Christmas tree permits

July 2020

• Christmas Tree Permits move to Recreation.gov

May 2020

• The on-line Christmas tree pilot is concluded using the Open Forest system and future sales are planned for the Recreation.gov system.
• Christmas trees sales information for entire pilot 2018 and 2019 season in an excel format click on "View raw" to download
• Christmas trees sales information for entire pilot 2018 and 2019 season in a comma separated (.csv) format

January 2020

• The Open Forest on-line Christmas Tree pilot was successfully implemented on thirteen National Forests in 2019 the details can be found in the summary.

November 2019

• Nine additional Forests all in the Pacific Northwest Region (Region 6) were added to the Open Forest on-line Christmas tree pilot effort

June 2019

• Research on customer feedback tooling
• Began planning for the next phase of the pilot to scale to all forests in Region 6

March-June 2019

• Ongoing design and development work to refine the application and improve the user experience

January-February 2019

• Pause on project work due to the federal government shutdown

December

• Continued to run pilot throughout the month, closed pilot on season end date (12/25/2019)
• Onboarded new team members
• Drafted 18F blog post about pilot launch

November 2018

• Washington Office coordination for roll-out
• Developed a product evaluation plan/approach for the pilot
• Trained Product Owner on how to manage content
• Launched Christmas tree permitting application on four pilot forests: Mt. Hood, Shoshone, Flathead, and Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forests

October 2019

• Reengaged Amber Sprinkle as the Product Owner

May-October 2018

• Refined Christmas tree permitting application
• Engaged with pilot forests to prepare for launch

April 2018

• Formally wrapped up Christmas tree module

March 2018

• Completed accessibility audit
• Finalized documentation
• Completed additional demos for Forest staff members and addressed their feedback

February 2018

• Addressed content editing needs by restructuring parts of the site to allow for someone who is not an engineer to more easily make content changes, creating a workflow for Forest staff to request content changes, and making cutting season dates directly editable by authorized staff through a web form.

January 2018

• Mid-point project check-in
• Implemented reporting functionality for admin users
• Made content updates based on user research
• Got pay.gov activated, allowing us to test the entire workflow including payment
• Conducted site reviews with SMEs from pilot forests

December 2017

• Completed recruiter set up for usability tests
• Implemented:
  • Initial design for the print-at-home permit
  • The complete user workflow for printing the permit, including requiring user to agree to forest rules
  • Sad-path payment scenarios
• Conducted research on the print-at-home Christmas Tree permits with LEOs
• Improved our testing infrastructure

November 2017

• Began research on the integration points for pay.gov

October 2017

• Kickoff and Sprint 1

September 2017

• Onboarded Amber Sprinkle as the Christmas tree product owner
  • Held two sessions of agile training
  • Debriefed on the sprint ceremonies
  • Held a strategy session
  • Held design and technical download sessions
• Awarded the Christmas tree module
• Completed the work to set up the environments for NCI

August 2017

• Developed materials for the vendor in preparation for the kickoff of the Christmas tree module

June 2017

• Posted the RFQ for the Christmas tree module
• Colin conducted a discovery sprint to determine if Christmas trees could be sold under FLREA authorities. Read the results

May 2017

• In order to make our solicitation documents plain language, our team took advantage of the 18F writing lab and had them review the various documents for the Christmas tree acquisition package.
• Colin held a law enforcement input session to discuss what the riskiest parts of Christmas tree permitting are, from their perspectives.
• We met with Daniel Cha to discuss the next steps for integrating pay.gov.
• Colin summarized the results of the multiple input sessions he held.

April 2017

• Our team finalized the RFQ package and sent it to our contracting officers on May 2nd so they could begin work.

• We held input meetings with the pilot forests in order to provide the Forest Service stakeholder with input on the order in which to build and test the stories. We suggest revising stories based on user research and starting with the stories that might be higher risk. We also wanted to start conversations with project stakeholders that we will return to as we continue to build out ePermit.

• In addition to the accomplishments described above, we also worked to determine next steps for integrating pay.gov, POSS, and FMMI, and drafted recommendations for policy changes that could ease the burden of Christmas tree permitting on front-end personnel.

March 2017

• The team completed a first draft of the Statement of Objectives for the Christmas Tree Module.
• We’re gathering feedback from forests, finance, law enforcement, and the program office to ensure that we get feedback from everyone involved.

February 2017

• We submitted a draft application to FS partners to create a pay.gov account for payment processing of permit sales through the ePermit platform.

January 2017

• From our observations, we determined that an initial pilot would likely be more successful without introducing the complexity of integrating the public-facing website with the Timber Information Management System (TIM). We then developed a proposed strategy of how to conduct a pilot Christmas Tree Permitting system and what that would look like without integrating with TIM.
• We reached out to partners in forest product management to ascertain whether a lightweight reconciliation application could be built using existing reports to minimize the workload of forest-level financial staff.
  • We determined that the reconciliation process didn’t warrant this application.

December 2016

• The team observed the permitting process at Mt. Hood and Fort Collins. Specifically, the team observed a hosted event in Ft. Collins at the Araphoe-Roosevelt and the administrative reconciliation of the permits on the Mt Hood.
• After our interviews and observations, we proposed Christmas Tree options to FS stakeholders.

October-November 2016

• We conducted interviews in pilot forests to inform our hypotheses and acquisition strategy. In particular, we wanted to understand the current challenges of Christmas tree permitting (for the public and Forest Service staff). We learned that the reconciliation process is really difficult for Forest Service staff, but also that we needed to learn more.
• We also began to speak with Daniel Cha (FS) about how to integrate credit card payments to the system.

August 2016 After project kickoff, we hosted a two-day workshop in Ft. Collins, CO with the pilot forests: Shoshone National Forest, Mount Hood National Forest, Flathead National Forest, and Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests.

• This was to get a better understanding of the process in these forests and to listen to staff who are working directly with the public, which the workshop readout details further.