During the past 5 years, I spent most of my waking hours rebuilding and restructuring a dilapidated Geographic Information System (GIS) for a Platte County in Missouri.
My team and I restructured systems and data to be more efficient, reliable, and accurate, while fully documenting processes and procedures, and organizing policy towards a functioning business solution using the ESRI suite of products, ArcGIS. Indeed, we only recently positioned our GIS to enable the Assessor and the County to begin to reduce its reliance on taxation and begin generating revenue through a fee structured subscription environment, capable of delivering geographic and non-geographic data to any client in the world, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
Resources for GIS were extremely limited, so it was very hands on, and I did most of the work on this system, personally. Along with a GIS Analyst under my supervision, the GIS Coordinator n the Planning & Zoning Department, as well as a bit of consulting on system design, architecture, and setup support from the Information Services Department.
In spite of numerous obstacles, both internal and external, we successfully upgraded all ArcGIS software from version 9.1 through v10.2, and implemented ArcGIS for Server v10.2, while at the same time, migrating this situation from an aging IBM DB2 v8.1 database on a Windows 2003 server to a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 database on a Windows 2008 server.
This multi-part series will document those adventures in full, from beginning to the bitter end, when a newly-elected Republican Assessor, closely affiliated with the Tea Party, made one of several uninformed decisions. In his opinion, an [underpaid] GIS Manager was an unnecessary expense, because “nobody really uses maps anymore;” ironically, just a few days later he realized he had made a mistake. The GIS Manager did not just make maps.
Fortunately for him, the system was well documented and permitted the GIS Analyst to easily step in and start with a good foundation. That was one of project goals, after all; that anyone could easily step in and assume command of the GIS, with little effort.
Essentially, this is a “Post Mortem” on the PCAO Geographic Information System Project, in every sense of the word, in the hopes of providing some insight to any other GIS Manager or Project Team that may face similar circumstances.
