Offering digital and paper initially would probably be necessary, but in order to realize the management benefits associated with electronic reporting, we'd have to make a full switch, in fairly short order. Making management decisions based on only a portion of the eventual dataset would be ill-advised at best. If everyone isn't willing to at least use a home computer to get their catch data uploaded periodically, the data won't be usable for in-season management purposes. Of course, the app I'm proposing would still be very useful to anglers who want to check regs before heading out, for example.

As someone who works in software development and has seen A LOT of ill-advised software projects, I think this is about as strong as a case for technological solutions gets. Regardless of the implementation challenges, a well-designed app could save WDFW a ton of money, on a ton of administrative activities, and it could give license holders instant access to WDFW resources and services. We've discussed regulations (how about email alerts about new, emergency rule changes, while we're at it?). We've talked about catch reporting. How about renewing your license with the app? Email alerts about upcoming public meetings or forums to which an angler subscribes?

How the negatives could outweigh the positives is a total mystery to me. Besides "It requires me to change my habits," what negatives do we see? I really want to know....