There are three significant aspects of the F&W Integrated Program:  
• NW Power Act (NWPA) compliance through regional collaboration the Northwest Power & Conservation Council (NPCC),
• Endangered Species Act (ESA) compliance through Biological Opinions (BiOps),
• Tribal Treaty trust, currently being extended through 10-year Columbia Basin Fish Accords (CBFA’s) for funding and environmental work.

All aspects consist of complex, political, and collaborative activities and data needs, and aspects emerge rapidly as the program goes through continued growth and changes in the next few years. The requirements for defining, tracking, and reporting on these multi-faceted commitments and their funding implications for BPA’s financial management is critical and significant. Increases in resources and systems capability are necessary to execute the regulatory, legal, and management requirements before us, essentially supporting a Program that is continuously expanding and changing.

BPA F&W’s vision for solving the outlined challenges was to implement and support a [Taurus] website, that offers BPA and its partners and constituents a rich, integrated experience for finding information and data about the Program, as well as enhance collaboration activities. This website system is a cornerstone application that BPA uses to manage the project portfolio data to support budget management, decision-making processes, and reporting. Other parts of the system will support decision-making and reporting processes for the Council, ISRP, and the Action Agencies in the future phases.

The vision and scope of this project is maintaining the current Taurus system in an externally hosted and supported environment as a critical investment funded by the F&W Program, and positioned as a partnership with both the Council and NOAA for enhancing information sharing and collaboration. This project (and long-term maintenance of infrastructure) would be a component of the Program’s BPA Internal Overhead funding, ensuring it is first and foremost meeting BPA’s range of requirements for management of the Program. It will integrate with the BPA-supported and housed Pisces operational system. It will also include further integration of the Aries reporting component system with both Taurus and Pisces.

The objective of this contract is to continue the efficient and effective maintenance and development services to sustain complex business operations and to provide continued development of begin implementing the Project vision quickly and to provide web site and data support to the F&W Program on a longer-term basis.  The project is planned as a continuation of the original 2 year implementation contract, with a minimum expected maintenance and support lifecycle of 4 years following FY14.