
ALMRS Forum. We Would like to Thank You for Your Participation. If You
Faxed Questions Not Answered on the Air, They Will Be Consolidated,
Answered and Posted on the IRM Home Page at www.ntc.blm.gov. We Also
Appreciate Your Comments On Today\'s Show. On Both the BLM and IRM Home
Pages Is a Link to the Evaluation Form Located on the Arizona Web Site.
Please Take the Time to Send Us Your Comments. I\'d Also like to Remind
All the BLM Downlink Coordinators to Fax Us the Total Number of Viewers
From Your Office Who Watched Our Program. Again, We Would like to
Separate The Totals for the Managers, IRM Specialists and Lands and
Minerals Viewers. Please Fax Us Information to NTC Immediately after Our
Telecast. I\'d like to Thank All of Our Panelists Here at NTC and
Everyone in Albuquerque Who Gave Us the Demonstrations of ALMRS. Most of
All, We Would like to Thank Everyone Who Called and Faxed in During or
Question‑and‑answer Segments. We Really Do Appreciate Your
Participation. Thanks and So Long from Phoenix.

Announcer: to Help Your Office Participate in Future Telecasts, See the
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