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Projects Search Public Sector Clients & References Case Studies Websites Showcase	Client Isle of Man Government Project the bovine information and tracking (BIT) system Overview The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is the department of the Isle of Man Government responsible for administering the legislation covering the agricultural and fisheries industries, as well as that protecting the Island's countryside and wildlife. The Island, being 572 per sq. km, has a stock of over 20,000 cattle which fall under the jurisdiction of the department. Due to legislation introduced by the European Union the Department needed to establish a PC based system to record information about the existence and movement of all bovine animals in the Isle of Man. Client quote "The PDMS technical team met the challenges to incorporate certain complex aspects of cattle movement into a computer database which was to be flexible enough to comply with a range of possible future requirements." Alistair Breed Scaleable and flexible systems for government Background The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is the department of the Isle of Man Government responsible for administering the legislation covering the agricultural and fisheries industries, as well as that protecting the Island's countryside and wildlife. The Island, being 572 per sq. km, has a stock of over 20,000 cattle which fall under the jurisdiction of the department. Due to legislation introduced by the European Union the Department needed to establish a PC based system to record information about the existence and movement of all bovine animals in the Isle of Man. Challenge Following their successful completion of a procurement process by the Department, PDMS were selected as the software providers for the new system development. The time scales for development of the system were short, as the system was required to comply with imminent EU legislation. One of the major problems in recording information about bovine animals is ensuring the correct identification of the animal. The EU legislation was based around the concept of a Europe-wide Unique Bovine Animal Number (UBAN), attached to each animal in the form of two ear tags. It was required that information received from the manufacturers of the ear tags be recorded, and the issue and use of these ear tags, including controlling the replacement of lost tags, be tracked. It was required that information on all bovine animals be recorded whilst they were present on the Island, from their birth or import onto the Island up until their death or export from the Island. This information included movements between the holdings on the Island, i.e. the premises at which an animal may reside such as farms, markets and the meat plant. The EU legislation required that a Cattle Passport, a pre-printed document containing the details of the animal, accompany each animal whenever it was moved between holdings, or exported from the Island. It was required that these passports, along with pro-forma post cards for reporting movements, be printed at the time of registration of an animal. solution The Bovine Information and Tracking (BIT) System was developed by PDMS to meet these requirements. The BIT System uses a single database, stored on a Server PC, accessed by a set of applications running on Client PCs in a multi-user environment. The chosen database platform was Microsoft Access, which complied with Government IT policy at the time. However, PDMS developed the system using ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) compliant techniques to ensure future scalability, as this facilitates an upgrade to a more powerful database engine, such as Microsoft SQL Server, if the need arises. The BIT system contains tag import functions developed to meet the bespoke, and extremely non-standard, requirements of the tag manufacturer. The BIT system records the status of tags, from their issue to holdings for use on newly born animals, to when the animal is slaughtered. Reported tag losses are also recorded, instigating a process of re-ordering replacements, which are also recorded. This has enabled a much tighter control to be placed over tag usage, therefore making fraudulent use more difficult. The registration of the birth of an animal is driven from the receipt of a pre-printed Birth Registration Form from the keeper of the animal. The keeper, which may be a person or a company, the holding of birth, the UBAN, breed and sex of the animal are all recorded. The UBAN is checked for uniqueness; the status of the corresponding tag is checked and, if correct, updated. The Cattle Passport and two Movement Cards are printed; after a pre-defined number of registrations for the same holding, replacement Birth Registration Forms are printed. This allows all documentation to be posted out to a holding in one batch. The two Movement Cards printed are a Departure Notification and an Arrival Notification. In the field, the keeper of an animal completes the Departure Notification, and passes the Arrival Notification on to the new keeper, when an animal changes hands. Receipt of either initiates a Movement Registration on the BIT system. New Movement Cards are only printed on receipt of an Arrival Notification, therefore preventing any subsequent movements of animals whose last movement has not yet been reported. The BIT system also handles several "special cases". One such special case is the handling of male calves, which are moved to the cull yard (on manually completed Temporary Calf passports) and culled within days of birth. This recording of birth, movement and death is handled in one process. Another such special case is the movement of animals through markets when sold. The recorded movement of the animal from the seller to the buyer also includes the movements into and out of the market, automatically generated by the BIT system. The BIT system contains search and browse facilities for animals, keepers, holdings and tags, with tailored information screens for each. The animals screen contains the details of the animal itself (UBAN, sex, breed, etc.), a history of the movements of the animal, a history of the passports issued to that animal, a screen of notes about the animal that may have been taken during, for example, visits to the holding, and a message facility so that, for example, suspicious information can be recorded which will be automatically displayed the next time a registration using that UBAN is attempted. The keepers and holdings screens both contain similar information about their respective items, such as name and address. They also display the current herd located at the holding. The tags screen contains information about the tag number, such as whether it is issued, used or harvested, as well as information about the multiple physical tags associated with that number, such as whether any have been reported as lost and replaced. In addition, the BIT System contains a flexible query and reporting engine, and a full audit trail of all registrations, movements and other actions on the system. This is all controlled by a system of privileges, which allows for users to be specified as system Administrators, with access to all BIT system functions, Operators, with access to virtually all BIT system functions, Data Entry users, who can perform registration and movement type functions, or read-only Browsers. achievement The major achievements of the BIT system are the huge improvements in control and tracking. For example, preventing the registration of birth of animals where no tag has yet been issued, or preventing the movement of animals with no movement cards allows incorrect information received from keepers to be dealt with immediately. Pre-printing UBAN information onto Cattle Passports and Movement Cards improves the quality of information received by the DAFF. Great emphasis was placed during the design of the BIT system on assisting the data entry process. For example, the UBAN is partially automatically generated by the BIT system from knowledge of the UBAN format, the holding of birth and the pre-defined check-digit calculation algorithm. All the registration screens have "fast-track" paths through them, focussing on the major data items that are necessary for all registrations, whilst providing additional facilities to support the necessary flexibility that is occasionally required. At design time, the majority of reporting requirements could not be defined. Emphasis was placed on ensuring that sufficient data was recorded to pre-empt future requirements, and the incorporation of a flexible query and report engine ensured that these future requirements could be easily implemented. PDMS worked extremely closely with DAFF to ensure that system was tested and installed by the required deadline. The system has now been successfully in operation for several years and has held data on over 40,000 animals. In light of the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease, which fortunately has not extended to the Isle of Man, the Department may consider extending the bovine system to cover other livestock such as sheep and pigs.

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Client

Isle of Man Government

Project

the bovine information and tracking (BIT) system

Overview

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry is the department of the Isle of Man Government responsible for administering the legislation covering the agricultural and fisheries industries, as well as that protecting the Island's countryside and wildlife. The Island, being 572 per sq. km, has a stock of over 20,000 cattle which fall under the jurisdiction of the department. Due to legislation introduced by the European Union the Department needed to establish a PC based system to record information about the existence and movement of all bovine animals in the Isle of Man.

Client quote

"The PDMS technical team met the challenges to incorporate certain complex aspects of cattle movement into a computer database which was to be flexible enough to comply with a range of possible future requirements."

Alistair Breed

Scaleable and flexible systems for government

Background

Challenge

Following their successful completion of a procurement process by the Department, PDMS were selected as the software providers for the new system development. The time scales for development of the system were short, as the system was required to comply with imminent EU legislation.

One of the major problems in recording information about bovine animals is ensuring the correct identification of the animal. The EU legislation was based around the concept of a Europe-wide Unique Bovine Animal Number (UBAN), attached to each animal in the form of two ear tags. It was required that information received from the manufacturers of the ear tags be recorded, and the issue and use of these ear tags, including controlling the replacement of lost tags, be tracked.

It was required that information on all bovine animals be recorded whilst they were present on the Island, from their birth or import onto the Island up until their death or export from the Island. This information included movements between the holdings on the Island, i.e. the premises at which an animal may reside such as farms, markets and the meat plant. The EU legislation required that a Cattle Passport, a pre-printed document containing the details of the animal, accompany each animal whenever it was moved between holdings, or exported from the Island. It was required that these passports, along with pro-forma post cards for reporting movements, be printed at the time of registration of an animal.

solution

The Bovine Information and Tracking (BIT) System was developed by PDMS to meet these requirements. The BIT System uses a single database, stored on a Server PC, accessed by a set of applications running on Client PCs in a multi-user environment. The chosen database platform was Microsoft Access, which complied with Government IT policy at the time. However, PDMS developed the system using ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity) compliant techniques to ensure future scalability, as this facilitates an upgrade to a more powerful database engine, such as Microsoft SQL Server, if the need arises.

The BIT system contains tag import functions developed to meet the bespoke, and extremely non-standard, requirements of the tag manufacturer. The BIT system records the status of tags, from their issue to holdings for use on newly born animals, to when the animal is slaughtered. Reported tag losses are also recorded, instigating a process of re-ordering replacements, which are also recorded. This has enabled a much tighter control to be placed over tag usage, therefore making fraudulent use more difficult.

The registration of the birth of an animal is driven from the receipt of a pre-printed Birth Registration Form from the keeper of the animal. The keeper, which may be a person or a company, the holding of birth, the UBAN, breed and sex of the animal are all recorded. The UBAN is checked for uniqueness; the status of the corresponding tag is checked and, if correct, updated. The Cattle Passport and two Movement Cards are printed; after a pre-defined number of registrations for the same holding, replacement Birth Registration Forms are printed. This allows all documentation to be posted out to a holding in one batch.

The two Movement Cards printed are a Departure Notification and an Arrival Notification. In the field, the keeper of an animal completes the Departure Notification, and passes the Arrival Notification on to the new keeper, when an animal changes hands. Receipt of either initiates a Movement Registration on the BIT system. New Movement Cards are only printed on receipt of an Arrival Notification, therefore preventing any subsequent movements of animals whose last movement has not yet been reported.

The BIT system also handles several "special cases". One such special case is the handling of male calves, which are moved to the cull yard (on manually completed Temporary Calf passports) and culled within days of birth. This recording of birth, movement and death is handled in one process. Another such special case is the movement of animals through markets when sold. The recorded movement of the animal from the seller to the buyer also includes the movements into and out of the market, automatically generated by the BIT system.

The BIT system contains search and browse facilities for animals, keepers, holdings and tags, with tailored information screens for each.

The animals screen contains the details of the animal itself (UBAN, sex, breed, etc.), a history of the movements of the animal, a history of the passports issued to that animal, a screen of notes about the animal that may have been taken during, for example, visits to the holding, and a message facility so that, for example, suspicious information can be recorded which will be automatically displayed the next time a registration using that UBAN is attempted.
The keepers and holdings screens both contain similar information about their respective items, such as name and address. They also display the current herd located at the holding.
The tags screen contains information about the tag number, such as whether it is issued, used or harvested, as well as information about the multiple physical tags associated with that number, such as whether any have been reported as lost and replaced.

In addition, the BIT System contains a flexible query and reporting engine, and a full audit trail of all registrations, movements and other actions on the system. This is all controlled by a system of privileges, which allows for users to be specified as system Administrators, with access to all BIT system functions, Operators, with access to virtually all BIT system functions, Data Entry users, who can perform registration and movement type functions, or read-only Browsers.

achievement

The major achievements of the BIT system are the huge improvements in control and tracking. For example, preventing the registration of birth of animals where no tag has yet been issued, or preventing the movement of animals with no movement cards allows incorrect information received from keepers to be dealt with immediately. Pre-printing UBAN information onto Cattle Passports and Movement Cards improves the quality of information received by the DAFF.

Great emphasis was placed during the design of the BIT system on assisting the data entry process. For example, the UBAN is partially automatically generated by the BIT system from knowledge of the UBAN format, the holding of birth and the pre-defined check-digit calculation algorithm. All the registration screens have "fast-track" paths through them, focussing on the major data items that are necessary for all registrations, whilst providing additional facilities to support the necessary flexibility that is occasionally required.

At design time, the majority of reporting requirements could not be defined. Emphasis was placed on ensuring that sufficient data was recorded to pre-empt future requirements, and the incorporation of a flexible query and report engine ensured that these future requirements could be easily implemented.

PDMS worked extremely closely with DAFF to ensure that system was tested and installed by the required deadline. The system has now been successfully in operation for several years and has held data on over 40,000 animals.

In light of the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease, which fortunately has not extended to the Isle of Man, the Department may consider extending the bovine system to cover other livestock such as sheep and pigs.