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) member tribes: 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 coordination and collaboration for the development of data products and efficient strategies for Columbia Basin Tribal Fisheries data management efforts, and to support Tribal Data Sovereignty. Inherent in this effort is to develop and maintain accessible, interoperable, and re-usable data products and services to inform 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 goals of the ITMD Project are to support the four member tribes to improve and efficiently maintain their fish and habitat data management strategies by funding portions of data professional personnel 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 by developing databases and tools to assist tribal researchers and monitoring programs throughout the data life cycle of  collection, quality control, storage, summarization, preparation for analyses, dissemination and reporting 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 at the member tribes and CRITFC is based on three goals:  

1. Facilitate tribal participation in regional data management coordination and sharing processes:  Support tribal participation in regional data management coordination processes, such as with the Coordinated Assessments Partnership (CAP) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Data Exchange Network (EN), which have regional data sharing nodes. ITMD project staff attend and participate in regional data management forums, meetings, and processes and report information to the tribes that are unable to attend or have designated CRITFC staff as their representative[s] (e.g., StreamNet Executive Committee).

2. Provide resources to the CRITFC member tribes to facilitate coordination of data management issues and to expand capacity for data management:  Support data management services at the tribes and within CRITFC for tribal projects, which includes: a) partial funding for tribal data professionals, b) partial funding for developing and supporting centralized data management systems for member tribes and for CRITFC, and c) partial funding for professional development of data management tribal and CRITFC staff. d) provide a 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.

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): Inter-tribal coordination provides opportunities for inter-tribal collaboration to implement tribal data management strategies, policies, standards, practices, software and technology. The Project assists tribal partners to build capacity to share data with regional partners and leverage existing technologies or strategies.

A focus of the ITMD Project is to provide direct support to tribes that do not have fully mature centralized data management systems in place, so that data is secured in managed data repositories. The ITMD Project provides direct support via partial funding to promote business requirements, including concepts such as data governance and FAIR data, that are common for supporting best practices for  data management development at the CRITFC member tribes.

The ITMD project will continue to support and develop best management practices at CRITFC and member tribes through collaboration, coordination, and self-evaluation. The CRITFC member tribes will continue to move old systems and other legacy data sets into central data management systems and consider alternative/new technologies for data collection and data flow pipelines. “Best practices” for data management refers to treating and protecting scientific data as long-term assets using FAIR data principles: Data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (Wilkinson et al. {52 authors} 2016).