After multiple data errors left hunters frustrated last summer, some are hopeful the Yukon government will improve the process this year by permitting hunters to verify their application histories online.

That’s among other suggestions put forth in a technical review carried out by Whitehorse-based Make IT for the Environment department. The review looked at how permit hunts are given out in the territory.

It comes after errors in data were found last year, just weeks before the hunting season began in August, resulting in a redraw. The data used for that redraw still had errors in them, as reported last July.

“These opportunities, to be able to get a permit to hunt, I just can’t emphasize how important they are,” Gord Zealand, the executive director of the Yukon Fish and Game Association (YFGA), told the Star this morning.

The practice can attract crowds and tourists who set their sights on taking advantage of things that may not be available elsewhere, he noted.

“That’s why some people move to the Yukon; I mean, they love the outdoors too, but there is also an opportunity that comes once every five or 10 years.”

Zealand added he was happy to see the tweaks to an existing system rather than a complete overhaul that would have reinvented the wheel.

“We’re not trying to start over fresh with something copied out of Alberta or B.C.,” he said.

“We know the system we’re working with and that’s what the public has been asking for – obviously there’s differences of opinions.”

That was a sentiment echoed by the department at a briefing Tuesday morning, during which it referenced other findings of public engagement held late last year.

“They want a reliable and transparent lottery above all else, and the department shares this goal,” said Christine Cleghorn, the director of the fish and wildlife branch.

That branch will be in charge of overseeing the process by which permits are awarded.

There will be little manual entering of data this time around, paired with it being given the green light by hunters themselves. However, there will still need to be oversight of the process – something that Make IT’s report recommended centralizing.

“Historically, the responsibility for the lottery, there’s a number of branches with the Department of Environment who have responsibilities within various points,” said Cleghorn.

“So moving forward, it will be (the branch) who is responsible for the governance of this process.”

Cleghorn also noted there were efforts to make it more difficult for duplicate profiles to be created in the system (like one for Bobby Doe and Bob Doe, for example, if they were the same person).

That was one of the logistical errors last year: somebody who filled out their application as Bobby Doe in 2016, for example, was not counted as the same person if they filled out an application as Bob Doe the following year.

By now, having individuals themselves go in and verify their histories after data has already been merged; people will be able to catch any weighting errors and contact the department to correct it if need be. That should limit the duplication of entries, it hoped.

Zealand commended this step of hunters taking ownership of their own data and verifying it beforehand, as a double check that everything is in order before those data are used for the year’s draw.

“The information is all there; you should be aware of it, you know where things are at.”

The department issues permits based on a weighting system: once somebody is awarded a permit, their weighting drops down to zero, lowering their chances of being given another permit the next year (should they apply).

Those who don’t get a permit for a longer period of time have a higher likelihood of being chosen next year as their weighting increases.

Those data will be given the go-ahead by hunters before it is passed onto from the Environment department to the Yukon Bureau of Statistics (YBS).The bureau is contracted to carry out the lottery.

The changes are expected to help the department prepare for the 2019 hunting season, which will see it begin accepting earlier applications on April 15.

“We are about to complete basically all short-term recommendations that are in that report,” said Anett Kralisch, acting director of the information management and technology branch with the department.

Noting that allowing hunters to see their own record is a major piece of the suggestions in the technical report, she said another was cleaning up the data and merging files ahead of this summer.

“Until last year, we were using multiple systems, spreadsheets.

“What we did for this year is to have from the beginning, merged files so human intervention is no longer needed for merging those files and therefore we can eliminate that error.”

The online system allows hunters to view their history dating back about a decade since the person’s last application, but Kralisch explained that if somebody hasn’t applied for 10 or 15 years, the department can still retrieve the data and add it into the system.

Meanwhile, human intervention was one of the root causes of the errors last summer, which came two-fold.

An initial one was related to returns and reissuances which saw a redraw happen last July, but there were still errors in that data used for the redraw that didn’t properly cross-reference people’s histories.

For Zealand, it was encouraging to see the department wanted to hit the ground running by opening applications earlier. By getting things going sooner, it could mean fewer possible headaches and logistical details (around returns, for instance) needing to be figured out as the hunting season dawns.

“Now instead of the June date, we’re looking at April – which hopefully makes sense in terms of dealing with returns,” he said.

What to do with returns will also be changing this year: hunters who are successful in the lottery but do not wish to take the opportunity must return them to the department by Aug. 1. That will allow their weighting to remain the same, rather than increase by one, as it has in the years before.

According to the findings in the reports (available online), most people supported returning a permit for medical reasons, or if the person received more than two hunts during that year.

One of the improvements the department hopes to put in place will still allow people to check a box that is “for weighting only,” but a release notes that returns may not be accepted anymore in the long-term.

The working group of the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board suggested that returned permits only be accepted if they are for medical reasons – something that could raise concerns down the road, Zealand said.

“If a person has a medical reason and can’t go this year, that sounds like a legitimate reason, but at the same time, I don’t think you can ask for doctor’s certificate or something in terms of what is really wrong with you,” he said.

“You start getting into an area with sensitive information.”

He suspected that question of what to do with returned permits could take a bit longer to nail down: “That’s just something that folks are going to have to deal with.

“Then, all of a sudden, the early dates and all the rest become very clear, because you’re either taking the opportunity or you’re not.”

In the meantime, a proposal for a regulation change to no longer accept returns is expected to be brought forward to the fish and wildlife board in April.

It is not yet a done deal, the department pointed out this morning, adding that the board has its own process that must be followed. That includes public engagement that could see the change come forward for people to comment on by the end of this year.

“After analysis, we found it would be just too difficult to implement that provision,” Diana Dryburgh-Moraal, a department communications analyst, said this morning.

She echoed Zealand’s remarks, noting that it could be difficult to go with the board’s suggestion because it would need to establish what an appropriate medical reason is – all the while trying to simplify the overall process.

Roxanne Stasyszyn, the department’s director of communications, later echoed this, noting that the change could come forward more likely into the 2021 hunting season.

That’s pending public engagement, she said, as regulation changes tend to take two years to take effect.

The returns and reissuances process can be “very manual, labour-intensive,” Stasyszyn said.

“It opens us up to the high risk of error,” she added, noting it also opened up a host of other questions – like what to do if the person got injured while they were out hunting.

“All these questions came to mind about the feasibility of accepting returns only for medical reasons, and it’s something that’s more difficult than maybe on the onset” the department doesn’t accept returned permits altogether, she said.

Until the regulation change is finalized though, hunters can still return their permits by Aug. 1, 2019 to see their weighting remain the same.

Coming at a cost of $28,000, the Make IT review joined a one-month public survey and more meetings with other groups in late 2018.

The department encourages hunters to log onto their client profile beginning April 15 to view their history, and contact them if there are any corrections to be made.