FY07-09 proposal 198906201

Jump to Reviews and Recommendations

Section 1. Administrative

Contacts

Section 2. Locations

Province / subbasin: Mainstem/Systemwide / Systemwide

Section 3. Focal species

Section 4. Past accomplishments

Section 5. Relationships to other projects

Section 6. Biological objectives

Section 7. Work elements (coming back to this)

Section 8. Budgets

Itemized estimated budget

Total estimated FY 2007-2009 budgets

Cost sharing

Section 9. Project future

Future O&M costs: CBFWA maintains a staff that is flexible and responsive to an ever changing fish and wildlife management environment on the Columbia River. The future scope and cost will be determined by the needs of the fish and wildlife managers and the Program.

Termination date: Unknown
Comments: CBFWA was set up to coordinate input and responses to, and implementation of, the PNW Electric Power Conservation and Planning Act (1981) that established the NW Power Planning Council. The need for CBFWA will continue with the continuation of the NW Power Council and the Fish and Wildlife Program.

Final deliverables: Unknown

Section 10. Narrative and other documents

Reviews and recommendations

ISRP PRELIMINARY REVIEW (Jun 2, 2006)

Recommendation: Response requested

NPCC comments: This proposal seeks funding to coordinate the region's fish and wildlife managers in implementing the Fish and Wildlife Program. The background section describes how the CBFWA was formed in 1987 as a coordinating mechanism after the 1980 passage of the Power Act. Nineteen tribes, state and federal organizations are members. Its purpose is to coordinate Fish and Wildlife efforts among members, provide a forum for information exchange, ensure effective implementation of the Fish and Wildlife Program, improve quality of decisionmaking and influence other regional decision makers. Member organizations are listed. A table describes the organizational structure and function of the sub-entities. The proposal does a good of explaining the complexity of the stakeholder groups and agencies and in demonstrating that there is a logical need for a coordinating body for fish and wildlife managers in the Columbia Basin. A response is requested on the issues identified below. A brief rationale describes the coordination of the Fish and Wildlife Program funded work of the fish and wildlife managers, liaison with PNAMP, and the Fish Screening Oversight Committee. However, the sponsors should give greater emphasis to the CBFWA’s impact and effectiveness. What would happen if CBFWA weren't funded? What benefits would go away? How does the region depend or benefit from CBFWA's existence? Why have the Kalispel and Spokane Tribes left the CBFWA, and how is CBFWA effectiveness affected by a loss of some participation? None of this information is provided, but should be. The history of the project is enumerated in a table that lists summary "core functions" for each year of CBFWA's existence. The proposal describes actions taken by CBFWA to monitor project implementation or policy development, but the proposal does not describe how CBFWA effectiveness is monitored. Apparently, CBFWA’s effectiveness has not been monitored. No metrics are presented to assess performance, but without them, how does CBFWA determine if it is being effective? For such an important function with a large budget, effectiveness monitoring should be ongoing. Performance metrics should be developed. Specifically, it is difficult to determine how effective the coordination process has been without feedback from the stakeholders and agencies. An analysis would be needed to determine aspects such as project overlaps and redundancy. The narrative suggests that there have been few of these types of problems. The project has ten objectives that represent various coordination functions. Useful background information is provided for each. Tasks are listed under each objective and seem reasonable, but many are described generally as "assist", "collaborate", "support", "facilitate", “track and assess” etc. and are difficult to understand more specifically. Maybe, given the breadth of coordination across all entities and issues, this is the only way the coordination tasks can be described. However, without more specific descriptions it is unclear what budget lines actually represent. For example, over $900,000 is budgeted to do an annual report. What is the final product? And what are the steps along the way to produce the final product? More detail should be provided as to what specifically the tasks mean in practice and what the outcomes are.

ISRP FINAL REVIEW (Aug 31, 2006)

Recommendation: Fundable (Qualified)

NPCC comments: The response includes a detailed description of the types of coordination and facilitation services that CBFWA is or could be providing. It adds information that was missing from the proposal regarding the operational meaning of general coordination terms. The response states that without CBFWA, the BPA, NPCC and the ISRP would find it difficult to staff activities such as holding meetings and providing website services. In addition, the response states that the "Columbia River Basin is dependent on the coordination, administration, and technical services that the CBFWA provides" for two monitoring and evaluation coordination partnerships (PNAMP and CSMEP). CBFWA activities in this regard include subcontracting services, participation in meetings, and website services. In 2005 CBFWA began to further expand its role to data inventory and reporting services. The response further states that the CBFWA role extends beyond coordination of its members to services for non-member entities. Overall, a better demonstration is needed that CBFWA’s services are provided in the most cost-effective manner. The response provides a better description of the association of the $900k budget line to the "annual report", including good detail on the range of products associated with the report. However, questions remain as to whether the costs are reasonable, especially given that a template of the website is already up and running. The response also provides a description of the withdrawal of the Kalispel and Spokane tribes from membership. It appears that the interests of these two entities were not being addressed at the policy level; however, little explanation is provided as to why this situation exists. Does CBFWA have mechanisms to cope with "under-represented" groups? The description of performance metrics is useful. As the sponsors indicate, existing performance metrics measure output (e.g. number of meetings, number of participants) but not impact (changes in behavior, value to the members). The table of number of meetings is interesting, particularly the very low number of PNAMP meetings (n=1) relative to other kinds of meeting such as "member meetings." However, evaluating performance on the basis of the number of meetings held, average number of participants, and reports produced is not, as the sponsors acknowledge, sufficient to assess impacts. As recommended by ISRP, the sponsors conducted a literature review of metrics to assess coordination effectiveness. Review results were not provided but apparently were not considered applicable: "Results from coordination-oriented literature searches provide a broad set of techniques and metrics that are not consistent for coordination efforts, a situation that is comparable to differences that exist among monitoring and evaluation efforts for physical and biological projects." Regardless of the range of approaches, the ISRP maintains that coordination efforts such as these can be evaluated. The response provides a vigorous defense of the need for the CBFWA, asserting that more coordination will result in better survival and recovery of fish and wildlife populations. However, no quantitative measures are developed for determining the degree to which this is the case. The Status of the Resource Project should provide useful information on key variables such as escapements, but the response does not give much information on project status or data QA/QC. Will Columbia River Basin fish and wildlife agencies rely on the Project for data or will the project duplicate agency data? The recommended qualification to funding is that the project should develop an approach to monitor its impact in terms of changes in behavior and value to the members. In addition to the PISCES metrics, it would be useful to have CBFWA develop member-feedback instruments to evaluate member assessment of effectiveness and impact. In addition, the new cluster of products included under the Status of the Resource report provides an opportunity for user evaluation of product utility.