Government Fishing App

Staying informed about regulations, closures and species restrictions was harder than it should have been. The information existed, but it was spread across channels that update at different rates, so a fisher could follow the guide in their tackle box and still be wrong.

Connectivity made it worse. The moment someone most needs to check a size limit is standing on a beach or a remote riverbank, which is exactly where a website is no help. An app that only worked with reception would fail at the point of use.

PIRSA also carried an expectation that comes with government software specifically: it has to work for everyone, first time, without training. A citizen service that frustrates people does not just go unused — it erodes trust in the department behind it.

Discovery with PIRSA stakeholders set three non-negotiables: usability, offline-first function, and information a person can act on without interpreting it. Everything after that was measured against those.

The interface was designed in Figma and kept deliberately shallow. Someone checking a bag limit is often standing in wind and glare, holding a rod, with wet hands — so the design question was not how much the app could show, but how few taps it takes to get one answer.

We built it in React Native, so iOS and Android come from a single codebase. For a government project that means faster delivery, consistent behaviour across devices, and one thing to maintain rather than two.

Offline-first was the hardest part and the most important. Rules, maps and species guides are held on the device, so the app behaves the same with no bars as with full reception. We then tested with end users and PIRSA stakeholders before launch, because an app people cannot use is a compliance problem, not just a usability one.

Fishers get a full species guide with size and bag limits, interactive maps showing closures, zones and marine parks, and trip and catch logging to record their activity — all of it available offline.

For PIRSA the result is a citizen service that does the job it was funded to do. Clearer rules mean better compliance, and better compliance is what sustainable fisheries management depends on. The app is not an awareness campaign; it is the rules, at the moment someone needs them.

It is also a reasonable model for how government modernises a service. The value came from deciding what mattered — usability, offline access, accuracy — and building only that well, rather than shipping everything the department could have included.