Recently, Equestrian Canada (EC) announced its partnership with Equine Register (ER) to delve into the development needs of a national central equine data-sharing platform, which is a vital element of the Canadian Equine Identification Program (CEIP).
The data-sharing platform will be an immensely complex piece of technology that will play a key role in the eventual development of a full-scale traceability system for Canadian equines. It will need to capture, organize and manage tremendous amounts of data and facilitate two-way communication with various individuals, groups and agencies – all while ensuring strict compliance with international regulatory requirements.
So what’s the best way to tackle a colossal project such as this one?
The first phase in this project is discovery, in which representatives from EC and ER have begun to work closely together to fully understand and document requirements for the data-sharing platform. The discovery phase will include a full assessment of the desired traits of a nationwide traceability system, as informed by numerous meetings with Canadian equestrian stakeholders. These stakeholders include provincial and national groups representing different facets of the equestrian community, including breed registries, veterinarians and equestrian organizations.
The final deliverable of the discovery phase will be a Business Specification Document (BSD) that details:
- Expectations of EC and other stakeholder groups.
- User groups and profiles.
- Functionality and user journey requirements.
- A strategy for onboarding data from EC and other third parties.
- Third party data and interface requirements.
- Resource requirements.
- Business and legislative standards.
- Business rules required to support functionality.
- A supportive business sustainability and cost recovery model.
- Timelines for implementation.
The BSD, which has a planned completion date of spring 2021, will then act as the basis for a Master Services Agreement (MSA) to be agreed upon by EC and ER. After final approval from the EC Board of Directors, the discovery processes will be considered compete upon the signing of the MSA. At this point, the building of the data-sharing platform can commence.