Managing a non-centrally funded GIS: How the city of fort worth and other U.S. cities manage
Robert W. Finkle
President
IT Nexus, Inc., 10129 W. Dartmouth, Suite 9304
Lakewood, Colorado 80227,
Shirley S. Sanger
Assistant Director
Information Systems and Services, City of Fort Worth
1000 Throckmorton Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76102
Enterprise GIS and the Non-Central Funding Issue
Some cities have a centrally appropriated budget to build and manage their GIS. Many cities,
however, must contend with managing their GIS based on annual contributions from other
departments. Non-centrally funded GIS programs can experience a great deal of uncertainty or
maddening oscillations in what the GIS program can accomplish from year to year.
In truth, the advent of non-centrally funded GIS programs is a hallmark of the maturation of GIS
technology. In the early 1990's, GIS technology advanced to the point where it was truly capable
of supporting client-server architecture and distributed computing - what we now know as
Enterprise GIS.
Prior to achieving this technological watershed, GIS systems were (in fact had to be)
implemented as back-room mapping and analysis systems. This kept GIS in one or perhaps two
Departments and "in the room down the hall where you go to get a GIS map prepared". These
early GIS systems commonly were implemented, funded and managed by a single department.
The jurisdictions that implemented department-centered GIS in the 1980s have been expanding
their systems during the 1990's to support enterprise GIS - GIS that integrates geographic data
for the entire organization and provides desk-top access to any worker who needs access. While
GIS industry literature has been heavily focused on the technical opportunity of this change, there
has been little discussion of how organizations are facing the institutional challenges of
accommodating this change and supporting these new enterprise-wide GIS systems*.
This paper focuses on what the City of Fort Worth and a few other organizations are doing to
manage the enterprise component of their GIS systems, asking the questions:
- Who is responsible for what?
- How are the central resources of the enterprise system funded?
- How are funding needs determined, coordinated and approved?
- What issues are being encountered as GIS managers attempt to create a sustainable
funding environment for the enterprise operation of GIS?
Funding Enterprise GIS at the City of Fort Worth
Environment
The City of Fort began its enterprise GIS initiative in 1996 after more than ten years of
experience working with several department-based mapping systems. The core components of
the City's GIS server database (parcels, lots, street centerlines and zoning) were completed in
mid-1999. The GIS is currently accessed by seven of the City's departments, with additional
departments expected to come on-line as the program matures.
The City's Information Systems and Services (ISS) Department manage the enterprise
components of the GIS (the server and four GIS staff). The GIS Manager reports to one of ISS's
six Division Managers.
Responsibilities
As part of the its implementation planning for enterprise GIS, ISS worked with the City's
departments to reach consensus on the critical issue of responsibility for managing and
maintaining the GIS. In short, it was agreed that responsibilities would reflect the client-server
technology architecture of the GIS: ISS is responsible for the "server side" and departments are
responsible for all things on the "client side" of the equation.
In practice, this means that the City's departments are responsible for: assigning staff to update
the GIS data components that are "owned" by the department's work functions, paying for the
GIS software they need to access and analyze the GIS data stored on the server, developing user
applications, and training. ISS's GIS group is then responsible for: managing the GIS server,
performing database administration, purchasing server software and hardware, administering the
purchase of department GIS software, coordinating (not delivering) training, performing some
application development, maintaining the common digital orthophoto data, and providing GIS
consulting assistance to the departments.
* Indeed this issue cries out for research and discussion on such topics as: institutional models for enterprise IT and
GIS decision-making; funding and accounting practices for enterprise IT/GIS; best practices for optimizing IT/GIS
investment in training and application development; approaches for developing and retaining IT/GIS staff.
Budgeting
Under the Fort Worth enterprise model, the City's Departments pay for their own GIS software,
applications and data maintenance staff. But how does the City pay for its enterprise GIS support
staff and its server hardware and software?
In October of 1998, the City's entire ISS budget (including GIS) moved to a service fee basis.
The City employs two simple revenue generation devices to fund the enterprise components of its
GIS program: a connection fee and an hourly rate under which the ISS GIS staff bill their time
back to departments. The connection fee is a monthly fee assessed to each department PC that
has been given a log-on account to the GIS server. The connection fee is calculated by ISS to
cover its hardware and software costs for GIS, the cost for the acquisition of some new data
(digital orthophotos), and the portion of its staff cost associated with database administration and
server data management.
The City of Fort Worth operates on a 2-year budget cycle. So every other year, ISS will review its
costs and revenues and recalculate its connection fee and hourly rate for GIS staff services. ISS
publishes the rate schedule at the beginning of the City's budget cycle so the departments can
determine the monies they need to budget or GIS access and support.
