Abstract
Faced with the reality of deregulation in the utility industry, the City of Tallahassee’s six utility
operations are now constantly challenged to provide the best services at the lowest cost to it’s more than
300,000 customers. This means doing more with less in both the utility and non-utility departments of
government. Management was forced to address several long-standing issues regarding the City’s GIS
program or the lack of it, and a coordinated city-wide GIS program is now underway. The paper
describes the issues brought about by integrating a multi-utility GIS with the enterprise from an
organizational, management, and system perspective. It discusses the frameworks of the City of
Tallahassee’s City-wide GIS program and the City’s implementation strategies.
Background
Threat of Deregulation
The City of Tallahassee (City) is an incorporated municipality that owns its electricity, gas, water, sewer,
storm water and solid waste utilities. It provides utility services to its residents and peripheral areas.
Revenue generated by the utility services supplements 25’%of the City’s annual expenditure, enabling it
to provide a relatively high standard of service in spite of a limited property-tax base and absence of
income tax. Deregulation in the electric utility industry is seen as a threat to the City’s ability to continue
to provide public facilities and services to its residents at a low cost.
Although the deregulation of the electric industry is not expected in Florida until the turn of the century,
the City is already preparing for its advent. There is a prevailing thought that it would be very difficult
for the City to successfully compete with private industry in the business of electric generation and
distribution. However, with already huge investments in the business, coupled with the perception that
the City’s financial state may be threatened, it will be difficult for the City to completely stay out of the
electric generation and distribution business. The City has to find a niche. Several studies are being
undertaken to identify the City’s best option in a deregulated environment. At the same time, other
potential sources of revenue are also being considered. The City management is looking for ways to
optimize the use of resources in existing operations. Geographic Information System (GIS) plays a key
role in all these activities as a tool for feasibility studies and map displays, an integrator of information,
and a facility to improve departmental operations.
Problems with Non-integrated GIS
GIS in the City began as individual automation projects initiated at the department level in the late
1980’s through the early 1990’s. It is only recently, however, that tangible benefits are being derived
from some of these systems. One reason for the slow return on investments on these GIS systems is that
good base map data did not become available until mid 1993. Perhaps a more important reason is the
lack of concerted planning and implementation across City departments. Every department that can
afford GIS had its own GIS system, GIS coordinator and staff, GIS budget, and GIS projects and
priorities. This non-integrated GIS is characterized by the following weaknesses:
| Feature
|
Problem |
|
|
- Higher cost for hardware maintenance
- Higher workload for system administration and
computer operation
|
- Incompatible GIS software and data formats:
|
- Possible loss of information and data integrity during data translation
- Low accessibility of data
- Higher cost for data and application development and maintenance
- Acquiring and maintaining multiple GIS
expertise
|
- Incompatible data collection devices and methodology:
|
- Higher cost for maintaining data collection devices
- Varying accuracy of the same type of data
- Training data collection crew
|
- Uncoordinated GIS planning:
|
- Projects are not prioritized based on overall City priorities
- Duplication of data development efforts
- Poorly designed applications and data
- Poor tracking of project progress and dependencies
- Poor checks on service and product procurement
|
