In response to recent events related to COVID-19, measures are underway to ensure the health and safety of staff while minimizing impacts to our core mission of data collection, reporting and site operations. PTAGIS will be operating business as usual to the extent possible. Technical coordination and support will continue and the usual phone and email contacts are still viable. Staff in the Portland office are already teleworking from home, utilizing collaboration tools and remote access to systems and servers. Staff in the Kennewick office are in the process of transitioning to teleworking from home this week. We could not do this without the support of the exceptional PSMFC IT staff.
Visits to PTAGIS interrogation sites by staff will be limited to situations requiring critical maintenance in preventing permanent data collection gaps or significant impacts to diversion gates for research projects depending upon separation-by-code. This follows recent guidance from U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Walla Walla District that operation and maintenance actions for these sites are not considered ‘Mission Essential’ and requests for site access ‘will be considered on a case-by-case basis’. We will rely on built-in system redundancy, near real-time operational reports, and recently developed remote operation tools to ensure the integrity and continuity of the PTAGIS dataset to the extent possible under current conditions.
I hope everyone stays healthy and look forward to resuming normal operations as soon as possible. Please contact me if you have questions or concerns.John Tenney
PTAGIS Program Manager
john@psmfc.org
503-595-3100