The Inter-Tribal Monitoring Data (ITMD) Project is a Columbia Basin Fish Accords (Accords) project to support data management at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) and its member tribes, which include the Nez Perce Tribe (NPT), Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation (YN), Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon (CTWSRO), and the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR). The purpose of the ITMD Project is to support implementation of the Accords, recovery planning under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and Biological Opinion (BiOp), and tribal co-management needs regarding US v. Oregon and the Pacific Salmon Treaty (PST). The project helps support building data management and data sharing capabilities among the four treaty tribes.

The ITMD Project is the only entity providing a forum for tribal data professionals from the CRITFC member tribes and facilitates communication and coordination among the tribes via monthly meetings, frequent small team meetings, an annual workshop, sponsoring educational webinars, and acting as liaison between the regional entities and CRITFC member tribes. The primary goal of the ITMD Project is to support the four member tribes in implementation of their fish and habitat data management strategies by funding portions of data stewards' time to coordinate and implement data management best practices. The ITMD Project efforts are intended to help meet tribal resource co-management responsibilities and reporting needs of the Accords and BiOps, while also building capacity within the tribes to support informed resource policy management decisions. This has, and continues to be, accomplished through building databases and tools to assist tribal researchers and monitoring programs in the collection, storage, summarization, and dissemination of data. The ITMD Project also serves a coordination function between member tribes and regional co-managers on data management issues and aids in the dissemination of monitoring datasets, e.g. Coordinated Assessments.

The long-term strategy of the ITMD Project to address data management and sharing issues at the member tribes and CRITFC is based on three goals:  

1. Facilitate tribal participation in regional data management coordination and sharing processes.

2. Provide resources to the CRITFC member tribes to facilitate coordination of data management issues and to expand capacity for data management.  

3. Assist member tribes to develop capacity and resources to improve data management to achieve best practices for tribal data management of Research, Monitoring, and Evaluation (RM&E) work for fish and aquatic habitat (CRITFC 2014).

The ITMD Project has assisted CRITFC and its member tribes to improve tribal data infrastructure and the capacity to organize, analyze, and share data. Prior to the Accords, most of the systems at each tribe and CRITFC were not organized or located in a centralized data management system. Beginning in 2021, Project members adapted to refocus the ITMD Project to achieve the following objectives:

1.1    ITMD staff serves as liaison with regional partnerships and entities by participating in regional data management forums and meetings to report information to the tribes and relay tribal developments and progress.

1.2    Track and communicate changes to the tribes about regional information needs of such entities as: Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries (NOAA-F), Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC), Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP), US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (PSMFC)/StreamNet’s Coordinated Assessments Data Exchange (CAX) among others.

1.3    Assist tribes to best respond to regional entities’ emergent or shifting data needs by disseminating information as it becomes available and by identifying the data or indicators that regional entities are requesting.

1.4    Educate regional entities about Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDSov), and the benefits of and ways to incorporate traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into understanding of fish ecology and fish as first foods.

2.1  Provide partial funding for data professionals at each of the tribes.

2.2  Provide funding for professional development for tribal data professionals on best practices for and implementation of data management, and by producing or announcing educational webinars.

2.3  Provide a forum to coordinate efforts for the four CRITFC member tribes to share expert advice and collaborate during monthly meetings and an annual Tribal Data Workshop.

2.4  Pursue alternate funding sources to support data professionals and implementation of best data management practices and administer and support existing contracts.

3.1  Seek out new systems or technologies for the capture, sharing and management of data and inform partners.

3.2  Support developing solutions to common data collection, data flow, and data management issues that benefit all member tribes across projects.

3.3  Continue to provide support and strategic development planning for centralized data management systems for the CRITFC treaty tribes and CRITFC.

3.4  Assess progress by using mechanisms to track the maturity of each tribe’s data systems by developing Data Governance systems to apply results from Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) analyses, and from Data Management Maturity Model (DMMM) assessments.