Enterprise wide decision support system for the city of San Diego water department
Richard Hammett
Water Department, MIS/GIS Selection Manager
Linda Schmidt
MIS/GIS Selection, INfrastructure team supervisor
Larry Rinehart
MIS/GIS Section, Infrastructure team Supervisor
Susan Wynne
MIS/GIS Section, GIS team supervisor
Tom Miller
San Diego data processing corporation, General Manager
Information for running a business is a strategic asset that must be developed, stored and retrieved using the
most efficient, reliable and cost effective practices. This paper briefly discusses the technology practices
used by the City of San Diego Water Department to manage information.
The City of San Diego Water Department has developed an enterprise-wide decision support system to
provide information for water facilities planning, design, operation and maintenance. This system is
referred to as TIDES: Total]y Integrated Data Enterprise System. Developed using an emphasis on
mission-critical data, TIDES is composed of eight technology components that are briefly discussed in this
paper. Objectives of the presentation and paper are to help the reader and audience understand the process
to create an enterprise-wide decision support system; demonstrate the success of the enterprise-wide
approach and highlight the potential problems with this approach.
Lessons Learned From the Tides Experience
Here are some of the most important lessons that have been learned from the TIDES experience:
- Up front management planning, led by an experienced professional is crucial.
- Select seasoned information technology service and resource providers, led by a seasoned
system integrator.
- Use the Request for Information process to develop a competitive list of seasoned
information technology service and resource providers to choose from.
- When working with GIS, CADD and Imaging between sites, communications network
band width is essential. Try to centralize your business operations to reduce the cost of this
high band width.
- Co-locate project development teams with the users at the users site in one secure office
area.
- Emphasize project management using a structured development methodology with
milestone schedules and frequent deliverables.
- Create small successes that show the power of the technology concepts.
- Know support labor ratios and resource availability early on in the project. Work with
firm-fixed priced contracts where possible.
- Roll out the micro computing environment ahead of the computer application
implementation to get users familiar with the equipment. Remove all computer games
before installing the computers.
- Partner with other agencies within your region, if possible, to reduce overhead and
development costs by amortizing over a greater number of users.
- Use the Steering Committee to gain management consensus and buy-in.
- Develop your requirements carefully and limit scope-of-work changes once into
development.
- Acquire (at no cost), if you can, then consider purchasing, then consider building. Let the
cost benefits guide your choice.
- Implement business process changes prior to implementation of automation.
- Involve the user at all levels in the process, it is their information.
Tides: Strategic Management Planning
As the first step towards creating an enterprise-wide decision support system, a long range plan was
established. A high level description of the water organization processes and the need for information was
developed to isolate problems and deficiencies in the pre-TIDES information system. The results of this
planning were to highlight the need for an Enterprise Wide Decision Support System to support the
planning, design, operational and management needs of the various programs and sections within the Water
Department, including the spatial needs of the Water Facilities Network.
Tides: Overview
TIDES is being developed using an emphasis on mission critical data accessed from workstations at the
user work site using Remote Data Access techniques. TIDES combines the legacy mainframe systems,
desktop modeling tools, spatial mapping tools, clientiserver applications, document management
applications, the associated network and databases into one integrated information system. Additionally,
TIDES is designed to incorporate American Water Works Association (AWWA) standards for computer
databases, communications and systems development where possible.
Tides: Mission Statement
At the beginning of the strategic planning process, it was determined that the mission of TIDES was to
provide the Right Information at the Right Time in the most efficient manner for the benefit of the users
within the Water Department and the City of San Diego. Providing timely information has been the driving
force as TIDES has been developed.
