Client: The Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is the federal institution responsible for safeguarding Canada’s waters and managing fishery and ocean resources. They help ensure healthy and sustainable aquatic ecosystems through habitat protection and sound science. The Department needed a gear-recovery reporting system that would work online and offline.

Project summary: In Canada, it is mandatory for all commercial harvesters to report their lost fishing gear to DFO. Lost gear reporting helps the Department and partners locate and remove lost gear from Canadian waters and, in many cases, return the gear to its rightful owner. This creates cleaner waterways and helps harvesters recuperate their investment in expensive gear. The reporting challenge for harvesters is that they are often at sea where there is no wifi or cellular connection. Historically, harvesters were forced to manually track the location and details of their gear, and then enter it on the DFO site once they were off the boat. This proved to be time consuming and cumbersome.

Ngage’s Impact: The solution Ngage proposed was to develop a Drupal-based mobile application (Progressive Web App - PWA) that harvesters could use while they were offline at sea. The app would allow them to enter data instantly and would sync with the DFO reporting system automatically once they were reconnected via wifi or cell. The solution was also built to be fully compliant with the GC’s web standards including accessibility (WCAG), security and protection of personal data.

The solution was developed using Drupal 9, using the WxT distribution. The front end framework is VueJS. It makes requests to D9 and then D9 makes requests to the internal case management system. The solution makes use of on-device state management with local storage to retain user profiles and offline activities - a first within the GC.

Result: The launch of the Lost Gear PWA mobile app was heralded by the industry. Harvesters in Canada finally had a user-friendly way to do their reporting; and moreover, they were able to do it from their boats without a connection thanks to the mobile app. This saved time and money.

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