Crafting an enterprise GIS: An enterprising craft
GIS Demonstration
Following this presentation, the IT Department began pursuing City Council approval of the first
phase of the GIS implementation – the database design phase. However, what the IT Department
learned was that several City Council members were still undecided about GIS. Upon more
investigation, it became clear that some members were still unsure of what GIS would do for
them. The Council meeting was approaching in which the GIS Design Phase was on the agenda.
The IT Director called the City’s GIS consultant to inquire about the availability of any GIS
demos that could be used during the presentation. Although generic demos exist covering GIS
capabilities, the City’s GIS consultant felt that the council had been given plenty of information
about the generic capabilities of GIS. The consultant decided to construct a simple application
using the data of another local government in Texas (who graciously agreed to the use of their
data).
Of particular importance to the City Council and the Finance department at this time were crime
analysis and management of assets for GASB-34 and storm water NPDES requirements. A
simple ArcView application was developed and demonstrated during the City Council meeting
with the following analyses built in:
- Determine linear footage of wastewater lines within an area specified. (Supports GASB-
34 requirement.)
- Determine the number of manholes within an area specified. (Supports GASB-34
requirement.)
- Determine the pavement condition of a selected street. (Supports storm water asset
management requirement.)
- Display all streets in the City with a certain pavement condition. (Supports storm water
asset management requirement.)
- Display actual crime calls versus false alarms for a selected area. (Supports Police crime
analysis work function).
- Displays the statistics of a specific crime type in a given area. (Supports Police crime
analysis work function).
The database design phase of the GIS Implementation Plan was approved by City Council on
December 18, 2001.
Showing Tangible Results
One concern of the City Council was showing results throughout the implementation to help
justify the cost of the GIS program. This was also a policy of the City’s GIS consultant. With a
focus on early results and highest priorities, the implementation plan was prepared so that each
phase of the GIS project was a smaller project onto itself, covering all four components of a
system – data, hardware/software, applications, and institutional support. The only exception to
this was the Database Design Phase, which will be discussed in more detail.
Prior to beginning Phase I data conversion, a formal GIS database design was developed for the
City’s selected GIS software. As part of the design process, complete design documentation was
produced to guide the subsequent database development tasks. During the database design
review meetings, it became obvious that many of the City Departments were still maintaining a
majority of their records in paper format. The City’s GIS consultant recommended the staff,
where and when possible, begin entering data, that would at some point in the future need to be
accessed by GIS, into either Access or Excel. This would reduce future conversion costs. To
facilitate this process, the GIS consultant delivered a web-enabled metadata document to the City
with data structure diagrams and data format requirements. This document has been loaded on
the City’s intranet for potential GIS users to access.
Conclusions
The City of Killeen’s experience with overcoming obstacles on the journey to implementing a
GIS program was a direct result of the constant and determined effort of staff and the City’s GIS
consultant to educate, facilitate, and produce information and results that led to the approval of
the City Council and the beginning of Phase I of the GIS program. Our hope is that by relating
information about hurdles we encountered and how we overcame them, other entities in similar
situations can use some of our tools/ideas to garnish support for their GIS programs and get their
plans on the road to a successful implementation of GIS. Our success seems to be attributable to
several factors:
- Identifying a high-level GIS champion who understood the importance of implementing
GIS while voicing the concerns of the City Council and stakeholders.
- Defining a comprehensive, yet flexible, phased implementation plan that outlines both
technical requirements and financial commitments the City should follow to realize their
GIS vision.
- Working diligently and creatively to educate all levels of the organization, from the future
end user to the current decision makers.
- Generating tangible results at every phase of the implementation process that are
meaningful and visible to all levels of the organization.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following people for the support of the City’s GIS project
and the development of this paper: Ms. Christine Watson-Hudgens, Mr. David Hall, Mr. Robert
W. Finkle, Ms. Laura Carr, Mr. Tom Dann, Mr. Colen Wilson, Mr. Bruce Butscher, the staff and
potential creators and user of GIS, and the honorable Mayor and City Council of the City of
Killeen.
