The Denali Commission is a joint State and Federal agency responsible for providing over $100 million in annual funding grants, primarily for rural Alaska infrastructure and training. When the Commission contacted GeoNorth, it was using a variety of Excel spreadsheets to manage these grants, requiring redundant manual data entry. Quarterly reporting was typically received from grantees, as hardcopy documents. GeoNorth provided process and requirements analysis and created a Project Database System, for the Denali Commission, in 2002. This application provides an integrated grant management tool, with single entry of each data item. In many cases, electronic data transfers, via the Internet, provide effortless data exchange with other applications, entirely eliminating the need to manually reenter this data into the Project Database. Since original deployment, a variety of enhanced features have been added, including an interactive map interface to project summary reports. Integration of MapOptix with this application, to provide more extensive spatial query capabilities, is currently underway. Some Features of the Project Database System include;

• Event and/or schedule-driven automated email notifications.
• 100% Flash, dynamic map tool, driven by spatial and tabular data, stored as XML. Capable of real time interface to website data or static deployment on CD
• WDDX exchange of data with web applications at other agencies provides significant reduction in data entry requirements, as well as ensuring data is fresh.
• Interactive Progress Reporting wizard, facilitates manual quarterly reporting data input (for agencies not reporting via electronic data exchange).
• Reading XML formatted data generated by the Commission’s Project Database into Flash.
• Integration of project data with geographic features exported from ArcMap.
• Multi-layer filtering and searching to display communities on map with Actionscript.
• Advanced project searching and filtering based on project location, users and progress.
• Developed ColdFusion/HTML forms for adding/editing project data, which are validated client-side before submission with JavaScript.
• Ability for the Commission to return a report with invalid data
• A task list that allows each recipient to see which reports are due in the next 30 days.
• Role-based security which grants or restricts access to project data and reports.
• Deployment and testing on RedHat Linux running Apache and PostgreSQL database back-end.
• Integrated system with RoboHelp for an on-line help system.