Project Highlight – Restore the Gulf – April 2016

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VMSI- Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council Support Summary

In July 2012, in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and other environmental challenges in the Gulf Coast region, Congress passed the Resources and Ecosystems Sustainability, Tourist Opportunities, and Revived Economies of the Gulf Coast States Act (RESTORE Act). The RESTORE Act:

  • Creates a Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund (Trust Fund).
  • Outlines a structure for use of the Trust Fund.
  • Establishes the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council (GCERC).

As part of its mission to support the GCERC, VMSI staff have been actively engaged in the development of the GCERC’s electronic grants management system since 2014. The Restoration Assistance and Award Management System—or RAAMS—was launched and began accepting grant and interagency agreement applications in early 2016. VMSI took the lead role in designing, configuring, and testing the system prior to launch and continues to develop and expand system capabilities in advance of anticipated client needs. As part of this ongoing effort, VMSI actively administers the Web-based RAAMS component and works closely with GCERC staff to ensure that RAAMS meets Federal requirements and program needs, eliminates redundancy, and provides an intuitive end-user experience. VMSI personnel coordinate the deployment of patches and software updates, test updates for bugs and compatibility with existing data prior to production deployment, develop custom web forms to capture data elements required for various grant and interagency agreement processes, construct queries and reports that enable GCERC staff to quickly access electronic data, and continually refine the process flows and tasks that drive public user and staff actions within the system.

In addition to providing system administrative support, the VMSI team also actively supports GCERC via its participation in numerous training seminars. These training sessions, designed to introduce public end users to basic grants management concepts and provide hands-on RAAMS training, have mitigated many of the potential pitfalls typically associated with the launch of a new system. As part of this support role, VMSI staff respond to staff user and public user questions, respond to technical errors, and produce guidance materials as additional capabilities are implemented in RAAMS. We are proud to serve such a great cause, helping to truly restore nature to its beautiful, intended state.