Reserve.Albertaparks.ca

"With this technology, we have significantly improved our campground reservation service, which has resulted in our provincial campgrounds being easier to access."
- Cindy Ady, Minister of Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation

The Challenge

Reserve.AlbertaParks.ca Product Shot

As a result of consumer demand, in early 2008 the Minister of Tourism, Parks and Recreation (TPR) committed to having a fully operational Campground Reservation and Registration Service (CRRS) in place for the 2009 camping season. Silvacom and Sierra Systems (Team Sierra) were brought on board in September to help TPR develop a vision for the CRRS and determine the options for implementing world class solution to 25 campgrounds by May 1, 2009. Team Sierra worked with the ministry to define a vision for the CRRS that was based on a geospatial backbone and would allow camper access to up to date information about the availability of camping across Alberta. Silvacom then undertook to develop and deploy the GIS system and design components in less than eight months.

The Solution

CRRS is based on a full geospatial model (in an ESRI environment) and delivers a world leading approach to the online access to provincial campgrounds in Alberta. The online GIS environment and experience presented in the application is a state-of-the-art, world class solution. Since commencing the project in late August, 2008, we have completed and successfully launched Release 1.0 of the application. In addition to a significant amount of software development completed in an iterative development project, we embarked on a massive sub project to geospatially capture information on all 3,030 campsites within the 26 Provincial Park Campgrounds originally in scope for May 1, 2009. This included the capture of all campground and campsite perimeters, significant landmarks, physical assets, park level and campsite level 360 degree panoramic photos. As well, sub-metre resolution orthographic photos have been taken for each campground enabling the overlay of multiple layers of geospatial information on top of a real world aerial view.

The CRRS provides the ability for its stakeholders to perform the following functionality:

  • View campsite details and availability including geospatial data overlaid on orthographic photos.
  • Register a camper with and without a reservation.
  • Perform basic reporting functions to support essential reconciling and reporting of finances.
  • Create, change, and reuse a customer profile on behalf of a telephone customer with basic user information.
  • Reuse camper details from past reservations on behalf of an in person or telephone customer.
  • Make, change, cancel a reservation on behalf of an in person or telephone customer.
  • Perform a single transaction for up to four reservations.
  • Make a credit card payment over the telephone online and on site.
  • Establish and update reservation policies (refunds, changes, etc).
  • Maintain user accounts.
"The whole world books online today and this system is going to be state of the art - it's miles ahead of other systems."

Awards

The annual Adobe MAX Awards is a global awards program that recognizes the best uses of Adobe software for creating engaging experiences. Held at the Adobe Max Conference (with over 5,000 attendees annually) the CRRS competed in the Public Sector category for 2009, where nominees are judged by the specific value constituents have received from the application and the effect the application has had on enhancing or changing their lives. The CRRS was successful in winning a Semi-Finalist spot in the competition, placing it in the top 10% of entries.

Most recently, Reserve.AlbertaParks.ca won the Government Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC) Distinction Award in the Provincial category. The Distinction Awards are a Canadian icon. For the past 17 years, the Awards have been the pre-eminent public sector recognition program in Canada, for the use of information technology and information management in government service delivery. Each year, the Distinction Awards judging committees conduct an extensive nominations, evaluation and judging program for hundreds of projects submitted by federal, provincial and municipal government teams. The 3rd party judging process is managed by SCOAP, a Canadian association of IT leaders, and the judging panels include executives from both the public and the private sectors.