Product framing

Teams from 18F and the Office of Natural Resources Revenue drafted the original product framing document during January and February, 2018. ODDD most recently revised in 2024 to reflect changing user needs, team structure, site management, and ONRR priorities.

Problem statement

The people of the United States of America collectively own federal lands, waters, and the minerals beneath them. Those lands are administered by U.S. government agencies. The federal government is also the trustee for natural resource revenue from Native American and Alaska Native lands.

Public discourse and government accountability require transparency about how these resources are managed. However, data about public resources is underutilized because it’s often difficult to find, lacks contextual information, or is presented in ways that aren't readily accessible or understandable to users.

Because natural resources data can require specialized knowledge to interpret and understand, the public relies on intermediaries, such as NGOs, journalists, and elected representatives to contextualize, interpret, and communicate its meaning and implications. These intermediaries have diverse goals and information needs. It’s critical these intermediaries are well informed with reliable and properly contextualized data.

Our vision

We are informing policy debates and raising public awareness by building the definitive source of timely and useful data about how the government manages federal energy and mineral resources, through revenue, production, and disbursements. We meet varied user needs by providing information and data in multiple formats.

Key scenarios

The following are what we believe are specific and common use cases for NRRD, organized by user type. These scenarios help us to focus our efforts in content design and site architecture. Our NRRD user types have additional information on what we know about our users.

Question answerers

1. A congressional staffer needs specific, accurate data on oil royalties and disbursements because they need to provide support for a proposed bill. They need to quickly and easily find data about how much oil was produced on federal land in their state, how much royalty revenue was generated, and how much their state received.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Query Data

2. An external liaison for ONRR frequently fields questions from the public and congress, such as how much money the Gulf of Mexico generated from GOMESA. They look in databases first, then use NRRD to verify the answer or get URLs they can share with the question asker.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Query Data, Data Downloads

3. A BLM or DOI economist uses NRRD to look up how much calendar year royalties, monthly royalties, and sales volume in order project future government revenues and determine fair market values. NRRD categories that meet their needs: Query Data, Data Downloads

Domain learners

4. A new county commissioner in a western state with significant oil and gas production on federal land ran for office largely on a platform of government transparency and accountability. They want to know how extractive revenues from federal land are disbursed at the state and county level. Using NRRD, they find out how much was disbursed to their county and state each month. This data allows them to hold the state accountable, advocate for their constituents, and inform public debate about extractive industry in their county.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Query Data, Explore Data

5. A tribal leader is working with the federal government to simplify the land-use authorization process. They use NRRD to find information on the tribal leasing process.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: How Revenue Works

6. An intergovernmental affairs analyst in the Office of the Secretary routinely pulls data to inform their interactions with Interior stakeholders. They have only one week to generate a GOMESA disbursements data trend analysis to present to Gulf state elected officials. They use NRRD to find detailed, up-to-date GOMESA raw data to use as the basis of the analysis.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Data Downloads

7. A public affairs officer from an oil company uses NRRD to get numbers to use in press releases about their company’s extractive activities and to do comparisons against other companies. They trust the numbers are accurate because they come from a government site.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Query Data, Data Downloads

Agenda supporters

8. An analyst for an NGO needs to research how public energy resources are used. They want to determine how much federal gas is vented and flared and whether the government is collecting revenues for that production. They also want to be able to pinpoint specific companies that have high flaring and venting volumes, so the companies can be held accountable. The analyst finds data on NRRD that they trust for gas production on federal lands and how the gas produced was used.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Query Data, Data Downloads

Storytellers

9. A student of public policy is writing an academic paper focusing on how public land management balances recreation, energy production, and conservation priorities. They need to find federal production volumes and locations on the NRRD site and want to use that data to inform their claims about federal government land-use policy.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Explore Data

10. A journalist at a regional news outlet is writing a story about policy and energy production on public land. They’re looking for data about production trends and land use for extractive activities both at the national and state level and how those numbers tie to policy. This information will help them back up their story with accurate numbers that haven’t been influenced by personal or political objectives.

NRRD categories that meet their needs: Explore Data, How Revenue Works

Product Goals

Goal	Outcome	Relevant scenarios
Accurate and up-to-date data is made available.	Users don’t spread misinformation. Users know the data is reliable.	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Documentation makes the scope and source of the data clear.	Users understand the scope and source of the data.	1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10
Data can be broken out by geography (state, county).	Users can easily scope data for only the locations they care about.	1, 4, 6, 9, 10
Information about the context of the data and leasing process is available to help users understand the data.	Users can learn about how the government manages energy and mineral resources and tie that knowledge to the data.	4, 5, 8, 9, 10
Data can be broken out by commodity.	Users can easily scope data for only the commodities they care about.	1, 4, 7, 8
Production data is available.	Users understand how much energy and mineral production occurs on federal and Native American lands and the Outer Continental Shelf.	1, 4, 9, 10
Disbursements data is available.	Local governments can determine if the money they received was properly distributed by federal and state governments.	1, 2, 4, 6
Company level data is available.	Users can hold individual companies accountable.	3, 7, 8
Monthly data is available.	Users can understand what is going on in the short-term. Users can look at data across time frames other than FY or CY (such as auditing windows).	3, 4, 6
Data is presented as trends over time.	Users can understand what is going on over time and spot trends and anomalies.	6, 10
Specific numbers and datapoints are easy to find.	Users can tie data to the things that are important to them.	1, 2
GOMESA data is available.	Gulf state representatives can forecast budget allocations based in part on GOMESA disbursements to their state.	2, 6
Revenue data is available.	Users can determine if the public is receiving a fair return from energy and mineral extraction on federal and Native American lands and the Outer Continental Shelf.	1, 3
Data can be broken out by revenue type.	Users can understand what phase of the production process revenue comes from.	1, 3
Datapoints that DORC, FOIA, and analysts at other agencies regularly pull are made available.	People don’t contact DORC, FOIA, or analysts at other agencies to pull numbers that are available on the site. Users quickly find needed data. The government uses resources more efficiently.	2, 6
Sales data is available.	Users can find sales volumes and values, which they can use to understand trends and make projections.	3
Datapoints are available without having to download data sets.	Users can quickly find numbers for a report or publication.	1
Data can be downloaded and URLs for filtered pages are static.	Users can easily spread the information to others and act as liaisons. Users can easily share numbers they’ve found on the site. Users can easily verify numbers against other sources. Users can manipulate the data themselves for use in charts and reports or to combine with other data.	2, 6
Venting and flaring data is available.	Users can identify where waste occurs.	8
Calendar year data is available.	Users don’t have to figure out what our fiscal year is.	3
We properly label and explain the scope of the data, including the date range.	Users understand the date range for the data they’re viewing.	1, 2, 3, 4

What we are not trying to do

We won’t try to...	Because...
Tell people what’s important about it, e.g.: Argue for specific policy Show data in ways that tell stories supporting specific policy goals	It’s our job to present the data in such a way as to inform public debate and policy decisions, not to define them. The data and context should be an accurate accounting of activities, not priorities.
We won’t provide data that could expose PII (Personally Identifiable Information) or violate trade secrets or trust responsibilities, e.g.: Granular price data Revenue data for individual leases Payment details Detailed tribal disbursements Tribal sales data	Our work needs to comply with federal law in every way. Exposing data that could be used to personally identify individuals, expose trade secrets, or undermine trust responsibility may violate federal law and risks the integrity of the product and the DOI as a whole.
Explain how to go through the leasing and reporting process to companies.	Our product reports production and revenue data for extractive activity on federal land, but it is not meant to be a guidebook for navigating the process of bidding and leasing federal land for the purpose of production. Other agencies (i.e. BLM and BOEM) manage the bidding and leasing process for extractive activity on federal lands and waters and are in a better position to describe and support that process for interested parties.
Go beyond energy and minerals revenue (e.g. grazing revenue; Forest Service revenue)	It is risky to dilute the focus of the NRRD site beyond extractives because: It becomes increasingly difficult for users to understand and navigate the content We have limited or no access to data outside of ONRR

Risks

Description	How we can mitigate	Criticality
It is challenging for users to discern the scope of the site and what data they can find.	Make sure everything on the site contributes toward the product vision Figure out how all the pieces fit together and design the structure of the site holistically Be willing to add and remove content as needed to ensure the site accomplishes the product vision	High
We’re a small team with four products to manage.	Keep the scope of the site small but high-value, to minimize maintenance. Continue to drive home the value of NRRD to help build support for funding and staff. Use laws, policies, and EOs to prioritize enhancements (Section 508, M-23-22, etc.)	High
There is minimal IT support at ONRR for in-house technology expertise, open-source development, and agile/iterative processes.	Make sure our team is involved in other IT projects that affect our work (e.g. data governance) Continue building alliances and relationships across silos Continue to seek creative compromises with IT	Medium
Silos at ONRR make collaboration challenging, and could reduce support for the project.	Find small, low-risk opportunities to collaborate and initiate trust, and build upon those (e.g. trainings/brown bags, joint user research, etc.) Advocate to leadership for more collaboration opportunities across parts of the org	Medium
Unmitigated technical debt can become overwhelming and unnecessarily drive team priorities unless managed as we go along.	Explicitly identify high-risk dependencies and debt, and prioritize mitigation accordingly Reduce complexity wherever possible Upgrade our hardware and software within ONRR more generally so we have a more modern environment to work with Stay up to date on current technologies Invest a substantial amount of development time mitigating technical debt	Medium
Department priorities sometimes conflict with researched user needs, which affect design decisions.	Outreach and education about user-centered design. Make time and space for finding creative solutions.	Medium