Out of the basement: Moving from mapping to enterprise GIS

Implementing Enterprise GIS at Fort Worth
All large IT projects, at a minimum, must have two essential “keys” if they are to achieve success: top management approval and an appropriate plan. This was particularly true for the City of Fort Worth’s Enterprise GIS project. The magnitude of the project required that it be endorsed at the highest levels of City management to insure that resources (both staff and money) would be available. To achieve this critical endorsement GIS was defined as an essential “enabling technology” and presented to the City Manager and City Council along with other ISS strategic initiatives, including the establishment of citywide networking.

In addition, ISS management pre-defined some key requirements and objectives for their Enterprise GIS project:

The GIS platform was defined to be Windows NT to fit within the systems architecture for the City.
The GIS would be enterprise wide with each department responsible for developing and maintaining the data for which they were currently responsible.
All data would be accessible to all departments through the network no matter where the data physically resided.
Committees (Technical, Steering and Policy) were established to ensure the proper oversight of the project and to formalize the involvement of all departments in project decision-making.

With these essential requirements defined and the organizational groundwork put in place, the actual project work began.

The GIS project was officially started in the spring of 1997 with a high-level needs assessment. Since the City of Fort Worth did not have the staff or the expertise to prepare this document a GIS consulting firm was hired. An important benefit to hiring a consultant was that a neutral, 3rd party expert was much better positioned to achieve inter-departmental consensus on potentially contentious issues related to project phasing and data ownership.

After interviewing various departments, a GIS Strategic Plan was created that projected time frames, project phasing and dollar amounts needed to complete the foundation of the enterprise GIS. It was decided that this foundation would provide the GIS data common to a majority of City work functions (these common features were defined as parcels, lots, street centerlines, and zoning) and establish a master GIS data server that all departments could access. The planning document was necessary to present to upper management and City Council so that money could be appropriated to proceed with the project. The development of the high-level strategic plan took approximately two months to complete.

The next step was to complete the GIS Strategic Plan by preparing a detailed needs assessment and implementation strategy that involved all seventeen (17) of the City’s departments that would use the GIS. Each department’s by-in for maintaining the various levels of data in the enterprise wide GIS was defined in the detail plan along with the sources of that data. GIS applications were also identified, described and prioritized on a citywide basis. This step was completed in the summer of 1997.

With a detailed plan in place the next critical step was the preparation of a database design. Key objectives of the City’s Enterprise GIS are integration with existing city information systems and ensuring the database supports a wide range of City work functions.

A formal database design process was absolutely essential to the successful realization of these two objectives. Key elements of the City’s database design process include:

formal design modeling of the database using CASE tools
the careful review of the schemas of primary external information systems that were targeted for GIS integration to ensure the database design accommodated system integration
multiple review and feedback sessions with key City users
data dictionary documentation to serve as a companion to the design
a recognition that a one-time database design is unrealistic; that incremental revisions to the design would be required as key applications and new points of integration are implemented

The detailed database design of the GIS and Oracle databases was completed in the fall of 1997. Database design focused on implementing the first phase of the City’s GIS database: parcels, lots, street centerlines, and zoning. A critical element of database construction was the migration and update of existing map data held by the City and data from the Appraisal District (the Tarrant County Appraisal District) that was responsible for the vast majority of the parcels within the City’s jurisdiction.

A data migration specification to achieve these objectives was prepared and an RFP for data migration/conversion was released December 1997. A data conversion vendor was selected and GIS database construction started in June of 1998. Data migration and conversion of the first phase of GIS data components was completed in the summer of 1999. During this time, the City of Fort Worth worked closely with its Tarrant Appraisal District to ensure that the most current parcel data was converted. The Tarrant Appraisal District (TAD) is an important player in the City’s overall Enterprise GIS system concept. TAD is responsible for maintaining and providing the City digital updates to their parcel data. The City is responsible for providing TAD digital updates of City approved platted land (subdivision lots).

Currently, ISS is helping its departments implement key GIS data maintenance applications to update the GIS database. ISS is also actively involved in assisting departments to plan, design and develop additional components of the GIS database – data elements specific to the City’s utility infrastructure, parks, police, planning, and development services.

While the City’s ISS Department is responsible for managing and administering the GIS database, its user departments are responsible for developing their unique data elements, for the maintenance of these data elements and for the purchase or creation of applications to support their work functions. The ISS Department will play a pivotal role in technically coordinating and orchestrating this on-going development.

Critical issue in achieving enterprise GIS
Implementing Enterprise GIS is not simply a matter of selecting and installing software. It requires a concerted effort that involves strategic planning, organizational development, proper design, implementing requisite computing infrastructure and establishing appropriate institutional mechanisms. The following discusses what we consider are essentials for the successful implementation of Enterprise GIS.

The Enterprise GIS Strategic Plan
Preparing a strategic plan for Enterprise GIS is a first and highly important step. The strategic plan has several important goals: developing multi-department consensus on priorities and responsibilities, winning management approval, defining the tasks and technical strategy for implementing the system and preparing a planning level budget estimate. Achieving consensus and management approval is essential, and often difficult to accomplish using in-house resources. As a result, using a respected, experienced consultant to develop the strategic plan is often a good idea.

The strategic plan must define a technical strategy and develop a planning-level budget for approval. This requires a level of detail that is often missing from many strategic plans. A plan that only states at a high-level desired outcomes or makes a list of the software and data elements that must be developed is not enough to deliver a sound technical strategy and budget estimate. Important elements that should be developed as part of a strategic plan include:

a review of the existing computing environment to identify any technical issues that must be resolved with existing network infrastructure, computing hardware, and existing or planned information systems that are targeted for integration with the GIS;
preparation of a GIS database concept that identifies all the major data components of the GIS and the anticipated method of data sharing with external information systems;
definition of a database development strategy that identifies all the data sources to be used to construct the GIS database and flags any issues related to accuracy, completeness or format that will need to be resolved;
identification and initial prioritization of user applications and system integration programming needed to support departmental work functions and integration objectives;
formulation of institutional methods for developing, coordinating and administering the Enterprise GIS;
development of a system development cost estimate that considers each components of the system: design, data migration/construction, software, hardware upgrades and networking, application programming, training, and staffing.