Paper cut!
Feature story posted on November 15, 2007
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New electronic application process for wildlife research will speed approvals
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development has unveiled a new, web-friendly set of documents that will dramatically cut the time it takes for wildlife research or collection licence projects to be approved.
The new documents are writable, meaning that applicants can fill out the form online through their web browser and e-mail it straight to Alberta Sustainable Resource Development.
“In the past, these applications were online, but a researcher would have to fill it out by hand and send in a hard copy,” says Mark Ball, a wildlife disease specialist with Alberta Sustainable Resource Development. The paper application would then have to be photocopied and sent out to a number of people for review and approval, which added more time to the process of getting an application approved.
“We came up with an application that was writable online, and could be distributed electronically in the form of a PDF,” says Ball, who developed the new electronic forms. “It has made the application process more efficient. The document now gets e-mailed to us for approval.” That electronic copy can then be quickly disseminated to anyone who needs to see it, speeding up the approval process. Ball adds that printing out the new forms and mailing them in is still an option.
Ball explains the benefits of the new system by recounting a recent example of a researcher at the University of New Mexico who wanted to come to Alberta to collect samples for a genetic study. The researcher wanted to start in early September, but the application took more than week to arrive in the mail and didn’t reach SRD until nearly the end of August. That left the department with very little time to approve the application before the researcher arrived in the province. With the new electronic documents, Ball explains, the New Mexico researcher would have had the proper forms in the hands of SRD much sooner, and would have also received a quicker turn-around time getting his proposal approved.
Ball, who is completing his PhD in wildlife genetics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont., says he came up with the idea of the electronic application process shortly after joining SRD in July and becoming acquainted with the wildlife research permit process. He quickly worked up the Internet-friendly documents and had them approved for use.
The application forms are used by researchers who want to, for instance, collect tissue samples from animals or capture them to attach an electronic tracking device. The documents require the researchers to explain their projects so SRD’s animal care committees can evaluate whether the project conforms to existing animal care protocols. “We just want to make sure the animals are not going under any unnecessary stress or trauma” says Ball.
