Notes from URISA 2000
by Susan Smith




An overview of any conference is not usually fraught with dawning realization. However, it offers an opportunity to assess an industry, its directions and the tools used. In addition to my perusal of the exhibit floor and the keynotes, I picked out a couple of educational sessions that addressed some of the key topics of URISA. It was no surprise that each session I entered had near to- or full attendance.

The URISA 2000 Conference in Orlando, Florida (www.urisa.org) kicked off with a keynote presentation by Jack Pellicci, BG USA (Ret), vice president, Global Services Industries, Oracle Corporation (www.oracle.com). Pellicci talked about his views on e-government and spatial information, as well as his role in the OpenGIS Consortium as a member of the board of directors. Clearly, spatial information has become critical to the GIS community. According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, spatially enabled business support systems made up about 20 percent of the total spatial information management revenue for 1999, with 10 percent market penetration of the potential 8 million users of these systems. (see Voice & Vision, Spatially Speaking--with Informix, in this issue of GISVision)

Educational session topics ranged from Enterprise GIS to Census 2000 to Internet and intranets. The conference is low key, offering luncheon seminars with full registration. The exhibit floor closes early, perhaps to give attendees an opportunity to focus on the content-rich seminars that run until 5:30 p.m.

GIS AND THE ENTERPRISE

The first seminar I attended was "Moving GIS to the Whole Enterprise: Shared Experiences, Lessons Learned." Six speakers, representing county and city governments across the U.S. and Canada, shared their experiences with implementing a GIS across an entire enterprise.

Dianne Haley of Calgary, Canada said they have pared down 23 departments to five portfolios, and expect 500 users on their GIS by the end of the year. They hope to have 1,000 layers of data by that time also. They still have some spatial data in MicroStation and other formats that need to be moved onto the client server technology.

Joe Jones of Nassau County, New York maintains a GIS system that services 1.3 Million people, 416,000 land parcels, and carries a $200 million deficit. They may lose 500 employees due to downsizing. The GIS is housed in the IT department, they have three staff members. They manage the GIS with this small staff by delegating responsibility for the layers of data to the twelve different county departments that generated the data. These departments meet once a month to coordinate the data. They use SDE. "The data is well integrated, it's used for the 470 government units and layers by 343 users," says Jones. "We have multi-participants with other governments, consultants and academics sharing and updating the data."

This concept of having a small staff to manage the GIS, with multiple departments taking ownership of specific datasets, is apparently not unusual. Most of these counties began working on a GIS around 1992. Kelly Ratchinksy, GIS coordinator for Palm Beach County, Florida, says this is the way their county manages the GIS also, with 14-15 layers and 13 municipalities using the data. Having a GIS information policy in place has helped them to manage this environment successfully, using ArcIMS, UNIX and NT.

Why move GIS to the Enterprise?

For Clark County, Nevada, there was no way the staff could manage their current configuration--change was a matter of survival, according to David Edwards. "We had eight GIS systems on different platforms producing different base maps, coordinated by different management. When it came time to budget management didn't want to spend on small projects; they would spend on one cooperative effort."

The effort to change was huge, yet there was great cost savings within the county government and to the taxpayers. They began to look to the GIS to also maintain low staff, low tax rate and high efficiency--three pluses they could ensure.

This was the case with Calgary, Alberta as well. When two different departments demonstrated two different map presentations based on different data, it was obvious that something had to change. "We didn't want different address and map information, we wanted something the whole organization could use," explained Dianne Haley. "The benefits of switching to an enterprise-wide GIS were sharing data, minimizing platforms and software to support, lowering the cost of consultants. IT had to hire experts to manage the different operating systems running the mapping programs."

In Nassau County, eight agencies couldn't get along and entered requests for GIS. Three different proposals were written but had to be rolled into one or the project wouldn't be funded. The benefits of the GIS would be huge-- all the governments could use it. What it boiled down to was that each department had to ask themselves what it could do for them. "We had to ensure each department's continued support over a long period of time," explains Jones.

Palm Beach County had the same issues. They chose to minimize staff costs and build in the ability to use data efficiently. Part of that decision involved choosing Oracle 8i Spatial as their DBMS. By choosing one DBMS they could avoid the issue of forcing everyone in the county to pick one software. The intranet also allowed everyone to access the same data model. What has occurred, according to Kelly Ratchinsky, is that the various departments are now deciding that they would like to go with one software. This came about by setting up self-directed teams that have ownership in the process. "The benefits go beyond the technology, they are in building community," says Ratchinsky.

Fairfax County, Virginia's public safety agency found they wanted mapping incorporated into emergency response. In 1992, they began parcel mapping, thinking in terms of the enterprise. 95 percent of the data is spatial, and ties data back to the map. It was perhaps not as difficult to encourage management to embrace GIS in the public safety department, as they enjoyed a successful 911 dispatch system as a result. The demand for service added to this success and was the catalyst for people to use the new technology.

Implementing a GIS information policy allowed some counties to leverage data in public and private partnerships. This enables changes to take place quickly. "we don't have to wait for Information Systems to sign off on something, so we can trade data quickly," said Kelly Ratchinsky.

Tips and tricks for setting up an Enterprise GIS:

  1. Assign one interface player, a technical coordinator who negotiates with IT and others.
  2. Move to the web and get GIS delivered to any desktop
  3. Make sure your data is accurate, and remain up to date on technologies.
  4. Every piece of data should have one owner. He who has the greatest vested interest in a piece of data should maintain it.
  5. Establish relationships within the organization and each funding source to perpetuate interest in the future.
  6. Meet regularly.
  7. Hire a full time GIS coordinator; it's not a part time job.
  8. Nobody should be expected to participate unless it benefits them.

GOVERNMENTS MUST CHANGE

In Tuesday's keynote, Peter Harkness, Editor and Publisher of Governing Magazine (www.governing.com), stressed how fundamentally, federal and state governments don't get along . "It's not just the feds mindlessly mandating to states, the states do the same to the counties and cities," claims Harkness.

There is a great need to bridge the data divide, and invest in technology and training. The internet has had a profound effect on government as it forces integration. There is a lot of tension over bringing technology into government. Technology education encourages individualism, and empowers lower echelon users, which is threatening to government. Yet governments have a particular challenge in that they are hard pressed to find and hold on to the best and the brightest as many are going to the private sector.

Government is slow to change in so many ways, professionals would far prefer to work in the private sector where management is quicker to pull the plug on projects that don't work.

Summarizing some of the critical ways government must change:

  • Procurement desperately needs reform. The procurement cycle in the government is so slow that by the time an order comes through, the technology is obsolete.
  • They need to organize for success and embrace an enterprise-wide way of doing business.
  • Privatization means everything--government would ideally be run by a consortium of companies
  • Act regionally and share costs, confront problems and attract businesses.
  • Can entertainment save city centers? Cities are making a comeback. The suburbs are incorporating city culture into their space now.

CENSUS 2000

A host of new data products will be available for analyzing Census 2000 (www.census.gov) results, which are eagerly anticipated by GIS professionals. The Census Bureau has been creating customer-driven and user-friendly products and interfaces available over the Internet. This will be the first time such data will be easily disseminated to the public. For Census 2000 Geographic Product Highlights, download this pdf file .

EASY-TO-USE GIS

On the exhibit floor of URISA, a variety of easy-to-use products tried to edge their way in front of more robust GIS products. As GIS goes mainstream and picks up the consumer market, the number of destination products for the PalmPilot and GPS proliferates, allowing you to find your way through a maze of streets to the theater, nearest coffee shop or any other desired location.



There are more products addressing the need for easy-to-use GIS solutions within the professional community. An example is CivicCenter for local governments, the child of a strategic relationship between Autodesk (www.autodesk.com) and Kanotech Information Systems Ltd. (www.kanotech.com) Kanotech's CivicCenter suite can integrate with Autodesk Municipal Solutions to deliver complete solutions for local governments. The beauty of CivicCenter is that it combines AutoCAD Map's power for map creation and MapGuide for publishing map information for nontechnical users. It provides low-cost GIS solution to communities that may not be able to afford a full GIS implementation or GIS specialists, or simply want to convey information to staff members quickly. CivicCenter is built on MapGuide technology so that MapGuide functionality is available to users, without them having to know the MapGuide product.

Added to location-based systems and local government software is the concept of "democratic mapping," or the use of GIS tools and 3D visualization and modeling to convey community planning concepts to the public so they can have a greater voice in the planning of their communities.

LOW-COST GIS

The U.S. is not the only country suffering from the problems of bureaucracy and tradition in government. In a session on "Implementing GIS in Industrializing Nations," two researchers spoke of the use of GIS in Botswana and Uruguay.

Botswana

Significant factors for the country of Botswana are institutional and climatic, according to Zorica Nedovic-Budic of the University of Illinois (www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/budic).The principal author of the presentation is Branko Cavric from the University of Bostwana, who unfortunately was unable to attend the conference. It is a country of 500,000 square kilometers and home to 1.5 million people. 50 percent of the population is urban, and 40 percent of the country lives in poverty. The country has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world. Botswana also has many natural resources.

The Government Computer Bureau (GCB) was founded in 1966, at which time attempts were made to coordinate information systems. Many databases existed but they were scattered. Between 1990 and 1995 centralization and coordination was a primary goal. Today, there are 26 GIS sites in the country. The University of Botswana has the highest ranked GIS use and technology transfer in the country. The Botswana National Centre for GIS is beset by politics and is still somewhat fragmented.

Challenges in Botswana in terms of creating a centralized GIS include: management and coordination, training and expertise, standardization and data collection.

Recommendations:

  1. Heighten GIS awareness
  2. Long-term commitment of resources to GIS
  3. Enhanced educational and training opportunities
  4. Access in remote districts and various groups
  5. National GIS coordinating agency

Uruguay

David B. Davis aimed to prove that you didn't need $10 million and lots of people to create a GIS. You can create a GIS with free software and untrained people. Davis, of Carpincho Consulting Services (http://carpincho.home.att.net) in Salt Lake City, specializes in Latin American GIS implementation.

Uruguay has a population of three million and has lots of technology. The capital city of Montevideo has money for projects. "You need cheap equipment and software," said Davis. "You are dealing with people without college degrees."



Davis chose IDRISI (www.idrisi.com) software which is $250 a seat for students. The software has been used by the U.N. all over the world and is available in several different languages. Davis gathered data such as sewer lines, aerial photography and water lines and shared it with Uruguayan agencies. Aerial photography was mostly obtained from the military. Davis scanned in quad maps and georeferenced them with IDRISI. He used ESRI's free ArcExplorer (www.esri.com) to give his presentation to the agencies and Mapsheets Express from ERDAS (www.erdas.com) which is also free. Metadata for all of the data was free.

For more information on this study, please see Implementing GIS in Developing Countries

In summary, I was heartened to see that more agencies and organizations recognize the importance of shared data, e-government, e-commerce and spatial information. Whether or not they will achieve that state of grace any time soon remains to be seen. Hopefully the GIS/GPS tools designed for public use will help move this process along. As the learning curve and costs of GIS software diminish, and visualization tools make GIS information more accessible to a larger public, the vision of GIS for all becomes more of a reality.