Sounds like OceanSun works in the same industry I do. I like his ideas for beefing up the app to include personalized "journaling" features, but for the sake of what WDFW needs, I think most of that would be out of scope (lol).

The last thing I will say about this reporting app business is that, despite my desire to always accommodate people's preferences, no reporting system will add the value we're seeking unless everyone eats the same dog food. That means that, as much as I'd like to let those who love paper hold on to it, to do so would defeat the purpose of offering the app in the first place. If only half the license holders use the app, the data recorded at any given time won't be accurate enough to be meaningful, because the catches by non-adopters wouldn't be available until the season ended. Sure, there are reasonable ways to extrapolate data, but if the app were to be used as an in-season management tool, it would need to be more accurate than anything less than full adoption could provide.

No matter what we use, the fact that catch recording can't be monitored effectively means that our data will only be as good as participation allows. That's a problem software won't solve. My reasons for wanting to go electronic lie mostly around convenience, ease of use and the prospects for in-season management tools. A WDFW with near real-time data can only become a more effective, better-informed manager of the resource. Plenty of devils in the details, but even a sub-par implementation of an electronic reporting system would improve WDFW's efficiency and accuracy in analyzing catch data, and that should matter more to all of us than our preferred way of reporting our catch, IMO.