Electronic Licensing System Data:
There is a company in Illinois that runs the ELS system for the DNR. They supply us with data updates every so often so that fish and wildlife folks can mine the data to do things like sample the data, send out questionaires to license holders to get feedback about issues, and get demographics about the data.
As my coworkers are becoming aware that this data exists, I am getting more requests for specialized queries. As I work on them, I am finding out things about the data that everyone needs to be aware of as they mine the data:
- Every license has a status field. The license is only valid if the status is set to 'A' for Active. If transactions are cancled for some reason, the status is set to something else, but the data is still in there.
- Combination licenses do not capture the name of the spouse on the same license. This means that the data shows half as many license holders as there should be for combination licenses.
- Some people buy more than one license of the same type in the same year. Trout stamps are an example. Some people collect the various stamps and so buy one of each. For this reason, you have to get distinct names and addresses.
- The company in Illinois doesn't always send all the data in a timely manner. When we query the data we expect a certain count of records and are sometimes suprised to find that the data is not there.
- Not clear how lifetime licenses are handled. A lifetime license holder must renew for no charge each year that they wish to fish. If they don't renew, is there a record of them in the data for the year and what status do they get?
- I'm sure there will be more surprises as I work with this data. I am asking questions here that may already be answered somewhere else.
- The company in Illinois, Central Bank, can't be trusted with queries. Last year the state of Wisconsin had to submit license data to the Feds to judge federal grants for wildlife programs. They made the mistake of trusting Central Bank to do the query. Central Bank got it wrong. The Wisconsin DNR caught the errors, but only after the Feds had the data and had made their grants based on the data.
10:24:03 AM 
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