2014 State-EPA Data Management Users Conference

A very successful Data Management Users Conference (DMUC) was held in Kansas City, Missouri on May 13-15, 2104.  Approximately 140 attendees representing EPA’s Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water, EPA Regions, states, and data management consulting firms participated in a variety of discussions, but with a particular focus on building and transitioning to the next generation of the Safe Drinking Water Information System:  SDWIS Prime.
The conference began with overview perspectives from EPA-HQ, EPA Regions, and states.  The criticality of the state-EPA partnership in the development of the new system to ensure that it meets our respective business needs was underscored.  This introduction was followed by a SDWIS Prime development retrospective and a discussion/demonstration session of the SDWIS Prime modules completed thus far:  System Administration and  Security, Inventory, & Legal Entities. An overview was next provided of the various SDWIS Prime modules that are at the “Requirements” stage, namely, the Business Rules Engine (BRE) and the Compliance, Monitoring, and Enforcement (CME) elements.  Significant time was also devoted to discussion of states’ “interfacing applications” – i.e., the issues associated with linking various state data management tools to SDWIS Prime.  The conference concluded with a robust discussion of the various challenges and considerations associated with eventual state transition to SDWIS Prime, once the new system is fully operational.
Presentations and other summary material from the conference will shortly be posted on ASDWA’s web site.