**RMIS Tips, Tools, and Techniques**

A Telecast Originating from the

BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona

August 22, 2002

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 ‑‑ RMIS, tips,
tools and techniques. An overview of RMIS 3.1 to review basic
operations, to give a few helpful hints and to inform users about new
features and changes since last year. And now, your course facilitator,
Harold Johnson!

H. Johnson: Good morning. I\'m Harold Johnson, recreation branch chief
in the Barstow, California, Field Office. My role today is facilitator
for your class. Our last RMIS broadcast was in September of 1999 when we
deployed the new web‑based system. A lot has happened in the last three
years, and we\'ve made progress. We have, however, not been able to keep
up with training needs for you, the RMIS user. Today\'s class will help
you learn and use the system and the data stored in it more effectively
no matter what your skill level may be. The value of the data BLM is
able to retrieve from RMIS is only as good as the data you put in it.
RMIS data is an important measure of BLM\'s overall performance at the
end of the year. But it is also a good tool to use throughout the year.
If you systematically input data throughout the year, you will find your
data is not only more reliable, but it\'s also more useful. You\'ll also
spend less time inputting if you do it monthly or at a minimum on a
quarterly basis. During this class, we will try to give you some
suggestions of how to start building a systematic approach to data
collection, interpretation and data entry. And before I forget, I want
to thank the National Training Center and the National Recreation Group
for enabling us to offer this course today. Also, thanks to Ann and
Kimberly for the great testing period prior to our training. Before we
go on, I\'d like to take a moment to introduce two instructors here
today. First from the Colorado State Office, we have outdoor recreation
planner Tina McDonald. Good morning, Tina.

T. McDonald: Good morning, Harold. I\'m happy to be here.

H. Johnson: Also with us this morning is Don Applegate, recreation
program lead from the Arizona State Office here in Phoenix. Welcome,
Don.

D. Applegate: hey, Harold. I was just thinking this morning how long
we\'ve been working together. It\'s been quite some time. Glad ‑‑

H. Johnson: Over 14 years. Before we get on with the training, a few
housekeeping items. First, I\'d like to share today\'s agenda, which is
as follows. Our session today will be three hours long with a 15‑minute
break after unit 5. If you want, you can even make a note that this is
‑‑ a note of this in your Student Notebook on the table of contents.
Students will be given the opportunity to interact with instructors
during the course. These interactions will include questions and
exercises. We\'ll be asking assessment questions directly to you,
however, we want to encourage you to ask your questions at any time. By
now, all of you should be connected to the push‑to‑talk phone bridge and
have one of these radar O\'Reilly microphones in front of you. This is
the way to talk to us. You can do so just by pressing and holding down
the button while you\'re speaking and keep the microphone at least a
foot away or at arm\'s length. This is to avoid sounding like the driver
through person taking your orders at McDonald\'s. One very important tip
is that if you depress your microphone and it does not cut out or mute
the audio coming from Phoenix, then your system is not hooked up
correctly. There may be times when more than one of you speak at the
same time. If those cases, one of us will make a time‑out sign with our
hands. When that happens, release your mic butt un and we\'ll sort out
who gets to go first. The protocol for using your microphone is to state
your name and your office so that we can keep track of who is
participating. In that case, please either use the secondary phone‑in
number or fax us with any questions or comments. Here are those numbers,
but they also appear in your Student Notebook. We\'re not going to
expect results without enticing you a little. We are going to throw the
names of everyone who participates into a hat and do a drawing for some
recreation related prizes. At this time, we would like to announce our
first prize winner, who will receive a gift certificate for REI, Kay
SHIPAN, recreation lead in Boise, Idaho, is the only person to score
100% on the pretest. So, congratulations, Kay, you\'ve won this REI gift
certificate. Ok. So now on to what we\'re all here for and what we want
to learn about, today\'s RMIS course objectives are: To reinforce the
importance of RMIS data; to demonstrate basic and new features; to
review key recreation visitation concepts and explain visitor use
formulas;. To demonstrate time‑saving data entry methods, to identify
critical dates for RMIS data; and also to provide additional sources for
information. Also for you to reference as we go along we have developed
a Student Notebook. This notebook covers many of the tools, tips and
techniques we will be showing you today. Feel free to keep additional
notes you learn today in your notebook. It\'s meant to be a supplement
to the RMIS user guide that many of you should have already be familiar
with. We ask you to keep both of them handy today as we go through our
material. If you haven\'t already done so, you can find and download
these important documents through the course management tool or NTC\'s
website at www.ntc.blm.gov. In addition, we also want to remind you that
there\'s a RMIS information website. It includes a link to the RMIS
log‑in page as well as other references for those of you who are very
serious about improving your methods of collecting, interpreting and
recording visitor use data. This important website can be found at
rmishlp.az.corp.blm.gov. And finally, during this class, you should not
be logged onto RMIS. There will be plenty of time for that during the
next two months. So, if you are logged in, please sign out now. For
today, please concentrate on the information we have pulled together for
you. We\'re excited about you actively participating. From time to time
we\'ll be going through the roster and asking some of you to help answer
questions. But before we go on, I\'d like to share with you a message
from Fran Cherry, deputy director, and Rob Roudabush, special assistant
for policy and budget for the NLCS group in Washington. They couldn\'t
be with us today, but wanted to share their views on the importance of
RMIS and how this data affects BLM\'s bottom line.

F. Cherry: Thanks for taking the time to attend this training class on
the recreation management information system. NTC\'s push‑to‑talk
technology has allowed the RMIS team to develop this interactive class
to improve the skills of field people in compiling data for FY2002. I
understand there are in excess of 170 students participating in this
training class. I\'m very pleased with the interest shown by the field.
The FY2002 annual data call and instruction memorandum will soon be
released which requests states and field offices to complete entering
FY2002 data on visitor use, permitting, off highway vehicle usage and
partnerships. Although the BLM has been collecting visitor use data for
over the last 35 years and reporting the results in our public land
statistics, the importance of this field responsibility has never been
as critical as it is now. Both the Department and the BLM strategic
plans now specifycally address recreation and visitor services as
priorities. RMIS data will be increasingly used to understand visitor
use trend and resulting impacts on resource conditions. RMIS will help
us tell our collective BLM story, one that reflects the social and
economic changes occurring in the west. Demand for BLM resources and
what we actually do to accommodate it and manage it. RMIS is already now
being used to compare BLM\'s visitor use data with those of our sister
agencies. RMIS will be relied upon as a primary tool to account for
impacts on the public lands and the Bureau visitor service programs,
especially now that we have a user‑friendly web‑based accounting and
reporting system. But the data you enter into the RMIS can help us or
hurt us in advancing our programs and the needs in the Bureau and the
department. Data which are erratic and contrary to known trends are data
that has nothing backing it can hurt our chances of getting public or
congressional support in building our resource programs. Our accounting
and documentation methods will come under scrutiny as they have for the
park service and the Forest Service in the past decade. We now
anticipate a similar level of accountability for our data. It is time to
take the RMIS program very seriously. It is time to focus on the
quality, the reliability and the validity of the data in that system.
I\'m told that there are plans to begin developing specific training in
the collecting, interpretation and documentation of reliable visitor use
data. I fully support this new emphasis. Nowhere will this be more
important than in our newly designated national landscape conservation
system. I\'d like to have Rob Roudabush for the NLCS office address the
importance of RMIS to the NLCS. Go ahead, Rob.

L. Ridenhour: Thanks, Fran. Rap rapidly changing demographics in the
west have place new demands. BLM must be able to track visitor use and
develop trend Tata to successfully track these demands and understand
their impacts on the resources and on the social and economic values and
benefits to our local communities. Better collection methods and
reliable statistical data provide a basis for communicating change in
public demands with our gateway communities and our partners. Visitor
use data will help us develop transportation plans and Baseline
maintenance levels, design resource interpretive information and
allocate fiscal resources. Correlating existing public land visitor use
data with population growth and recreation demands enables BLM to plan
for future management needs in the development and implementation of our
land use plans. When the president and Congress designated national
monuments and national conservation areas, BLM\'s visibility increased
significantly in both the east and the west. Our need to communicate
reliable visitor use data to our customers and to Congress has never
been greater and is now one of the most effective ways we have to gain
parity in funding with our sister agencies. Last month, the NLCS and
National Recreation Group met in Washington to discuss visitor use needs
and RMIS. We had a very productive discussion about BLM\'s need to
improve data quality, Data Standards, data collection protocol and the
opportunities to use and share this data with our customers. The
Washington Office NLCS staff would like to express our sincere
appreciation for the hard work and dedication of the National Recreation
Group and the RMIS team in improving BLM\'s visitor use data and the
system, and for their developmental work in efforts to extract data from
RMIS by individual NLCS units. To help support these improvements, we
encourage all NCA and National Monument field offices to verify and
validate the RMIS data by the end of this fiscal year. It is with a
great sense of enthusiasm that NLCS would like to summarize our thoughts
for future priority work in visitor use data collection. We want to work
with recreation staff to establish protocol for the collection and
documentation of visitor use data that can be used at each NCA and
National Monument. We want to establish valid and reliable visitor use
data in order to develop and analyze visitor trends for each NCA and
monument. In 2003 we plan to complete a few prototype efforts that will
establish areas ‑‑ in well established areas like Grand Staircase and
Red Rock canyons to help guide others. We want to provide guidance into
the FY2003 annual work plan directive for each NCA and National Monument
for initiating improvements in the visitor use data. NLCS will support
the National Recreation Group with active participation in the RMIS
oversight group which will guide the future development of visitor use,
collection for the BLM. And we want to continue to improve protocol for
visitor use data collection, interpretation, documentation and recording
in RMIS for other NLCS system components like the national trail
systems, wild and scenic rivers and wilderness. Fran, we\'re excited
about the plans for improving BLM\'s visitor use data and look forward
to working with recreation and other programs in achieving these goals.
I want to thank you for the opportunity to share some of our thoughts
and our plans. Thanks, Fran.

F. Cherry: Thanks, rob. I talked earlier about how RMIS data would be
used by the BLM to position ourselves in the budget process. But to
further emphasize the importance of your task at hand to your office, I
want you all to understand that internally RMIS data will be
increasingly used to develop budget strategies, determine workload and
justify resource needs, including the allocation or redistribution of
funds to those areas of greatest recreation management and visitor use
needs. The various data elements in RMIS, like program elements in MIS,
will be part of the analysis for budget tracking and allocation in the
future. We will require workload measures and outputs for the funds
invested. RMIS will be a big part of that in determining workload
between units and states as well as accomplishments. In other words,
just as the RMIS data will be subject to additional scrutiny by
Congress, GAO and the department, the efforts your field offices to
provide reliable, timely and accurate data will also be evaluated. The
days of throwing any old number into the system and forgetting about it
are over. I strongly encourage managers to support their field staffs in
completing this task and to become familiar with data which is generated
in their Field Office during their watch and make sure you can stand by
that data. Learning RMIS is as important as learning MIS, THMS, and
other systems that account and track BLM\'s resource and amenity
conditions. RMIS tracks trends use of of the lands highlighting our
contribution to overall BLM accomplishments, accountability and
effectiveness as an agency. Thanks for taking time out your busy
schedules time to improve your skills. The quality of work you do in
RMIS, and as a result contribute to the strengthening BLM\'s recreation
program. Good luck in your class and I look forward to using our visitor
trend data with our sister agencies, the department and Congress. It
will make a difference. I\'m also very interested in hearing your
evaluations of this new training technology. Thanks again.

H. Johnson: Thanks to Fran and Rob for making those important points.
Now, we\'d like to get down to looking at the RMIS application. Most of
you will recognize these pages but stick with us, because as we go
through the program, even old time RMIS users are going to learn some
new tricks. As Justin Wilson used to say, \"I guarantee.\" Now, let\'s
listen to the dulcet and mellifluous tones of Ms. Tina McDonald as she
explains office, RMA and site pages. Tina?

T. McDonald: Thanks, Harold. This morning I would like to cover the RMIS
basics in unit 2. It can be found in your Student Notebook on page 5.
Here are the objectives for this unit. To explain the difference between
a guest and an office RMIS user, to review the basic organization of the
office RMA and site pages and to identify where this information can be
found in the RMIS user guide. We\'re also going to interact with
exercises, and not like jumping jacks, but regular exercises and
questions, and in your Student Notebook, the questions are listed on
page 7 and we have. Kind of rearranged when we\'re going to give them
butt questions there are. Next, let\'s look at the log‑in page. One of
the common questions RMIS team members get this time of year is how to
log in. This question usually comes from both new and experienced RMIS
users and those of you who have forgotten your passwords. For easy
access you should always have your RMIS page book marked if that you do
not know your log‑in name or password, contact any RMIS team member.
Refer to appendix A in your Student Notebook on page 29 to find a list
of the members. You can log in as a guest or as an office, and you\'re
probably wondering what\'s difference. First, let me show you how to log
in as a guest. The log‑in number ‑‑ oh, this is available to anyone in
the Bureau with intranet access. The log‑in name, which is guest and the
log‑in pass word is guest. Now you\'ll notice on the menu bar oat
left‑hand side you can see we have as ‑‑ as the guest you have the
ability to browse through current information of any office. You can
also check visitation reported to date, see general information on SRPs
and partnerships and you can also run standard reports. Now, I want to
log off and relog in as an office. I\'m going to ‑‑ this will give you
access to your official office data, and be careful, you or anyone in
your office will be able to access the log‑in page and can change or add
any of the data. I\'m logging in as the Barstow Field Office, and then
we\'ll go down to their homepage. Here you are. You will notice on the
left‑hand side on the menu bar that you have several ‑‑ you have more
extensive options and selections than you did with the guest. I\'m going
to go to the top of the page, and the office code is your primary unit
to be stored with all your recreation data for your administrative
areas. The name of the office is highlighted in blue and this is where
you could click on and do any edits. You have your address and phone
number, and new this year is the primary contact of that office and
their e‑mail address, and that\'s real important in case somebody wants
to contact and have any questions on who has been putting in data. A
little bit further down on the screen you\'ll find dropdown lists of
your RMAs, your areas, rivers, trails, SRPs and partnerships. This is a
shortcut for those items and you can also find those over to the left on
your menu bar. The menu bar has these categories, plus they have a few
other ones, which are new this year. One is the ‑‑ of course, the CBS
data, and we have CBS the golden fees, and CBS SRP fees. Visitor
information can also be reached ‑‑ or visitor ‑‑ putting in visitor use
can also be reached from this page. We\'ll go into revenues and visitor
use more later. Let\'s take a minute now to ‑‑ and look at a question
about the office page. The question is: What are the two features on the
office page ‑‑ two new features on the office page? Ok. I\'d like to ask
Dorothy Morgan in the Glenwood springs office, Dorothy, if you could
help me out. If you\'re there. I guess nobody\'s there. How about Leslie
Smith in needles Field Office? Is Leslie out there? How about rich
ROZINE in the Kremmling office.

Caller: CBS is one of the new additions.

T. McDonald: Which was that?

Caller: The CBS reporting information.

T. McDonald: Correct. And anybody else know the other one that I
mentioned earlier? Well, the other one, and it might have missed, but
for the contact, the visitor ‑‑ I mean the primary contact and the
e‑mail of that person that\'s putting in the visitor information. So,
rich, since you are the first person to participate in our training, you
get a prize. We are going to be sending you an REI gift certificate and
as we go along we will keep track of who participated today and doing
more drawings. So, rich, be shooing for that in the mail. Now let\'s
talk about RMAs, the next subdivision of an administrative office is the
resource management area, which we refer to as RMAs. An official
definition of RMAs can be found in your Student Notebook on page 6. In
the 1980s, RMAs originally were strictly established through the BLM
planning process, though through practical key RMAs has been evolved and
have not always required to be established through an official planning
document. The main thing to remember is to that create a new one or to
delete one in RMIS you have to go through a system administrator. Let\'s
go down the RMA page. So on the left‑hand side we\'re going to click on
RMA, and then in the middle we\'re going ‑‑ I\'m going to go and select
‑‑ you can see there\'s a down arrow to different places within this
Field Office. I\'m going to select El Mirage and you\'ll come back up
and select ‑‑ hit the select button. Down the page we have the RMA ‑‑
the name, we have the I.D. number, we have, if it\'s special or
extensive, and then if there\'s any management plans and the dates of
those plans, if there\'s any significant caves in there and then you\'ll
see a dropdown menu that will have if there is any additional sites.
This particular one just has dispersed. Then there\'s a section for
notes. Let me just scroll down a little further on the page and you\'ll
find the off highway vehicle designations. Off highway vehicle
designations. Have become very important for the Bureau for several
reasons. First, it summarizes the OHV designations by category. And mark
Goldbach will cover this later on. And, second, the total acreage in
each OHV designation category per RMA will add up to the total acres in
your Field Office. And then if you add up all the field offices acres
for the Bureau, it will give you the total for the BLM. You should make
every attempt to make this acreage as accurate as possible. One thing on
the ‑‑ one other thing ‑‑ sorry ‑‑ on the RMA page include sites, and
you can move sites and also a visitor use button. Let\'s now take a
moment to have another question. I\'ll ask somebody, and just think, you
might be able to win a prize. And the question is: If you just finished
a new land use plan and wanted to create a new RMA, how would you create
these new RMAs in RMIS?

Caller: Dallas Meeks from El Centro Field Office.

T. McDonald: Dallas, yes.

Caller: I think you stated that we need to first go through the
system\'s administrator to formulate the new RMA?

T. McDonald: That\'s correct. Thank you. We\'ll put your name in and
you\'ll ‑‑ you\'re going to get a prize. Now the next thing we want to
go to is the site page. And the formal definition of a site can be found
in the Student Notebook on page 6. More details can be found also in
your RMIS user guide. Let\'s click ‑‑ I\'ll go over to on the left‑hand
side, I\'m going to click on sites. Now, as you see, we have the
dispersed site. The same thing goes, the blue highlighted is any time
you want to edit. Actually o this particular page I\'m going to click on
this so we can go into the editor page, and as you can see we have the
real property number, which would be ‑‑ should be with FMS and with
disperse there wouldn\'t be one, then the acres in dispersed, the
primary site type, and then the land ownership, if you\'re off public
lands. This would be if you were ‑‑ your visitor centers or your public
rooms. And this ‑‑ if you check this, you need to actually put in some
acreage for that, at least .01, and then there\'s ‑‑ a separate report
will show that, but you would like to keep your visitation at your
visitor centers. The next part, moving down the screen, is the times
it\'s open. So if it\'s a seasonal use, you would want to put that in.
The management responsibility f it\'s BLM leased or an RPP partnership.
And then new this year is the current fee authorization. The purpose of
this new element is to identify which fee authorization covers the use
of this site, whether or not it\'s ‑‑ the payments are made at that
site, on site, at an entrance station or any other location along this
site. Let me give you an example of this, would be the Red Rock canyon
NCA. Visitors are required to pay a fee at the entrance station in order
to visit the sites along this route. The loop road. All sites,
therefore, along the loop road should be identified as a fee demo site
or area. When this data field was created, all sites were defaulted to
the fee status not identified. So we\'re asking, please update this
information for all your sites prior to the end of the year, and we\'ll
be working with the state leads to verify this information this year.
Now, let me talk about the LWCF criteria, which is the next one down on
the screen, but this used to be called BLM fee status, but this became
so obsolete when ‑‑ somewhat obsolete when the fee demo authorization
was given to BLM. It classified the site against strict criteria to
determine if it was eligible as a fee site and only was ranked as ‑‑ at
the fee collection locations. We\'ve just changed the name. So for right
now we don\'t want you to have to worry about this category and what it
shows. Other things on the screen that are on here which some people
use, and it\'s kind of new for the last couple of years is interpretive
types, printed materials f it\'s a visitor center and if you have
wayside signs. This will help our interpretive lead know what kind of
information we have. Then we do the project plan and then last is notes.
This is a good place to keep any of your records of historical stuff.
Eventually you will have to start documenting how you derived your
visitor use data. Make sure you include your date and your initials in
the notes section. Let me go back to the site page, get off the editor
page. So I\'m going to go over and cancel out of this on the left‑hand
side and I just wanted ‑‑ a couple other things on the site, information
page, lower down in this ‑‑ on the screen, we have ‑‑ it has the current
visitors for this year that\'s been put in for fiscal year 2002. As you
can see ‑‑ wow, the dispersed area, they got 104,000 people already, and
part of them have been at the site and 6,000 of them have actually been
at SRPs. Then below is the formula, and it\'s highlighted blue, so that
means you could go in and change that. But Don Applegate and Larry will
be talking about those later. You can also add visits from the site
page. Now let\'s take another moment. We got another question on this
page and I\'ll ask someone to help me. Or you can call in. The question
is: You can get to the add visitor use page from several different
pages, but visits can only be added to (blank)

Caller: Joe, Bishop.

T. McDonald: Somebody from Bishop?

Caller: Yes, it\'s Joe Pelini.

T. McDonald: Back up your microphone just a little bit.

Caller: How is that?

T. McDonald: That\'s great. Thank you.

Caller: The answer is: Through the sites ‑‑ or through sites page.

T. McDonald: Yes, Joe, that\'s correct. Thank you. And your name will be
added into the drawing. Thanks.

Caller: Tina, can I ask a question?

T. McDonald: Yes, you can.

Caller: You mentioned earlier about putting notes in. Will this be
available to the public in terms of accessibility?

T. McDonald: Accessibility to reach the notes or as in universal
accessibility?

Caller: No, the former ‑‑

H. Johnson: Joe, in previous years, the only person that could read the
notes is you putting them in. They weren\'t even available in the State
Office. But now as the system goes forward and other people look at it,
the State Office will be able to look at them, the Washington Office
will be able to look at notes, the public doesn\'t have access to those,
doesn\'t have access to the RMIS system at this time, nor does anybody
outside BLM. But certainly you should temper what you put in notes by
understanding that it is viewed by other people. Keep it clean, Joe!

Caller: Thanks, Harold. You\'re looking good these days.

H. Johnson: Thanks.

Caller: This is JONA in Ukiah.

H. Johnson: Hi, JONA.

Caller: Another question about the notes. Does that mean on a FOIA
request that that could be potentially dispersed to the public under a
FOIA request?

T. McDonald: That\'s a good question.

H. Johnson: JONA, I believe probably yes. I think it probably is
available to the public under FOIA.

D. Applegate: RMIS is a permanent record of the Bureau, so it would be.

H. Johnson: That\'s correct. It\'s a permanent record.

Caller: Thank you.

T. McDonald: Are there any other questions on RMIS basics? If not, then,
Harold, that\'s it for the. Basics.

H. Johnson: Thanks, Tina. Now that we\'ve gone through the first section
of Tina\'s presentation, let\'s continue. Since last year\'s data
submission, there have been some changes. Once again, here\'s Tina with
those features.

T. McDonald: Now I\'d like to 81 date you on some of the new features in
RMIS. You can find unit 3 in your Student Notebook on page 8. The
objectives are to inform students that recreation revenues are no longer
recorded in RMIS, to introduce the collections and billings system or
CBS and new terminology; to show the relationship between RMIS and CBS;
to demonstrate new ways to access recreation revenue information; and to
describe the procedure to amend CBS entries. Here\'s a little
background. Since October 2001, recreation revenues haven\'t been
entered into RMIS but into the Collection and Billing System. The RMIS
team worked with the Collection and Billing System, also known as CBS
specialists, to create links between these programs. The main reason for
upgrading both systems was to eliminate duplication entries by the
field, by popular demand. Also to ensure the revenue figures were the
same as the Federal financial system. Recreation information will be
generated from CBS for the Public Lands Statistics reports. You can find
an example of this report on pages 30 and 35 in your Student Notebook.
When necessary, each office can either run reports from CBS or from
RMIS. The number of all the permits issued are still required in RMIS
this year. The RMIS reporting function will be able to track and
actively ‑‑ the active and the issued permits, which are also ‑‑ relate
to workload measures in MIS. We suggest entering your permit numbers
into RMIS monthly. Then you can use report 34 and 34‑A or 14 and use
this information to update the quarterly requirements in MIS. By fiscal
year 2003, the plan is to no longer enter the numbers into ‑‑ the permit
numbers in RMIS, or at least just the basic ones. Permit count data
entry in RMIS will be discontinued once the permit count is made
mandatory in CBS data and revenue deposits. The permit count will then
only be reported in CBS. As I mentioned before, CBS is a systemwide for
all revenue collections. Revenues collected are entered into CBS on a
daily basis, and each entry is referred to as a daily transaction.
Reports can be run which will show each transaction. I don\'t plan on
making anyone an expert on CBS, but there are three important CBS terms
that relate to recreation and RMIS. The first ‑‑ they\'re commodities ‑‑
actions, also known as CSAs. First, commodities is the highest level of
collections such as recreation SRPs, recreation entrance fees,
Recreation Use Fees and RUPs and recreation special area SRPs. The
second, the subject, is the next level of collections, which further
identify the geographic area or the fee demo location. Such as Barstow
Field Office CF03 or Anasazi CO02. And, third, the action. This is the
lowest level of identifying the collection, such as commercial,
competitive or organized group events for SRPs or RUPs as specific
recreation sites.

\> Refer to your Student Notebook for examples of the CSAs on page 9.
Unless your notebook on page 37 is a list of your CBS contacts for your
state. It\'s very important to work with the contacts to verify each of
these commodity subjects and actions. Next let\'s get into the CBS
report examples. There are three ways to find recreation revenues. First
is the CBS program itself. Accessing CBS is available to any BLM
employee, and we have provided the steps ‑‑ are outlined in the RMIS
user guide and also in your Student Notebook on page 38. We won\'t take
the time now to show you these steps, but you should either try the
steps yourself or make good friends with your CBS specialist in your
office so that they can help you do this paramedic now I would like to
show on the Elmo an example of what a CBS report looks like after I\'ve
done all the necessary steps. We have the commodities, the subject and
the action, and then the amount collected and underneath commodities you
can see some of the things I was talking about, recreation and
concessioned, recreation special areas and SRPs and then under the
action would be the actual location, which also includes a fee demo
number and then under subject ‑‑ I messed you up, sorry. But that\'s ‑‑
it takes quite a few steps to get there, so hopefully you can ‑‑ you
guys can figure that out. All right. The second way to find recreation
revenue is actually within the RMIS program. So let\'s go back in and
I\'m going to go into the Yuma Field Office, and we\'re going ‑‑ I\'m
going to show you ‑‑ I talked about earlier those CBS buttons on the
side, but on the ‑‑ on the left‑hand side on the menu screen you\'ll see
CBS, CBS golden fees and CBS SRP fees. I\'m going to click on the CBS
and I just want to briefly show you what this ‑‑ what it is. The date,
the dedescription, and the permit information and the permit type.
You\'ll notice that the transaction level data is being transferred from
CBS to RMIS on a daily basis. This information is provided for you ‑‑
your reference to see if revenues are being properly credited to your to
the office and the site. Remember, if you find any errors, you will need
to verify that the deposits were properly entered into CBS in the first
place and then work with your specialist. The third way to find a RMIS
report is ‑‑ and this is new ‑‑ it\'s going to be the recreation
revenue, which is new in the BRIO reports. So let\'s look at what the
future holds for you. By the end of the year, this fiscal year, we plan
to have a button on the office menu screen called recreation revenue.
The information found in this report will be downloaded from CBS on a
nightly basis, and let\'s take a look at the information from the same
office that we have previously been viewing. First of all, some of you
may be familiar with this screen, if you\'ve had to work with the budget
and planning system, BPS, and over on the left‑hand side you can see you
can set limits and we\'re going to go down to state. , and I\'m going to
select Arizona and say ok, and actually I could probably do office and
then under view I\'m going to select State Office summary and permit
types. This will give us a whole listing for the whole state of your
office, your permit types as you can see, the number that was issued and
the fees that were collected for that office. This is going to be
really, really handy for everybody. At this time, I\'d like to provide
you with the opportunity to experience firsthand how this might work of
finding revenues. At your sites let\'s have you break into small groups
and play this little scenario out. Please select someone to record what
happened and then I\'ll call on a site or two and you can tell us what
happened. And don\'t take ‑‑ we\'re not going to have a long time to go
through this, but the scenario is today is August 22nd, and, John, your
manager, has just come into your office and requested the number of
special recreation permits that are currently active and how much
revenue has been collected this year for all SRPs. How would you
proceed? Ok, I hope everybody had a chance to discuss appear little bit.
I\'m going to call on ‑‑ I\'d like to ask the folks at the Idaho State
Office. Kay, since you\'re up there and you got 100% on your test, I
would like to hear how you guys proceeded with this.

Caller: Hi, this is Kay in the State Office. We\'re having some
technical difficulties here, so I hope you can hear. We decided that you
would need to go into CBS to get the actual dollar figures for that day,
but we would also need to go into RMIS to get the total number of
permits because CBS, I think, still double counts the number of permits.
As you make the collections into CBS, each individual collection is
counted with individual permits. So I think you still need to go into
RMIS to get the total number.

T. McDonald: Good. That\'s right, Kay. Then when our new and updated
BRIO report comes in, we\'ll be able to get both of those entries at the
same time. Thank you very much.

D. Applegate: Kay will be subject to another drawing.

T. McDonald: Now I\'d like to see if there\'s any other questions about
this. Ok. To quickly summarize this section, recreation revenues are
entered only into CBS. Permit counts must be entered into RMIS. The CBS
revenue and RMIS permit count data will be used to generate the FY02
public land statistics reports. And there are three ways currently to
find recreation revenue and new fee collection sites and permit types
need to be established by the CBS representative. Finally, let\'s
discuss what\'s happening with the office code updates. The RMIS
database now shares data with the CBS database. Eventually we\'ll be
sharing budget and workload measure information between these two
systems and MIS. One of our priority projects in RMIS is to update the
office codes. Because of the formation of new NLCS offices and the
reorganization within various states, many of the office codes in RMIS
are obsolete. The programming in RMIS is such that all data, such as
visitation sites, SRPs and corridor details are detached to those
obsolete office codes and need to be analyzed and redistributed to the
new budget office codes. By the beginning of FY03, we have a goal of
having these office codes updated and based on the responses to an
information request that we expect to go out early in September. Once
these changes have been made, we should be able to retrieve data with
the proper office codes and interact with other databases in the Field
Office. One other change to RMIS deals with the NLCS units and new
reports. This will be covered later. So are there any last questions on
this section?

Caller: Tina, I have a question. This is Joe from Bishop.

T. McDonald: Yes, Joe?

Caller: When we get contributed funds such as donations that go into the
1232 account, will they be reflected in RMIS through the CBS?

T. McDonald: Yes, they will.

Caller: Ok, thanks, Tina.

H. Johnson: Any other questions? Anybody?

Caller: This is Evelyn in burns and I have a question about ‑‑ that we
won\'t be entering permits into RMIS anymore next fiscal year. How are
we going to enter visitor use associated with SRPs?

T. McDonald: The SRPs are still going to be entered. You\'ll still put
your permit information into RMIS. We just won\'t ‑‑ you just won\'t
need to put like a permit count. But, yes, we\'ll still want that
information in RMIS and we\'ll still keep the visitor information. Good
question.

D. Applegate: The advantage there would apply to where you have a
special area and you issue numerous SRPs such as a long‑term visitor
area or an area that requires an SRP to go into because it\'s limited to
the number of people that are allowed in there at any one time. So the
offices that have that situation won\'t have to input the dozen or so
numbers, but where you issue a single SRP, you will still need to enter
that data in the ‑‑ in your RMIS program.

T. McDonald: Thanks, Don, for helping me out on that. Ok, that\'s about
it for new features in RMIS. Harold?

H. Johnson: Thanks, Tina.

T. McDonald: I guess we have another question?

H. Johnson: We have another question? Shoot! Hello? Oh, it\'s ‑‑ we\'ve
got a fax. Ok. This is from penny foreman in the Phoenix Field Office.
Tina, does it matter if we report events which are commercial and
competitive as competitive for the action or do we report as commercial
in CBS?

T. McDonald: Hi, penny. It should be commercial. In CBS. Does that
answer your question, penny?

Caller: Yes, it does. Thank you very much.

T. McDonald: Ok. Thank you.

H. Johnson: Ok. Thanks, Tina. In March of this year, Field Offices were
asked to update their OHV limited designation acres in RMIS. One of the
big questions was why is this information needed? Well, to answer that
question today we have mark Goldbach, recreation lead in Wyoming, who is
in Wyoming in the Cheyenne office. Good morning, Mark? Don\'t tell me
how hot it is in Cheyenne.

M. Goldbach: Good morning, Harold, Tina and Don. We\'re actually having
some nice cool 70‑degree weather here in Cheyenne today. I\'m Mark
Goldbach, a recreation program lead in the Wyoming State Office and off
highway vehicle team member. I\'m here to talk to you about the new OHV
designation categories in RMIS. Please turn to page 11 in your Student
Notebook for the unit objectives of this section of the broadcast. You
as well as Harold are probably wondering why this change was necessary?
The OHV team needs to the limited use designation information split up
to serve as a basis for better record keeping and subsequently more
effective OHV management. This more precise record keeping enhances our
ability to respond to public inquiries as well. You may remember that
during the preparation of the national management strategy for motorized
OHV use on public lands several environmental organizations inquired
about the number of acres in the limited to existing and limited to
designated use categor. Responding to this request was difficult because
the information was not readily available, took considerable time to
respond to and had questionable accuracy because of the way the OHV
information was displayed in RMIS. At this time by like to ask you to
please turn to pages 39 and 40 of your notebook. Appendix F shows the
OHV designations from the Pinedale RMP. This is a typical RMP decision
record table showing the diversity of OHV designations that we would
like to track more accurately in RMIS. In the future, different people
from within the BLM, including Field Office, State Office and national
OHV coordinators, as well as public affairs specialists, will likely use
OHV designation data to respond to public inquiries as we complete our
planning efforts and we implement OHV designations on the ground.
Approximately 2/3rds of the RMIS reporting units have made the necessary
adjustments within the limited use designation categories. Here is a
page from RMIS standard report number 11, OHV area designations for the
Pinedale Field Office. As you can see, the shaded area is the new area.
The name of the old limited data element was changed to the \"other\"
column. Two new limited data elements included limited to designated and
they\'re limited existing roads and trails were then added to the RMIS
database. The subtotal column was also created. The request was to
respread the \"other\" use acres to what was officially designated in
the Field Office land use plan. Since acres in the limited to existing
and designated categories have been the areas most requested by the
public, we asked RMIS users to first show what has been designated in
these two categories. The total number of limited acres in the
designated existing and other categories cannot exceed the Field Office
total acres. On the Pinedale RMA page you can see how the comment field
following the other category was used to distinguish among the other
types of limited use designations, such as limited seasonally,
authorized personnel only, or other limited use designations made in the
RMP. If you leave the acres in the other categories, that\'s ok. You
just to put in a note to describe what other pertains to. As a Bureau
revises our land use plans and OHV designations change in many states
from open to the indictment use designation category, it will be
important we keep accurate records of these revised designations. We
will likely have more acres in the limited use designation categories
than any other OHV designation category. We would like to be able to use
the RMIS database system to its full capabilities by accurately tracking
these limited use designations. The OHV team feels that additional
changes to the OHV section of the database may ultimately be needed to
more accurately display the status of OHV designation information. We
would like to eventually show all of the seven major limited use
designated categories and combinations that may be designated by a BLM
Field Office. As we move towards more comprehensive travel management.
We may be able to incorporate other trail information inventory into
RMIS as well. Don\'t worry, these additional changes to RMIS will take
some time. OHV team thanks everyone who has complied with this request
and encourages those who have not been able to make the change to do so
by the end of the fiscal year. We would also like to encourage state,
recreation program leads to pull up RMIS standard report number 11 for
their state and check to ensure its completeness. RMIS users can direct
any questions concerning OHV designation updates to either their state
OHV and trails coordinator or to their state recreation lead. Thanks for
allowing me this opportunity to represent the OHV team on your
broadcast. Back to you, Harold.

H. Johnson: Thanks, mark. Before we move on, does anyone have any
questions for Mark?

Caller: We have a question here in Moab. This is Katy Stevenson, Moab
Field Office. In WSAs that are limited to inventoried ways, should the
WSA acreage go in limited to designated or in other?

M. Goldbach: Limited to inventoried ways ‑‑ would that ‑‑ is that
equivalent to an existing or designated way? I\'m not sure just what
that designation status is. If it\'s not limited to existing or
designated, I would recommend you leave it in the other, and then put a
narrative statement in there just what specifically that inventory
applies to.

Caller: Ok. Thank you.

H. Johnson: Thanks, Katy. Anyone else have any questions for Mark?

Caller: Yeah, just a comment from Salmon, I think that\'s pretty typical
across the Bureau that you might have existing designation, but that
wasn\'t the time of the inventory and now the proliferation of other
routes has happened over the years.

H. Johnson: Who are we talking to from Salmon?

H. Johnson: It\'s Michael in Salmon.

H. Johnson: Hi, Michael. Any comment, Mark?

M. Goldbach: No. Good comment. Ok. Anyone else?

Caller: This is Scott with the Klamath falls Oregon Field Office and I
am just wondering how are we going to avoid double counting the OHV
limited acres when we have areas that are limited to existing or
designated roads and then also seasonal limited?

M. Goldbach: Good question, Scott. Yeah, that is a concern and we ask
you to please not double count. In the instructional bulletin that was
sent out we asked that the limited to existing or designated roads and
trails take a precedent over other designation categories. So where you
have a seasonal limitation as well as an existing or designated
category, a dual or maybe even a triple designation for public lands,
the limited to existing or designated would take a precedent and you
would put the acres in that category and then you\'d need to explain in
your other category that ‑‑ and with a narrative statement, there\'s
also a seasonal limitation in there as well. The OHV team realizes that
this is not the ideal system, and we hope to refine it to be able to
better clarify the situation and the problem that you\'re depicting, but
for now we ask when you have a dual or triple designation you put it in
the limited to existing or designated roads and trails category. Does
that answer your question?

Caller: yes, it does. Thank you.

H. Johnson: Anyone else?

Caller: This is Duane in Santa Fe.

H. Johnson: Hi, Duane.

Caller: Did I miss something or is the ‑‑ what\'s the purpose of the
seven categories and are those listed on the RMIS report?

M. Goldbach: The seven categories are, I believe, listed on the RMA page
f I\'m correct. I don\'t have a copy of that RMA page. But the seven
limited use designation categories are categories within the limited OHV
designation category that you can designate public lands as. And the
goal is to eventually be able to show as accurately as possible within
RMIS what those limited use designations are. We\'ve got quite a variety
of limited use designations throughout the Bureau, and right now the
current picture shows a limited ‑‑ or a ‑‑ I will use a different word
there ‑‑ a somewhat clearer depiction of what those designation
categories are, but they\'re not full and complete and we\'re trying to
work towards that goal of making it more complete. Does that answer your
question?

Caller: I guess so, but I really don\'t see the need for these. I think
we\'re splitting hairs, but that\'s my opinion.

T. McDonald: Mark, this is Tina and one of the things, at least
currently in RMIS, we don\'t have all those seven categories, we just
have the limited to designated and the limited to existing and the other
category. The seven that Mark had brought up is in possible eat works,
but we haven\'t gotten there right now. So your question was if you ‑‑
do we have to put those all into RMIS right now, and, no, you don\'t.
It\'s just the limited to designated and limited to existing.

H. Johnson: Great, Mark. Thanks. Mark will be staying with us up to the
course break. One of the primary purposes of RMIS is to account for
visits and visitor days to public lands and here\'s Don Applegate,
recreation lead in Arizona, to waltz us through visitation. Let \'em
have it, Don.

D. Applegate: Thanks, Harold. This should only take a second, but I was
noticing your use. Word \"waltz,\" I\'m wondering if that\'s for song
and dance? Is that the politically correct term? Anyway, for this unit
I\'d like to take you through unit 5, the visitation concepts. For this
unit our objectives are as follows, to review the key concepts of
recreation visitation. , to demonstrate techniques for estimating
recreation visits, to demonstrate how to design formulas for RMIS to
calculate visitor days of primary activities. Now let\'s talk about
Federal reporting requirements. Agencies are required to report
recreation use on management areas to Congress. This is how the taxpayer
gets feedback on how their money was spent. Visits and visitor days are
the agreed units of measures used in the public land statistics to
satisfy this reporting requirement to Congress. BLM\'s recreation
specialists should make the best professional judgment to provide
reasonable and consistent recreation visit estimates and record those
into RMIS. The detailed definitions of visits and visitor days is in
your Student Notebook. Now let\'s talk about those definitions for a
bit. You can find these also on page 13 of your Student Notebook. The
definition of a visit is the entry of any person onto lands or related
waters administered by the BLM for any time period. For example, the
same day reentry, negligible transit and entry to another recreation
site within or to a detached portion of the recreation management area
on the same day is considered a visit. The definition of a recreational
visit is the entry of a person into BLM ‑‑ or onto BLM lands or waters
for recreational purposes. So you don\'t want to record visits that are
not there for recreation, such as people pulling off a highway to
stretch, or driving by, or even your own group of recreation specialists
when inspecting a proposed area for SRP event to decide whether or not
you want to approve it. For more examples, refer to the guidelines for
reporting recreation visitation on public lands, which is available
through the link in your RMIS user guide, which you can get to from the
help page, the RMIS help page on the web. The definition of a visitor
day is the visitor day is equivalent to 12 visitor hours. It\'s pretty
straightforward. But those last two definitions lead to two more that
are necessary to understand. What is a visitor hour? And that always
leads to the question, how long does a visitor stay? Well, the
definition of a visitor hour is the sum of minutes of one or more
persons in an area for continuous, intermittent or simultaneous periods
of time aggregating one hour. In other words, one person for one hour,
two persons for 30 minutes each or ten persons for six minutes each. The
definition of an average length of state stay is the duration in hours
of the average visit to a specific area, site or management unit. It\'s
important to understand the average length of stay at any site or area
before you start developing RMIS formulas. But we\'ll get into that a
little later. Now it\'s time to see if you\'re with me. Please take a
moment to think about this question: If we have six hike oars a trail
for eight hours each, how many visitor days does that equate to?

Caller: Four. Bill in bellfish. South Dakota Field Office.

D. Applegate: You got it. That\'s the exact right answer, Bill. We\'re
going to throw your name in the hat for the drawing. Let\'s talk \[
APPLAUSE \] Let\'s talk about that basis of professional judgment. How
do we know about visitor days and the average electricity length of stay
at any site or area? It\'s your job as a recreation professional ‑‑
we\'re going to talk for a while about ways that you apply professional
judgment. This graphic that\'s on your screen now illustrates the simple
process that is our reporting role in BLM. The discussion we\'re about
to have is not part of the RMIS software but RMIS is a tool that helps
you go through this process. You can see here how raw data from ‑‑ and
your knowledge of the visitor use patterns in your area are combined and
interpreted, and that is what we use to report to Congress. There are
cam pulls of raw data sources that can be found in your Student Notebook
on page 14. These are important because the quality of the data source
should determine the complexity and accuracy of what is reported. Your
knowledge is critical. You are the agency\'s source of the information
for the area that ‑‑ for your area and that\'s your job. Besides the raw
data sources we just reviewed, take a moment to think about this. What
other examples of background information and knowledge that you might
have that is specific to use patterns in your area? Evelyn ‑‑

Caller: This is Terry in Boise. How about visitor ‑‑

Caller: Katy speaking from Moab.

D. Applegate: We have three people, I think, online. I heard one voice
from Boise first.

Caller: Don, Terry from Boise. How about visitor use surveys?

D. Applegate: The visitor use survey? That\'s very good. Let me write
that down here. Do we have any others? I heard two or three others there
for a moment.

T. McDonald: I think someone from Moab, Kate.

Caller: In Moab we have the arches visitor center and we\'ve sort of
calculated what percentage we are of the arches count.

D. Applegate: Let\'s talk to Moab. What was the source of ‑‑ what
knowledge did you have to calculate that percentage other than those
listed in your example in the notebook.

Caller: The national park visitation data and we\'ve had people at the
information center here in Moab ask people how many of those planning to
go to the park also visited BLM attraction and worked out a figure on
some sort of percentage.

D. Applegate: Very good. So you went to another agency to get
information from them.

H. Johnson: Excuse me, who was this in Moab?

Caller: Katy.

D. Applegate: Thanks, Katy.

H. Johnson: Be sure you give us your name as well as your office because
we want to get you in the hat.

D. Applegate: I heard another person throw out an example a few minutes
ago and I\'m hoping they can throw it out again.

Caller: El Centro. We use air monitoring.

D. Applegate: Your mic was too close to the mouth to be clear. I need
you hold it further away and tell me again your name and what your idea
was.

Caller: This is Tom sharky, we use photo air monitoring on weekly counts
in the imperial sand dunes.

H. Johnson: How is it going, Tom?

Caller: Good. I like your shirt.

H. Johnson:, hey, thanks.

D. Applegate: There was one from Winnemucca, I remember.

Caller: Lynne Clements from Winnemucca. What about chambers of commerce?

D. Applegate: Excellent. Thank you, Len. I\'m going to go ahead and
mention a few others that we kind of thought of just to move us along
here. We\'ve got seasonal changes. Those are always important. Sometimes
there are floods in your area that may prevent access to a campground.
We have ‑‑ so you have climatic incidents. Your normal ‑‑ your length of
stay is going to be different no matter where you are, even if you have
the same site ‑‑ same kind of site in different parts of the country.
People may be using it for different amounts of time. Then another
important one is your on the ground evidence of use. I think that\'s
enough examples. But what I meant by on the ground evidence is if you
know that you had, let\'s say a maintenance clean‑up day one afternoon
and then the next day you went out and there was litter and trash
everywhere, then you would realize that you had people out there during
the night or in the late evening, and that would ‑‑ might change the way
you want to manage the area. So the point of this is that different ‑‑
is that different sites are different, every place, every site, every
management unit is different. They have different volume of visitor
level use. There\'s a diversity in the types of use, the size of the
site or an area and the complexity of use patterns, the local knowledge
of use patterns, raw data that\'s available, but only you know those
differences, so only you can take the raw data, mix it with what you
know to interpret it and design a formula to reflect what you figured
out. So I\'d like to talk about using RMIS as a tool to do just that. By
comparing sites, BLM is different when compared to the other agencies.
We started out talking about how different agencies have all ‑‑ all
report, but they\'re all reporting in such a way that they may be
slightly different among etch other, but they all had one thing in
common, visits and visitor days. Remember, those are what we are
required to report. But there\'s no congressional requirements to report
how people recreate or what it is they do. But to do their own jobs,
each Federal agency breaks down the recreation activities that people do
during their visit a little differently as their needs require. BLM
needed an automated system to report the visits and the visitor days to
Congress, but BLM also wanted to have details to help with management
decisions such as planning and public safety. They wanted to provide use
and information to consistency groups, researchers and special interest
promoters to follow trends and visitors demands, reduce the number of
specific data calls to the field ‑‑ I remember those days ‑‑ have
details where specialized activities occur on public lands, for example,
where is the best place to mountain bike? Account for workload demands
and differences between states and offices. To do all of this, RMIS was
created long ago, and it continues to evolve. With it came new
definitions and concepts such as activity. Now, activity is a specific
recreational pursuit undertaken by a visitor. Now, you can refer to
appendix G on page 41 of the Student Notebook for a list of recreation
activities that BLM currently tracks. These are the ones that roll down
when you are inside the RMIS software and you can pick from them. If
RMIS users have recommendations for additional activities not collected
on the ‑‑ not currently on that list, notify Terry O\'Sullivan by the
end of August and we\'ll get them in there for next year. Another
definition is that of participant. A participant is a visitor on a
single visit who engages in one or more activities on public lands. Ok.
Time for another question. Please take a moment to think about this one.
How can a person be one visitor, but several participants on the same
visit?

Caller: This is Marilyn from the Moab Field Office.

D. Applegate: Hi, Marilyn.

Caller: Hi. Multiple activities on the public lands you would be par
disa punt.

D. Applegate: Multiple activities on the public lands could be a
participant. I think ‑‑

Caller: Right. They would be doing like climbing and boating and
bicycling, you know, doing multiple activities?

D. Applegate: So if I understand you right, you\'re saying that one
person could arrive at a site and do multiple things before they leave?

Caller: That\'s correct.

D. Applegate: Ok. That\'s exactly right, because that would make them
one person as a visit, but they would be counting separately ‑‑ or
counted separately as a participant in each of those things, so they
could be three or four participants during the same visit. Ok. I think
you understand those points. Now let\'s look at our process illustration
again and see how RMIS fits into all this. RMIS is a tool used to record
and report the recollectation information to all BLM offices need to
meet the reporting requirements. So it is after the data is interpreted.
But it also warehouses at their fingertips the data, they being the
staff and you folks, it\'s your data needed to make management decisions
to justify budget requests and to provide information to the public in
an efficient and consistent manner. Now, you programmed RMIS, you are
the RMIS programmer and that\'s where formulas come in. We talked
earlier about how each site and management unit is different. So RMIS
was designed to be flexible. But only you can match it to the site and
using your professional judgment and the knowledge of the area. When you
attribute an annual number to visits ‑‑ of visits to a site in RMIS, the
duration of the visit will be calculated into visitor days for you by
RMIS, plus a whole lot more. So that number and the visitor days are
what was intended to be reported to Congress. This is what RMIS formulas
are meant to do but we do it by calculating all those participants. Now
you see the big picture and why formulas exist. So let\'s talk about
their purpose and how they work. BLM has given you a hammer to nail down
your job, and it\'s up to you to pick it up and hit the nail on the
head. Formulas are the magic inside RMIS and you are the magicians. You
build formulas for sites, dispersed areas, corridor segments and special
recreation permits. To make RMIS put this imagine tyke work you need
four bits of information, one is the actual number of visits that occur
at the site. The three other bits are variables in your formula.
Formulas are established to record, one, activities on a site or in an
area, and the average amount of time a participant spends during the
activity, the percent of visitors that participate in the activity. So
we have the ‑‑ I\'m going to write right on top of this. We have the
activity times the hours ‑‑ that\'s not working. We\'ll just go away
with that.

H. Johnson: John Madden\'s job is safe.

D. Applegate: I can go to the Elmo and do it here. We can say that the
activity times the hours times the percent of visitation divided by 12
equals the visitor day. Remember our point we made earlier. The
complexity of the formulas should not be greater than the source of the
data you are interpreting. In other words, the formula should not be any
more sophisticated than the raw data source you used to get the numbers.
The simpler the better. It\'s better because you can stand by it. What
you put in comes out. It\'s counterproductive to complicate RMIS soap it
comes out looking better than what went in. Let\'s refer to this graphic
again. A simple formula will meet the requirements of the system. A
formula ‑‑ let\'s see. I lost myself here. A formula can include just
one activity at the site that 100% of the visitors participate in doing
and how long they do that activity and, ta‑dah, you\'re finished with
the hardest part of RMIS. Here again are the reasons we have RMIS.
Perhaps you have more reasons than those shown for specific data needs.
Only those ‑‑ so you only add those activities to your formula that will
fulfill these needs such as those ‑‑ the needs such as the ones listed
here. The intent of BLM through RMIS is not to list every possible
activity that might occur. Instead, it is to capture primary unique or
other activities that might be a management issue. Now back to our
process graphic. This interpretation of data area in the process is
where recreation specialists determine the percent of visitors do that
each activity and for how long. It\'s not in RMIS. It\'s there. We need
to get back to that to show ‑‑ we need to get back to that now so that
we can see how RMIS fits in the big picture. Even though this is not a
part of the RMIS software. In the later session today, we\'ll bring you
a sorcerer to show you the mechanics of how to input RMIS and create a
formula, but as you can see, that comes later. Have you noted that so
far in this segment I\'ve talked a lot about definitions and what you do
as recreation professionals? Our talk about RMIS software has only been
about how it fits into your job as a tool. Ok. Back to the process
again. Let\'s look further back up the process to an earlier point. Here
we are considering the knowledge and use patterns and the raw data. We
will describe a hypothetical magical site called Wizard Point, and you
can follow along with these objectives on the page ‑‑ bottom of page 16
in your Student Notebook. And these are the four variables needed for
RMIS formulas. A critical question to ask when interpreting data from
any site, how to approach the interpretation of the site date to you to
get of the information, a formula complexity paradigm to remember and
what the RMIS formula calculates internally. Let\'s look at our first
map. This is a trailhead with two day uses. This man ‑‑ map depicts a
simple typical site. This is a trailhead with a parking area, and
there\'s a trail register right up the trail. In RMIS the primary site
type is TH for trailhead. The local knowledge and culture of this area
is that people go there, primarily to use the trail for trail
activities. The raw data is from a trail register and the ranger visit
patrol logs. From patrol logs, patrol ‑‑ from the patrol logs we learn
that it\'s patrolled on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Cars are parked
there anywhere from 1 to 4 hours, and there are some hikers observed
coming and going. So from the trail register we see that hikers spend
three hours and mountain bikers spend an hour. Ok, RMIS users, let\'s
interpret this data. Take a moment to think about this question. We\'re
after the three things that a formula does. Mary Ann Dewitz from Grand
Staircase, can you name them? Can anyone else name them?

Caller: Terry ‑‑

Caller: This is Margaret in Portland.

Caller: The activity ‑‑

D. Applegate: We had two people talking at the same time. I heard
Margaret but I didn\'t hear the gentleman that started first.

Caller: This is Margaret.

D. Applegate: Hi, Margaret. Who is the gentleman?

Caller: Don, Terry again from Boise.

D. Applegate: Hi, Terry. The elements are the activities, the hours and
the percent of the visitation.

D. Applegate: That\'s exactly right. What\'s the fourth thing that
we\'ll need to? Does anybody know that? I\'ll ask Margaret?

Caller: I don\'t understand your question, Don.

D. Applegate: Ok. There\'s four things we need to estimate visits at the
site, and the fourth thing ‑‑ we have the three variables from the
formula. What\'s the last thing we need to input?

Caller: Dallas from El Centro. Be divided by 12, visitor day?

D. Applegate: The fourth thing we\'ll need is the number of visits. So,
good job for all of you that were there trying to jump in and answer
those questions. Now we\'ll have to figure out how we\'ll get all that
from what we know back to our examples. It\'s time for a critical
decision. You have to make this decision for every site you work with.
Ask yourself what data source will be the key to getting at the number
of visits, the four item you need to complement any formula. In this
case are we going to count cars and extrapolate our estimate of visits.
That would be the information from the ranger log? Or are we going to
count entries in the register and extrapolate or estimate our estimate
of visits? I can\'t emphasize this enough. Here goes. The quality of the
data source should determine the complexity and accuracy of what is
reported. Now, grab your microphones and repeat with me, this is
everybody at once and please follow the bouncing ball. This is
unrehearsed, so go easy on me in the course evaluation. The quality of
the data should determine the complexity and accuracy of what is
reported? Let\'s do that again. Repeat after me. Ok? The quality of the
data source should determine the complexity and accuracy of what is
reported. I didn\'t hear anybody. So I can\'t say that was great.

Caller: Don, why don\'t you sing it?

Caller: I\'m holding the microphone in Barstow.

D. Applegate: Let\'s get back to work. To answer the data source
question, we\'ve got to review the raw data you have and how you get it.
Let\'s start with the sample page out of the Wizard Point trail register
box. Ok? Boy, there\'s a wealth of information here. First we see
activities that people have checked. This is what they were doing. Right
there. This is one of our variables. Then there\'s a length of stay
column. Ok? That\'s another one of our variables. Third, you just add up
the number in each group, here they are, and compare what they ‑‑ each
group has done with their activities and compare them as a ratio and we
can conclude from this example, we won\'t take the time to add them up
in front of you, but we have concluded in this example that 80% of the
use is by bikers ‑‑ or by hikers, excuse me, and the other 20% is by
mountain bikers. Now all we need to do is figure out the fourth element,
the number of visits. To do this we\'ll need what is called a compliance
ratio. Now, that is not a RMIS term, so it\'s not in your books. But in
our example, let\'s say that we have a compliance ratio of 30% signing
the register. What that means is that only three out of every ten
visitors fill out the register. For those that are curious, one way to
get that figure by aligning the dates on the register and the patrol
logs and then looking at the ratio of visitors that sign the register
with the number of vehicles recorded in the parking lot. This gives you
a conversion factor of the average number of visitors per vehicle. And
from that point o you just need to count the vehicles and multiply by
that conversion factor. But there are many other methods to find a
compliance ratio and that kind of detective work is a whole other
training that we can\'t get into right now. We heard Mr. Cherry talk
about further classes that are being planned and we have been doing just
that. So let\'s just use the 30% figure as an assumption. Now we know
where to get the fourth element. How do we interpret the data? How can
we get a usable number? The answer is to add up the register, then
correct for compliance. Later in today\'s lesson our RMIS Wizard will
show you young magicians how to input this magic into the software so it
can work for you. This is all one needs to be successful with RMIS
formulas. If it gets more complicated, if your formula is more
complicated, it\'s because you needed to to better match RMIS to your
site or area, but not because RMIS demanded it. Now, let me take a
minute to illustrate what this formula will do for you in RMIS. This is
the magician\'s secret. Like the class learned so far ‑‑ I have to find
a pen here ‑‑ we need to interpret the raw data visits we get from the
register before it can be used by the RMIS formula. So let\'s do that.
Correcting for compliance is a simple ratio. The registered vehicles ‑‑
the registered vehicle visitors over X equals 30 divided by 100. So we
have the known visitors and we\'re after the total visitors. This would
be X divided by 100. Simple ratio. That gives us the three to one.
Let\'s assume the July register added up to 150 on patrol days and 25 on
nonpatrol days. So that\'s 175 visits over X equals 30 over 100. Now,
that will calculate out to 583. Ok. Now I\'ll show you what happens
internally once you interpret the data. Calculating the formula goes
like this. This is what RMIS does. It takes 583 visits for both ‑‑ all
the activities, but it will multiply that times the 20 and 80%,
depending on which activity we were talking about, and it calculates how
many participants. Took part in that. You also entered the number of
hours every person on the average participated in that activity and it
will calculate out how many participant hours occurred for each of those
two activities. Then it divides these numbers by 12 and you get visitor
days for each activity. Ok. Now, we\'re going to make that typical
example a little more typical. The next example will demonstrate how to
use ratios to analyze raw data, identify factors to consider when
deciding on a data source, discuss problems caused by mixing raw data
from different sources and discuss how recent evolution of RMIS can help
keep your data pure. This would be our second example. I\'m going to get
myself caught up here on the notes.

Caller: Don?

H. Johnson: A question?

Caller: Yes, this is Dallas from El Centro. Is there any way that the
office could get copies of your calculating and formulas and examples?
It seems like that would be very helpful.

D. Applegate: We can do that. Or you can copy them down in your Student
Notebook as we go. Are you referring to the little table I just did on
the Elmo?

Caller: I wasn\'t able to write everything down as fast as you were
putting it down. So that was why I was asking that question.

H. Johnson: Dallas, one of the things we intend to do with a lot of this
information that isn\'t in your Student Notebook is we\'re going to add
it to the RMIS user guide. It won\'t get in there right away, but
sometime in the next couple months we\'ll get it in there. Ok?

Caller: Thanks.

D. Applegate: For our example, it seem the magical Wizard Point has now
become a trailhead with water access and two more day uses. You can see
it has a river going by, but we still have the trailhead and the
register. Ok. Our local knowledge has not changed for this example.
It\'s still primarily used for trail activities. The raw data has more
details than the ranger logs but there is no change in the trail
register information. So we see the ranger has observed swimmers in the
waterhole and anglers fishing along the riverbank as they park their
cars and wander upstream. But he also as has noticed that cars are
parking on one side of the parking lot and other side of the parking lot
depending on where people seem to be. Or people are focussing their
activities. So depending on where they\'re parked, they\'re parked for
different lengths of time. Now, again, we have to ask ourself, what is
the key data source that will provide the information that we need? In
other words, are we going to count the cars and extrapolate our
estimated visits, or are we going to count entries in the register and
extrapolate the ‑‑ our estimate of visits? So in this example, we could
do either, but perhaps in this example we should do both. Let\'s go back
to the map. We\'re still on the map. We can read the ranger logs for the
vehicles and use the register for the visits. There are several steps to
doing this. We already showed you how to determine the trail user visits
using a compliance ratio. But now we create a series of ratios to take
us from vehicles as a medium, the vehicles that are seen in the lot as a
medium, and then back to the participants that might be along the river
or up the trail. I\'ll try to explain that a little better. Let\'s
imagine that we have ‑‑ where is my pen ‑‑ we have a universe of
visitors that are coming to this site. We know we have patrol days, we
have nonpatrol days, we have some of the people going to trail
activities and some going to the river activities. Some are signing the
register. They all have vehicles. So we can look at our universe and
start dividing it up. We know we have ‑‑ let\'s imagine this is our
universe of visitors. We have patrol days and nonpatrol days dividing
that universe in half. We have some going to trail activities and river
activities. So that divides it in half. Ok? Then we have vehicles and
visitors. So we can take ‑‑ we can take our two elements of our universe
and target right in. So we actually have a nice little target right
there. But let\'s look at what we know and what we don\'t. We have some
visitors that have signed a register and others that have not. So we
have some that have signed a register on days that were nonpatroled and
some that have not. These are things we know. We have all the signatures
that are in the register on both days that it was patrolled and on days
that it was not patrolled. We know how many vehicles were there on the
patrol days, and let\'s think. Is that what we have? I think that\'s
what we have. So we can use our compliance ratio to calculate how many
visitors were there that did not sign the register. Now we have a ratio
of the number of vehicles in the lot to the number of people in the lot.
We can use that same ratio and the same compliance ratio to calculate
how many people were there on days that did not sign ‑‑ that were not
patrolled but ‑‑ and did not sign the register. And using those numbers,
we can calculate the number of vehicles that were there. Now, remember,
the ranger also saw vehicles parked along the river. So this is a known
element over here and now that we know these ratios, we can then do the
same here and calculate all ‑‑ this ratio to these ratios and calculate
the entire universe based on just a little ‑‑ a few little missing bits
‑‑ provided bits of information. Now, this is a Georgia example of how
raw data can be taken a little bit too far. There\'s problems with it
and it shows that mixing data from different sources, the register and
ranger count, can create some problems because it involves so many
assumptions and so many ratios. So let\'s discuss some other possible
solutions. If we choose not to use the register, we are left basing our
visitor count for the whole site on the information in the ranger log.
Using this to arrive at the visitor count is similar but simpler to the
process I just alluded to. We didn\'t go into depth because we realize
that\'s a whole another course, all those ratios, but it\'s summarized
in your Student Notebook on page 18. That would be using just the
visitors ‑‑ I mean, just the vehicles. Excuse me. There are more things
to consider ‑‑ one of the other things to consider are our formula
paradigm, the one we talked about and whether or not the data is getting
so much interpretation that it is diluted in value. So back to the
question, what should be our key data source for interpreting number of
visits to use? There are problems like we\'ve discussed with mixing raw
data from different sources. And we remember the paradigm about the
bouncing ball, but like we said, there are simply Tom assumptions and
averaging and variables coming into play in the second example to use
the register as complete visitor count for the site. However, if you had
to do it, if that\'s all you had and you had nothing else, it would
work. In the past, this is where we would have ended our second example,
but recent evolutions of RMIS give us another waive looking at this
example, another new concept to the flexible formula design. RMIS was
recently changed to allow you to enter data not only at the sites but
also in polygons such as the river or trail corridors and not only that,
you can design different formulas for each one and have all the visit
data be reflected at the site. This was done as a result of requests
from the Field Offices. Let\'s look at this ol\' diagram of RMIS 2.4. In
it a RMIS specialist had to put the visits into the software and it ran
through a formula that gave you a total visits for a particular site and
then that site would then distribute that use, or we called it ‑‑ a sign
use to, for example, a trail corridor or a river corridor. This was
called attributing use. An example, that would be the trail and the
river. RMIS required a secondary formula to filter only the applicable
data from the site, the trailhead, and count it towards, in our example,
the trail use and river use. Now in RMIS 3.1 the polygons work in the
opposite direction. The user can enter the visit data in the polygon,
for example, there are river ‑‑ whoops ‑‑ or are trail and assign it to
the site. The polygons each require a separate formula of their own.
That is the new concept that can be applied in this second example.
Because we have good raw data from the trail register, we can enter data
that use the trail use as ‑‑ as trail use in the trail corridor and
attribute to it Wizard Point. This gives you the option of having a
higher quality formula for the trail use activities. Because we have raw
data from the river that is less accurate, we can enter it through a
different formula pertaining to the river corridor and attribute the use
to Wizard Point. RMIS will then sum those together and provide total
visitation for Wizard Point without causing you to dilute one source for
the other. Using the solution in example two, you will not need to enter
any visits to Wizard Point. But you would have to enter separate
formulas for the two corridors and separate visits to each. Ok. Pop quiz
time. Take a moment to think about this. What\'s the first question to
ask when you want to estimate use?

Caller: This is ‑‑ that would be the quality of the data.

H. Johnson: What was your name and office again, sorry?

Caller: My name is eve from the Casper Field Office.

H. Johnson: Thank you.

D. Applegate: I think your answer was exactly right. What is the quality
of data, but the quality is dependent on where that data came from. So
to take appear little farther, you would say, what is the data source.
So Ewing that second solution in situations like example 2, emphasizes
the importance of the data course question and gives you a solution to
protect the integrity of your raw data. So, remember, rarely will you
have a situation that fits this example exactly and although your site
might be a different type and the activities may be completely
different, the process and approach will still be applied. Let\'s take a
few moments to discuss a common problem in designing a formula. Imagine
a day use site in the northern climbs. The eager recreation specialist
has the local knowledge that visitors spend about six hours there. They
go primarily to cross‑country ski but often they have to snowmobile to
get in and practically everybody checks out the eagles fishing the
river. Some folks go ice climbing to get a better view and others decide
to join the eagles and fish the frozen river oxbows. So let\'s look at
the card over here on the table again. Your classmate has designed that
100% of the people have come to cross‑country ski, 100% have come to
snowmobile, a hundred percent have come to view wildlife, 50% have gone
ice climbing, and 50% have gone fishing. And they\'ve said that cyst
hours ‑‑ happy they just got all that right, your classmate remembers
the average length of stay is six hours, and each visitor came there to
ski, so they must be skiing six hours. They spend about an hour each way
on a snowmobile. So that\'s two hours. Heck, they saw birds the whole
time, so that\'s six hours. On the average it takes about two hours to
climb the cliff there, and the ones that go fishing do so for four
hours, if they catch anything at all. So if logic were to look at this
formula, would it ‑‑ I mean, you would say that the person that\'s there
100% of the time, if we can go back to this table here, will see that
the ‑‑ if every visitor there must spend at least six hours and six
hours and two hours doing these three ‑‑ at least these three things and
would that add up to 14. So that\'s ‑‑ but you already know that the
average length of stay is only since hours. So that can\'t be right.
Another way to look at this is to multiply ‑‑ or to work the RMIS
formula as if it were the program itself and imagine you only had one
visitor for the entire year. So if you had input 1 into the RMIS at the
end of the year, it would calculate through like we showed earlier,
would it say 1 times 100% times 6 hours gives you 6 hours participating
in cross‑country skiing, and it would do that for each these here. It
would go 1 times ice climbing, only 50% of the people do that, so it
would divide and give you .5 times 2, which would equal 1. 5 times 4
equals 2, so your one visitor that year would equal 17 hours. So, you
see, in effect your fellow student is considered the visitor as
participating in multiple activities at the same time such as wildlife
viewing while they were skiing. Well, although that may be true, the
visitor can only be doing one primary activity at a time. They can\'t be
snowmobiling and skiing at the same time. So it\'s like deciding that a
primary purpose of the site is ‑‑ just like you did to decide that this
was a cross‑country site, you have to decide what is the primary purpose
of what the person is doing. You don\'t want to double count your
visits. So you don\'t want to double count your activities. It\'s a good
idea to routinely review your formulas to look for this kind of error.
You can check he each of your sites for this orby running the RMIS
report that runs your formulas and mentally calculate what would happen
if you only had one visitor at the site for the year. How many hours
would it total up to be? If it is reasonable close to the average length
of stay, you are ok. If it\'s way out of whack, it\'s time to go back to
the drawing board. And in my case, it\'s time to go back to the Elmo. I
intentionally said reasonably close to the local knowledge based average
length of stay because it\'s only a guide. It\'s important not to think
that adding all the calculated hours gives you the actual length of
stay. See, when we\'re at point in a formula when you input the visit,
you\'re at a point in the formula where we\'re in a mystical, magical
other world where hard numbers of visits are transformed into
participants and hours, and once we\'ve gone through this formula, this
data can never be put back together again. You can add participants and
get participants and add hours and get hours but you can\'t add either
of these to get visits. Ok? There\'s still a shadow of a visit there
because you know the participant can only be counted doing one thing at
a time during their visit. And the this happens is that different
visitors have their time visit split into different ratios. So think of
this self check as a guide to see if you are inadvertently counting
hours. In fact, because it is just a guide, RMIS was not designed to
include it as an automatic data quality check. We\'ll talk about that a
little later today. We could talk about formulas for a whole week,
however, we have other topics that we need to cover today. So following
our course today and tomorrow morning, we\'ll have a team of RMIS
experts here at the NTC to answer any and all questions. Please see your
Student Notebook on pages 45 and 46 for the fax form and contact
information. As you can see, formulas can get very complicated. But for
now, the best advice is to keep it as simple as possible. The minimum
number of activities, the total time as close to the average length of
stay and the purest data you can interpret will make for a good formula.
You are the programmer, and the simpler it is, the less work you need to
do. There\'s no need to do work that does nothing to fulfill your
office\'s needs. The formula variables are now finished. The formulas
have been designed, and the next step is to input the visits. RMIS then
takes this fourth element, and through the formulas, makes it usable
data to be reported. So, in conclusion, I have one last term to share
with you. It\'s the visitor use reporting plans. You will be hearing
more and more about this because eventually all acres will need to be
covered by one. Think of the VURP as a RMIS metadata. This is the
background data that supports the numbers that RMIS and thus the BLM
provide Congress and the public. All that thinking, all those ratios and
the tables of tools and the decisions about what the data source you
choose are all the metadata for your data input. You will need to spell
it all out like I did for each example, which is another reason to keep
it simple. As an added bonus f your metadata is in place, you will meet
the requirements of the PE code BA, the workload measure, for the annual
inventor eve visitors across all these acres. The reason why is you\'ve
established a methodology in your VURP and you will be reporting the
results in the Bureau\'s permanent record. And what do you know, it
seems we have been forever asking for a way to record how much time and
effort goes into visitor use reporting information. So now we have the
tools and the process to do it. Harold, do you think that\'s enough for
everybody to handle today?

H. Johnson: Yeah, Don, I think that\'s ‑‑

D. Applegate: I could go on.

H. Johnson: I think that\'s plenty. I thought you said at the beginning
this would just take a second.

D. Applegate: It did. It went by so fast.

H. Johnson: Everyone\'s brain mush yet? You\'ve had an opportunity to
ask questions throughout, so now we\'d like to provide you one last
chance before we break to ask questions for anyone on this first panel.
That includes even Mark, our Wyoming compadre. You still there, Mark?

M. Goldbach: Yes, thanks.

H. Johnson: Cool! At this point, anybody have any questions?

Caller: Visitor day question, is that 12 hours standard throughout all
the government agencies or specific to BLM? This is Bill in bellfish.

D. Applegate: Yes, Bill, that\'s standard.

H. Johnson: Ok. At this point we\'re about two‑thirds of the way through
our course and we\'re going to take a 15‑minute break. Thanks to
everyone on our morning panel and thanks to Mark for popping in through
the magic of television. Coming up after the break, we\'ll be teaching
you some Wizardry that will make RMIS easier. So please make sure to get
back on time. We will also have the first of our drawings for those who
have participated. And remember to leave your push‑to‑talk and satellite
equipment right where it is. Don\'t turn it off. We\'ll see you again in
15 minutes.

H. Johnson: Welcome back. We\'re not quite ready to resume our training
yet. We hope you haven\'t completely lost all of you. Before we do
continue, I\'d like to welcome a couple new instructors here in Phoenix.
Anthony Bobo joins us from the Washington Office. He\'s the business
practice specialist. Good morning, Anthony.

A. Bobo: Good morning, Harold.

H. Johnson: Also back with us this morning is Tina McDonald. Thanks for
sticking with us, Tina.

T. McDonald: You put superglue on my chair. I had to stay.

H. Johnson: Last lay as prop identify, the Wizard of RMIS, Larry rid
now. Welcome, Wizardly one.

L. Ridenhour: Thanks, Harold. Hopefully I can win this afternoon\'s best
shirt contest.

H. Johnson: Before we go any further, by like to have Tina do a couple
drawings for us for those that participated in the morning session.

T. McDonald: All right. The fancy hat here.

H. Johnson: And you will receive your REI certificate\... Dallas Meeks
in El Centro.

Caller: Thank you.

T. McDonald: The next one? Let\'s see. One more. Terry in Idaho.
Congratulations.

H. Johnson: We\'re doing eight. Anthony, I\'m keeping track. You\'re
running out of fingers.

T. McDonald: Joanna Hildebrand in I don\'t know where.

H. Johnson: Ukiah.

T. McDonald: Don\'t worry, somebody that has more knowledge than we do
is keeping track of this.

Caller: I\'m in Ukiah.

T. McDonald: Len ‑‑ number is 119.

Caller: That\'s Clements.

T. McDonald: Good. Congratulations. Number 187, Neal ‑‑ no Marilyn
Peterson. Marilyn? Peterson. Congratulations. Is this the last one?

H. Johnson: You have two more.

T. McDonald: Evelyn congratulations. You can tell ‑‑ all right. One
more. Number 11. Oh, penny foreman here in Phoenix Field Office.
Congratulations. You guys will all be getting your gift certificates.

H. Johnson: Penny, in case you didn\'t know where you are, you\'re in
Phoenix. Thanks, Tina. It\'s good\...

Caller: Harold, can you raffle off your shirt?

H. Johnson: Maybe after the show. Thanks for all the ‑‑ by the way, we
did have a couple of phone‑in questions, and you cannot find a
carburetor for a 1984 Dodge dart in RMIS. That question is now answered.
Thanks to all who participated so far. We will be doing more of this as
we go along. Please continue to participate. We\'re ‑‑ you\'ll go in the
hat and we\'ll finish up the drawing at the end of the program. Ok. This
afternoon\'s session, we\'ll be covering units 6, 7 and 8 in your
student notebooks, and, of course, at the end, we\'ll have time for more
questions. Again, remember, this training is for you. We want you to
interact and ask questions as needed. We hope that you\'ve learned a few
things so far. But, the best is yet to come. Without further adieu we
will show some techniques for entering visitor use data in RMIS. I have
learned many wonderful things from our next instructor. We call him the
Wizard of RMIS. Here is Larry Ridenhour, outdoor recreation planner from
Boise, or as we like to call him, Larry Potter, the Wizard of RMIS.

L. Ridenhour: I will be covering unit 6, RMIS Wizardry. You will be able
to follow along in your Student Notebook on page 23. In the second half
of today\'s class, I will show you several things, how do use common
windows shortcuts to help with data input, how to create a visitor user
formula in RMIS, how to add visits directly to sites, how to add visits
through SRPs and corridor segments and how to add visits to all of your
sites at one time. This will really save you time and make this whole
process less painful. Our first objective is to demonstrate how to use
common windows shortcuts and multiple entry methods to shorten the
amount of time spent inputting visitation numbers. Now, most Windows
programs use common key stroke shortcuts to accomplish functions that
are listed in dropdown menus. Let\'s look at the menu bar in Microsoft
Word. If you use your mouse and you click on edit on the menu bar, you
can see options to cut, copy and paste. Now, I need to highlight
something for these to show up. Now we can see cut copy and since
nothing has been cut or copied, paste is still grayed out. But off to
the right you also see key stroke shortcuts, CTRL‑X, CTRL‑C and CTRL‑V.
These shortcuts will be used mostly to copy and move information to
different input fields. Now, let\'s look quickly at how this works with
some real hands. You can see that the X, C and V are located next to
each other on the keyboard. So if you take your pinkie and put it on
control and use your middle and index finger, you can hold control down,
hit CTRL‑X, CTRL‑C or CTRL‑V and this just saves a lot of moving of the
mouse back and forth from where you\'re working to the menu bar. Now,
the two shortcuts we\'ll be using most often are the control and shift
keys to make multiple selection. Let\'s look at the computer window
again and look at Windows Explorer to see how these would work. If you
want to make a selection go to your first item and click. Now, while
holding down control you can select whatever other items you wish to and
if you pick one you didn\'t mean, you can click again and it will
unselect it. Once you\'ve made all the selections you would like, you
can either cut or copy these and then paste them elsewhere. If you want
to make a selection of a large group of items, select the first item in
your group, move to the last item you wish to select, and hold the ‑‑
while holding down the shift key, click the last item. Everything
between the first and last item will be selected. Now, the RMIS program
works like many other Windows‑based programs and you can utilize these
same time‑saving shortcuts. Now, let\'s move on to our next objective,
creating formulas. Just to review on our flowchart, Don showed us how to
construct visitor use formulas. What I\'m going to cover right here on
the flowchart, creating a formula. So on the bottom center of the screen
there. Now, creating a formula is fairly simple. What we need to do is
create a formula for Wizard Point Trailhead. Now, many of you may want
to experiment with building formulas, creating sites or trying different
features in the RMIS program, but you\'re worried about messing with
your data. Well, RMIS team has a solution for you. A training database,
the RMIS training database is an exact copy of the database, and it
functions just like the real database with one exception. It\'s not
permanent. So you can log in, experiment with creating formulas, sites,
corridor segments, et cetera, without worrying about messing up your
real data. Now, the Internet address for the training database. Is
listed in your Student Notebook on page 26. But please note that this is
a web address that is case sensitive and the notebook is incorrect in
that you need to change the O in web objects and the T in RMIS training
to upper case. Now, you may want to ask how do I know if I\'m using the
training database or the real database? That\'s a good question. And the
answer is color. Now, let\'s look at the real RMIS log‑in. We\'re going
to go to our computer screen and we will see that this is the regular
RMIS log‑in page that you will see, and the background color is gray.
Now we\'re going to look at the training database. And you\'ll see that
the training database background is blue, plus there\'s a note at the
bottom that says \"this is the training version and any changes will not
be stored in the life database.\" So any changes you make will not be
permanently saved. Now, onto our objective of learning how to build
formulas in RMIS paramedic. We will use the examples Don gave us early
you are. First we must log into the training database. I\'m going to log
in as my Field Office, I put in my password, and I click log‑in. Now,
when we open the office page, you will notice that the blue background
also shows up behind the left navigation buttons. This let\'s you know
you\'re still in the training database. We\'re going to create a formula
for the Wizard Point Trailhead that Don told us about in the first half
of the class. Now, the hardest part of creating formulas is the
conceptual part that Don showed us. Creating the formula in RMIS is just
a matter of putting what we came up with into the computer. Now, what I
want to do is to have you think about this question. Where do I find the
formula for a particular site? I\'ll give you a hint. There\'s two right
answers that you could give. So let\'s see. Is there anyone out there we
haven\'t called on yet that knows where we can find the site formula?
Tina mentioned this earlier in the class. Anyone? How about if we call
on someone. Jeff Christianson in the Challis Field Office. Jeff, are you
with us today? Jeff? Jeff\'s not here. Ok. How about Bill bogs in Idaho
falls? Are you with us, Bill? It seems everybody has left for the day. I
will give you the answer. It\'s at the bottom of the site page. Since I
got the right answer, I guess you can put my name in the hat. Now, the
other place that you could find the formula is on the formula master
list that you can also find on the office page.

H. Johnson: That was for the drawing for the new car, too. We had
upgraded the prize to a brand‑new Corvette. So first we must get to our
site page in order to build the formula. And to do this we\'re going to
look back at our computer screen and we\'re going to ‑‑ to get to your
site, you need to start by choosing the correct RMA, and in our case
that would be the Snake River birds of prey NCA. Now, the quick way to
get there is to choose your RMA from the dropdown list, then move to the
left and click RMA button. And on the RMA page we go to the site\'s
dropdown menu. We\'re going to click Wizard Point. And then on the left
we\'re going to click sites. Finally we will get the site page for
Wizard Point. Now, as Tina showed us earlier, the site page has all the
information associated with this site, and at the bottom we can see
visitation, and we also see the formula created for this site. Now, when
you create a new site, RMIS automatically creates a default formula for
the site. But to add visits to the site, we must change the default
formula to a real formula. And to change the default we\'d click the
blue highlighted link to open the editor page ‑‑ or we open the site
visitor use formula page, and then to edit, we click the blue
highlighted formula name to get to our editor page. Now, in our example
earlier today that Don showed us, we had two activities at Wizard Point,
mountain biking and hiking. The average number of hours, one hour for
mountain biking and three hours for hiking. The percentage of
participation in each of these activities were 20% for mountain biking
and 80% for hiking. Now, first when we get this set up, what we need to
do is to save this formula. You do that by moving to the left and
clicking save. Now, if you wanted to make any changes to the formula,
you could do so. If you had like Don was talking about earlier your
local knowledge had changed and there are new activities, then we\'re
going to have to insert those activities. Now, that brings us a point
that Don talked about earlier, and that\'s the 100% participation and
participants. Now, each of the people in your ‑‑ that are using your
site can be doing different activities. Now, everyone is counted toward
recreational visit by definition is engaged in an activity. In other
words, every visitor must be participating in at least one activity to
be considered a recreational visitor. Therefore, at least 100% of
visitors are participants if that your participant percentage variable
don\'t add to 100, RMIS will give you an error message. If any visitors
are participating in more than one activity, the total of the
participating percentages used in the RMIS formula can exceed 100%. This
is normal and you should expect it. Now, this is explains why you or the
BLM can never add the number of participants in different activities
together. Because it will result in double, triple or more counting of
the same visitor that engaged in multiple activities. Participants do
not equal visits. Our formula is finished. We click saved. And our
formula is done. At this point, you can now add your visit ‑‑ your
visitor use numbers to the site. That\'s Don\'s magical fourth element.
If you try to add visits to the site before you change your default
formula, you\'ll get an error message that says you have a formula with
an unspecified activity. So the program forces you to change the formula
if you forget. Now, this will bring us to our next section, adding
visitor use. As we see in the flowchart, this also feeds straight into
the RMIS program. This is really the heart of the RMIS program. Adding
the visits at your site. Now, our objective in this section is to learn
how to add visitor use to a single site, to multiple sites, to special
recreation permits and to corridor segments. Now, we\'re going to start
with adding visitor use to the Wizard Point Trailhead. Now, since we
have the Wizard Point Trailhead site page open on our computer, we go to
the left side of the screen, and toward the bottom we see the visitor
use button. We click there and this will open the \"add visits visitor
use page with Wizard Point already highlighted in the sites list. Next
all we have to do is move up to the left and click \"add visits.\" Now,
there are three pieces information that are necessary to input visitor
use, a start date, an end date, and the number of visits. Now, while
we\'re waiting for the program to come up ‑‑ here we go ‑‑ now, in our
example earlier, Don told us that for the month of July we had 583
visits. So we put in the start date of July 1st, 2002. We put an end
date of July 31st, 2002. And in visits, we put in 583. Now, you may have
noticed I didn\'t have to delete the 1 that\'s automatically put as a
visit. If you double clicked in that box, it will highlight what\'s
there and you can type right over it. Now, when we\'re finished, all we
have to do is click save and that\'s all there is to it. Going to move
over, click save, and that visitation record is stored in the database.
Now, another way to add visits is directly from the office page. Instead
of having to go through the RMA site page to get to there. Now, on the
office page, we move down to the ‑‑ going to move back to the office
page and if we go to the bottom, we\'ll see the same visitor use button
listed. If we click here, this will add ‑‑ this will open up the screen
we were just at. Very familiar screen. Now, let\'s take a moment and
look at this screen. You\'ll notice at the top is an option to add
visitation to with a dropdown list, and from here we can actually add
visitation to our sites, to SRPs, to area designations, to river, road
or trail segments. Now, we\'re going to stick with sites for now. The
next section allows you to choose a specific RMA, if we look at the
dropdown list, we see all RMAs is listed, but if you wanted to add to it
a specific one, you can. We are going to keep all RMAs highlighted here
and underneath it shows all of your sites for your office. We\'re going
to choose Snake River birds of prey NCA and we\'re going to click select
and this will show us only those sites in the birds of prey NCA. Now,
we\'re going to use one of our shortcuts, and that is hold down the
shift key, and we can select multiple sites. Now, you can just click and
drag and I\'m going to show you can click and drag down and it will
select everything or we can use our control key to select specific
sites. What I\'m going to do is only select four right now, but in
effect, you could select every site in your office to make this very
simple. If we\'ll go back to the computer screen, once we have selected
our four sites for this example, we\'re going to move over to the right
and we\'re going to see we have a default start and end date. We want to
put in ‑‑ in our case we\'re going to put in July 1st, 2002 and an end
date of July 31st, 2002. Now we\'ve sort of preset this screen for what
we really want to do. We have our start and end dates set, and we have
the four sites that we want to add visits to. All we need to do now is
move over to the left and click add visits. This will open up our page
showing all of the sites that we have selected and our start and end
dates are accurate. So all we need to do now is move to the left, double
click to highlight the one, and input on our visitor numbers for these
sites. Now, if you had 40 sites in your office and you have a cuff
record of your use numbers, you can just use your cuff record next to
the computer and you\'ll have a list of every site in your office and
you\'ll be able to add all of these at one time. Now, once we\'re done
adding all our visitor numbers, we click save, and you have all of your
visitor input done. If you do this on a seasonal or a monthly basis, it
makes it very quick. Now, being able to add visits to multiple sites
also works for adding visits to SRPs, roads, rivers and your trail
segments. Now, we\'ve covered a lot in a short period of time, so I\'d
like to pause and make sure that you got it. Now, the most important
thing that you should have gotten here was the ability to add all of
your visitor use to all of your sites on one screen. You don\'t have to
hunt and Peck and go back and forth the way we used to. Now, this is
going to save you tons of time and make your data input very easy. So,
at this time, I would like to open it up for questions, or also if
anyone in our class has additional hints that you\'ve been using that
you may want to share. So between Don\'s presentation and mine we hope
you have a better understanding of the concepts of developing and
creating visitor use formulas and editing that data. So, with that, I
have no more lotions or potions to share. Harold, back to you.

H. Johnson: Thanks, Mr. Potter. You truly are a Wizard. Before we
continue, I just want to mention that after today\'s session, and also
tomorrow morning, the RMIS team will be standing by here in Phoenix to
answer your questions that we didn\'t get to today. For more information
on the times and how to ask these questions, please consult your Student
Notebook on page 2. Before you get too relaxed, Larry, why don\'t you
explain partnerships and agreements?

L. Ridenhour: Ok. Our objective for this section is to learn about the
basics of partnership and agreement information in the RMIS program
found on page 24 of your Student Notebook. We can use the RMIS program
to easily track all of the accomplishments from year to year for our
volunteers, our partnerships, challenge cost share projects and
agreements. This can be done for one‑time agreements or multi‑year
agreements. Now, we\'re going to take a look at the information that is
being tracked in RMIS. What we have is the name of the partnership, the
agreement number, the type of agreement, the year the agreement was
signed, an expiration date for the agreement, the purpose,
accomplishments to date and details of the agreement. Now, what we\'re
going to do is go back into our training database and look at this. I
need to log back into the computer, into the training database. I put in
my log‑in and the log‑in and password for the training database is
exactly the same as for the real RMIS database. Now, when we get to the
‑‑ for some reason we\'re not getting back into our database. We\'re
going to try it one more time. Just like real life. Ok. Here we go. Now,
to get to the partnership and agreements page from the office page, you
look for your partnerships and agreement button on the left. Click in
here brings up the partnerships and agreements page. And you notice
there are very few buttons on this page, just one, new. You have your
office and log out butt ton but the only one is the new button. And this
is used for creating new agreements. Clicking here will bring up a blank
editor screen that simply fill out the details and click save. It\'s
that easy. Now, most likely you\'ll be adding some additional detailed
information to an existing agreement and you do this by selecting the
agreement from your dropdown list and clicking the blue highlight name.
Now, this will open up the editor screen and allow you to change any
information. In this case, you may want to add some accomplishments that
have occurred since you last looked at this. And once you make those
changes, all you need to do is input the changes and click save. Now,
this is a great place to track all of your volunteers. Harold, wake up!

H. Johnson: Oh! Good job, Larry. Now, please give us the skinny on SRPs,
special recreation permits always generate a ton of questions. Larry,
can you make this special for all our students?

L. Ridenhour: Ok, Harold, I\'ll try. Now, in this section on special
recreation permits, I\'ll cover the following objectives: What
information is on the SRP screen? Why some SRPs don\'t show up in the
drop down list. Two ways to create a new SRP. How to create an SRP
formula. And how to add visits to your SRPs. Now, to begin, we\'ll take
a look at the information on the SRP screen. I\'m going to switch to our
computer, and from the office page we move down to the SRP button and
click it to open up our SRP page. Now, here we see the permitee name in
the dropdown list. We see the SRP I.D. number. Whether you\'re ‑‑ your
office issued the permit. All the contact information, the address,
phone number, fax, e‑mails, the type of permit, the primary purpose of
the permit, start and end dates, any associated NEPA information,
documentation, any notes you may have in it, a record of the current
number of visits associated with the permit and the visitor use formula
associated with that. Now, in order to change any of the listed
information, you click the blue highlighted I.D. number to open up the
editor. Now, to change the necessary information, you make whatever
changes you need, and when you\'re finished, you click save. Now, if you
get to your SRP page, you may have the situation where there are no SRPs
listed in the dropdown list. Now, let\'s ask one of our students why
this might happen. We\'re ‑‑

Caller: Rich in Kremmling. If they\'re expired, they won\'t show up on
that list.

L. Ridenhour: I missed your first name.

Caller: Rich.

L. Ridenhour: You\'re right. If you have current active permits you know
you\'ve list bud they don\'t show up, that\'s because they\'ve expired.
Only the current active permits show in the dropdown list. If you have
not input your current SRPs, they\'re not going to show up either. Now,
you can see the expired permits by hitting the \"show expired\" button,
which is on the left. Now, why do you think you would want to see
expired permits? One reason brings us to our next section. Creating new
SRPs. There are two ways to create a new SRP. We can use the new button,
which will open the editor page and you can fill in all the necessary
information from scratch. The second way is to open an expired SRP, use
the copy function, and create a new permit from an old one. This comes
in real handy if you have a permitee that comes back year after year
basically doing the same thing. This allows you ‑‑ you don\'t to to
recreate formulas or go through a lot of hassle. You just change the
dates and you\'re done. Let\'s look at how we would do that. From the
SRP page we click the \"show expired\" button, and the page that comes
up appears to be the same. However, if you look at the dropdown list,
you will notice all the SRPs you\'ve entered since 1998 now show up.
Now, you select the SRP that you wish to copy and in this case we\'re
going to choose the desert raiders motorcycle club. We hit select, and
that brings up the expired permit we click the blue high lighted name to
bring up the editor. Now, off to the left is a new button that shows up
which is the \"copy\" button. We click the \"copy\" button on the left
and the page that will come up now looks to be the same except the
permitee name says \"copy of desert raiders.\" The first thing tie is
get rid of that. Usually at the end I just put the new year we\'re going
to work for. In this case let\'s say it\'s the 2003 permit. The next
thing to change is the SRP I.D. number and you may have a new number
that you want to use. In this case we\'ll just make a change. And the
other ‑‑ last item you want to change is the start and end dates. Now,
by default, RMIS puts in the current date. So to make it easy we\'re
just going to change it starts today and ends next year. 2003. Now, once
you\'ve made your changes, you move to the left and click save. Now, by
copying an existing expired permit, RMIS also copies the SRP formula
associated with the expired permit so you don\'t need to recreate the
formula for each new permit you have. Now, you can see the formula
associated with your new permit at the bottom of the SRP page. Now, if
we create a new permit from scratch, we need to create a formula for
this permit. Now let\'s look at how to do this. We\'re going to go to
our computer screen, and we\'re going to select Wizard bikers. We choose
it from the list and we see we have our Wizard bikers SRP, and at the
very bottom we have a permit, and in this example we have created an SRP
formula that the outfitter is using two sites, and like Don was
mentioning earlier, in the old version of RMIS if we knew exactly how
much use was taking place associated with the permits at these two
sites, we had to sort of reverse engineer to get the program to work
properly. Now, in the new version of RMIS we can actually input the
exact number of visits that we get from the permitee, and then the RMIS
program will allocate and distribute the visits attached to this SRP to
multiple sites. Now, we have selected our outfitter, and we look at the
formula, and we have a primary activity of mountain biking and we have
100% participation and they do this for an average of 3 1/2 hours, and
they are doing at the at the Cabin Draw rec. site. Now, the other site
that is being used is Wizard Point. And as Wizard Point, they are
mountain biking and 100% participation, and they\'re doing this for an
average of about one hour. You will notice another percentage listed
here. Under Wizard Point there\'s 50% and under Cabin Draw there\'s
100%. Now, what this is saying is that of the total number of visits
reported by the permitee, 100% of those visits are going to Cabin Draw
and only 50% of those visits are going to Wizard Point. Now, once
you\'ve made any of your changes, you click save and you\'re done. Now
once you have your formula created, you can add the visits for the
outfitter. So, where do we get the numbers from from our outfit center
well, that comes with their post use report. The SRP use is recorded the
same as corridor use. So if you have a given amount of use at a river or
a trail, it can be allocated to one or more sites, including your
dispersed use site. So, to summarize, this should give you the basic
orientation to SRPs, data entry and the formula create ‑‑ creation. You
take the information you get from your permitee, you interpret it, and
you build a formula from that. Then you add your visits to the SRP and
that RMIS distributes the visits to the sites that you\'ve identified
that most closely matches what is happening on the ground. Ok, now
let\'s open it up for some questions. Anyone with questions on how to
create SRP formulas? Going to give you a few minutes to let you think
about it.

H. Johnson: Larry, in the meantime while they\'re thinking about that,
I\'ve got a fax here from MONA Daniels in the Palm Springs Field Office.
It\'s pretty lengthy. Actually, what she\'s asking to do is will you
show her how to move a site. She had a site that was in the wrong RMA
and she needed to move it. So she understands how to create a new site
but can you show her the move function on a site?

L. Ridenhour: Ok. That\'s a good question. There\'s a lot of offices 7
have actually reorganized, and so you have sites that are now in
different RMAs and what we will do is have a help session after today\'s
broadcast and tomorrow morning, and we can cover any questions like that
if she would like to call in. We can sit down with her on the phone and
show her how to do that. To answer it briefly, there\'s actually a move
sites button, I believe its on the RMA page and that will allow you to
move sites between RMAs. It\'s just a matter of you\'ll get two fields,
one showing an RMA and the sites listed with it, and then the other
field you\'ll show all the other RMAs. You select what RMA you wish to
move the site to, click the site, and there\'s a little arrow button.
Move it over to the new RMA. Well, that about ‑‑ never can learn to
read. That about wraps ‑‑

Caller: This is ARnold in El Centro.

L. Ridenhour: What\'s your question?

Caller: Actually, it\'s a comment that sometimes you have a need for
more than one formula for a particular permitee. I\'ll use the case of
an off road racer. Sometimes there are ones where few tar dispunts and
then when he has trucks and bug ease, it\'s a larger group of visitors.
That\'s where it\'s handy to go back to the master formula and check the
one that matches the type of event that\'s occurring so you don\'t have
to reconstruct every time?

L. Ridenhour: That\'s a great point and one that we should probably
emphasize. With your formulas, especially if you have use that changes
dramatically from season to season, you can create a ‑‑ say a fall use
formula for a site or a summer use formula is in\'s major changes ‑‑ in
your activities, or in this example, you have an SRP permitee that has
different things that are going on, you can actually build different
formulas, and when you go to add your visits, you can select whatever
formula you wish to apply to that visitation. Great comment.

H. Johnson: Oh mighty Wizard, I have another fax that I will answer. The
question is from Stephanie in the Cody Field Office in Wyoming. Should
all volunteer agreements be recorded in RMIS partnerships or only those
related to recreation? Well, Stephanie, since RMIS is a recreation
database, you should only put those volunteer agreements in there that
are recreation related. So that\'s the simple answer to that.

L. Ridenhour: Ok, Larry. That about wraps up my hogwarts school of RMIS.

H. Johnson: I have a little bit of housekeeping to do here. We are going
to run over in our broadcast. That\'s the bad news. The good news is we
have a little extra satellite time. So until we finish or your screen
goes black, we\'re going to be with you. Now, let\'s move on and talk
about what you really want out of RMIS and to talk about that, AKA
standard reports and queries, here\'s Tina. Tina?

T. McDonald: I guess I didn\'t learn my lesson this morning and I came
back. So now I\'d like to take a little time and go through unit number
7, which is standard reports and queries. Which is on page 25 of your
Student Notebook. The objectives are to provide list of standard
reports, highlight new standard reports, to demonstrate how to retrieve
a standard report, to describe standard report output options, to
demonstrate how to use the query function. A standard report listing ‑‑
a current Stan yard report listing will be included on the RMIS
information page. This listing should be helpful in locating all the
information you\'re looking for easier. Standard report functions use
Adobe reader. If you have problems running any of your reports, you
should follow the instructions on page 43 of your Student Notebook
before you\'ll be able to run a report. This information had been spent
out earlier in the year and some people just have not updated their
Adobe reader. Now I\'d like to demonstrate how to run a report, and to
Ron report you need to ‑‑ run a report you need to be on your office
page. So we\'ll go back to the computer screen, and remember that you
can also reach standard reports as a guest. So I\'m going to go down on
the menu bar and select standard reports and you\'ll see there is a down
menu for all the reports and the types we have, and there\'s over 60 or
70 reports, and right here in the ‑‑ they\'re all alphabetized, and you
see we\'ve added new reports ‑‑ five new reports dealing with national
landscape units. What I am going to look at today is I\'m going to look
at report number 23, which has to do with visitor use and visitor ‑‑
visits and visitor days by RMA. Since so many people get ‑‑ are asked
what you need. The outputs type is ‑‑ the first is a PDF, if you have
Adobe reader on your computer it will print out like this. The next time
is HTML. It\'s good if you want to use a report Oz a web page. And then
SKCII is good if you want to bring the information to into a word
processor. And comma delimited for exports is for manipulating the data
into another database or spreadsheet. Now, I\'m going to ‑‑ since we\'re
going to select visitor days by RMA, I\'m going to select the year,
2001, since most people haven\'t put anything in for 2002 yet, and I\'m
going to select a state. Going to go to Arizona. And that way you can
look at any office, and I think I\'ll look at the Yuma office, and then
you can select by exactly RMA. And I\'m going to select Colorado River
and then you can go further down and do your site and actual lie do
sites, and I\'m going to do oxbow, I think. Then you just need to go
over to the left to the menu screen and hit \"run report.\" As you can
see, Adobe opened it up. This shows you on the report, of course, the
day you ran it, the fiscal year range that you were looking at, the
office name, the site name ‑‑ the RMA name, excuse me, then the
property, and the number of visits and number of visitor days. If you
are looking at this entire office, all the RAMs, it would give you a
total for this office and how many sites you had. There are several new
standardized NLCS reports that were created for the national landscape
group. If you have an office ‑‑ if you have an office that has NLCS
units in it, you should check these reports out. I\'m not going to run
any right now because they take a long time. But there\'s three basic
reports that list, the structure of the NLCS system, visitation by type
of NLCS units and visitation by office codes. One final note on standard
reports, and that is that the visitor data entered today will not be
tallied in the standard reports until after midnight tonight. The reason
we program RMIS this way is to improve the efficiency of the reporting
tool in RMIS. Most of the veterans will remember just a year ago when
large reports resulted in time‑out and much frustration. Next take a
quick look at the queries and what they are and what they do and how
they work. I\'m going to actually go back to the office page and at the
bottom of the screen on the menu bar it says queries and I\'m going to
select that and there\'s ‑‑ this ‑‑ the reason for queries is it\'s a
quick way to find real fast information. On the query, you can query on
several items as I\'m showing on the dropdown menu, but we\'re going to
look at visitor use. Then we\'ll put in the date of 10/01/2000 as a
start date and 09/30/2001. Then I\'m going to select the state. I\'m
going to do Arizona. Since we\'ve been looking at Yuma, I guess I\'ll
look at the Yuma office again. And you can see it drops down again even
further for the RMA. So you can come this way, and we\'ll look at
Colorado River corridor. And then the sites. We looked at oxbow last
time. So let\'s look at that. You can actually go further down and
actually select all the different kinds of activities and groups but
we\'re going to just go with any for now and then back over on the menu
bar just click on query, and this should bring up all the journal
entries that were entered for last year\'s data, and there were two
records that were entered, and at the bottom of it you can look at
those, and those were the exact journal entries and it will actually
show your visitor formula here and how much visits. But what we want to
look at right now is under this ‑‑ in the ‑‑ back up to the top is under
the results summary. You can go over to the values and click on and hit
visitors and this will give you a quick summary of this site in this RMA
and tell you for that year there was 5,500 visitors. Now I would like to
go ‑‑ we\'re going to have a question. But before we go on, think about
this one. What are some of the examples of useful reports that you have
run in your Field Offices? Anybody? Sylvia Jordan in Milwaukee?

Caller: I\'m here. I have ‑‑ I haven\'t run all that many reports, but I
have run the visitor days and participants by sites, in this case sites
are islands in a large lake in Minnesota.

T. McDonald: Great, Sylvia. Thank you. Anybody else have ‑‑ been running
any reports? Ok. Harold, that wraps it up for standard reports and
queries. Thank you.

H. Johnson: Thanks, Tina. And students. Before we go o I want to remind
you again about the training database. It\'s accessed at the web address
below. Don\'t try to write it down it\'s in your Student Notebook on
page 26, but remember, in the Student Notebook it\'s incorrect and you
need to capitalize the T in training and the O in webobjects. This
database, which was used today can be used to practice on whenever you
don\'t want to tamper with your precious data. You can do anything to
this data and like magic it ends up just like before your massive
tinkering. Try this out risk free at a RMIS website near you. Now
Anthony Bobo. Business practice specialist with the National Recreation
Group in Washington has a few important things to share. Anthony?

A. Bobo: Thanks, Harold and thanks for bringing me to Phoenix in August.
I would like to talk about three items. One is the post employment
review. The other is the critical dates for the data call. And the is
the data cleanup. First of all, the post deployment review. RMIS was
deployed in FY‑99 and we\'re completing our fourth year of use. This
application was designed and deployed prior to BLM\'s development of the
I.T. project manager procedures. Under current information technology
investments, management process, the system owner WO200 must initiate a
post deployment review shortly after the application enters the
operation and maintenance phase. The purpose of the post deployment
review is to assess the RMIS database\'s efficiency and effectiveness.
The PDR will also help determine if the investment was worth the cost
and met the needs of the user. The PDR also tells us how well it met the
mission needs and also supports the reengineering efforts that were
originally identified. This year the National Recreation Group requested
that a post deployment review of the RMIS application be done by the
system coordination office. The PDR is intended to do several things.
One, is to evaluate the functionality of the system. We want to evaluate
the usefulness of the system to the field. And identify where the system
met its goals and if there were any goals that it fell short on. Also,
as part of this PDR, there\'s a Lotus notes survey that all RMIS users
will be invited to complete. September 4th, 2002, will be the first day
of the RMIS deployment survey. It will be available for you to complete
for two week period before those results are compiled and analyzed. The
questions in the survey are aimed at determining what might be future
recreation data management needs or desires. Therefore, it is very
important for you as a RMIS user to provide input that you might be able
to effect change in the system. All users and students in this course
will be sent an invitation to participate in the survey next week. Now
let\'s move onto some critical dates which you will find on page 28 in
the Student Notebook. October 18th, 2002, field offices should submit or
finish completing all the data entry for 2002. By October 23rd, 2002,
state recreation advisors should complete quality assurance checks on
Field Office data. On the week of October 21st, the RMIS team will be
assembled again here at the National Training Center to open up our help
desk, and if you have any questions or last‑minute items that you need
taken care of, we\'ll be available to you then. On November 1st, 2002,
all the 2002 data will be locked for all time and you\'ll start seeing
the new screens for the 2003 data and you can start doing your data
entry for 2003. The third item is data cleanup, and as you go through
entering data these are some items that you should make sure that you
look at before you submit the final report. These items are not located
in your notebook, but if you can just take a moment to write them down,
you can have them for your leisure. The first is RMIS contact and e‑mail
address. Make certain that the current fee authority for the sites are
correct. Make sure that the recreation permit counts are correct. The
OHV acres are in their proper designation. Also look at the primary site
types that they are most accurate. Now, remember that we will ‑‑ you
will be receiving the post deployment review survey next week and all
RMIS data should be entered in by October 18th 2002. That\'s it for me,
Harold. Now back to you.

H. Johnson: Great, Anthony. We\'re in the home stretch. We\'ve covered a
lot of material today, and at this time we would like to give you an
opportunity to ask any additional questions on any of the topics.

Caller: Harold, this is bill from Boise district. In your new reports,
have you developed one that will give a complete report readout of
everything in one particular site, such as all the permits issued, the
visitor use and all office information?

H. Johnson: Bill, we have not yet, but that will be put in the PDR and
we do hope to do that at some point.

Caller: This is ‑‑ from Moab. I have a question on importing data from
other databases into RMIS. Much of the data that goes into RMIS we have
in other databases that we need to use for other purposes that RMIS does
not support. Are there any plans to make this a possibility?

H. Johnson: We are willing to work with those database managers to do
that, and we have, of course, worked with CBS to bring those two
together. We\'ve done some work with FMS. We\'re here and ready to do
that.

T. McDonald: We\'ve also done some stuff in Adams, too. We\'ve provided
them the database information.

Caller: Who would one contact to see if it could be done for us for our
particular needs?

H. Johnson: Contact Terry O\'Sullivan, who\'s the RMIS project leader
here in Phoenix.

Caller: Thanks.

H. Johnson: Ok.

Caller: This is Chris with Grand Staircase‑Escalante National Monument.

H. Johnson: Yes?

Caller: On the NLCS reports, do we need to do something special with
that is our data automatically moved into those reports?

T. McDonald: You ‑‑ the only thing you\'ll need to do is to verify how
the report was set up. You can run it for your state and your office and
look at what\'s there. You don\'t have to do anything special. The
information that you put in ‑‑ right now most of ‑‑ it\'s probably put
in either as a current RMA for maybe your own office. For that NLCS
unit. You just leave it like that. When you run the report, the program
has already been updated to pull that out. So the main thing that the
offices will need to do is make sure that the way we have it set up in
the database is correct.

Caller: Thank you.

H. Johnson: Ok. Before we go, while we\'re still ‑‑ while we still have
some satellite time left, I\'d like to do another drawing for about six
more REI gift certificates and Anthony will pull these and announce the
winners.

Caller: Did you get my name in there yet?

A. Bobo: All right. We\'ll make sure you get your name in. She\'ll be
coming through the door shortly. ROMA Daniels, number 38.

H. Johnson: MONA Daniels from Palm Springs.

H. Johnson: Well, she shortens it. Like you\'re Tony.

A. Bobo: Bill Hagdorn. We don\'t have a number, but, Bill, you should be
receiving it in the mail shortly.

H. Johnson: The last one did come in the door.

A. Bobo: Great. Sylvia Jordan.

T. McDonald: Eastern States. Yeah. All right.

H. Johnson: Milwaukee.

A. Bobo: Chris Mack ‑‑

H. Johnson: I haven\'t been counting. How many is much?

A. Bobo: So you got your name in and you won, Chris.

Caller: Thank you very much.

A. Bobo: Where are we?

H. Johnson: Where are we?

T. McDonald: 1, 2, 3, 4 ‑‑

H. Johnson: We\'re in Phoenix.

T. McDonald: I think we have two more.

A. Bobo: Got two more left. All right. Scott ‑‑ can you read that?

H. Johnson: I don\'t have my ‑‑

A. Bobo: 136. Center ‑‑ Scott center? You\'ve won.

Caller: Thank you, thank you very much. This is Elvis and he\'s leaving
the building.

T. McDonald: They were just waiting for that.

A. Bobo: And Stephanie SEREN. You\'ve won, number 209. Thank you very
much.

H. Johnson: Ok. That about wraps it up for us here in Phoenix. First and
most importantly, please complete the post course assessment and the
course evaluation found on the course management tool through Lotus
notes. I\'d like to thank our wonderful instructors from both panels.
I\'d also like to thank you the students for participating and making
this a truly interactive training. Remember, RMIS team members will be
available this afternoon and tomorrow morning for your site specific
questions and any questions in general. Please see the times, fax and
phone numbers in your Student Notebook at the bottom of page 2. We are
asking you complete the RMIS help session fax forms giving details of
your specific problem so we can research the problem and then call you
back. Hopefully with a solution. You can also try to call directly, but
if you receive a busy signal it\'s best to fax your specific questions
to us using the fax form found on page 46 of your Student Notebook. This
is the opportunity for you to provide valuable feedback regarding this
training course. Thanks for your participation from the entire RMIS
team. Remember\... we are a full‑serve RMIS team and we\'re here to
serve your every RMIS need. Good day, mates! To help your office
participate in future telecasts, see the BLM satellite downlink guide
and visit the NTC homepage on the World Wide Web. NTC\'s Internet
address is www.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of this program and other NTC
broadcasts are available on the homepage. For more information on
upcoming distance learning events, as well as traditional courses, call
the Training Center at 602‑906‑5500. Or visit the homepage. This
broadcast has been a production of the BLM National Training Center.