Crafting an enterprise GIS: An enterprising craft

Crafting an enterprise GIS: An enterprising craft

Marilyn Vargas
IT Operations Manager Information Technology Department
City of Killeen P. O. Box 1329
Voice: 254-501-7893, FAX: 254-501-3496
Email: mvargas@ci.killeen.tx.us

Kathy H. Spiveyl
Vice President IT Nexus, Inc.
15144 SE 139th Street Newalla, OK 74857
Voice: 405-386-4850, FAX: 405-386-4851
Email: khspivey@it-nexus.com

Abstract
Killeen, Texas, home to Fort Hood, one of the largest military bases in the country, is a dynamic and fast-growing city with a population of 92,000 and an expected growth rate of 23% over the next 10-15 years. With this growth potential, Killeen realized a need for improved citywide mapping and spatial analysis capabilities and began an implementation of an enterprise-wide GIS to greatly enhance their CAD-based, single-department mapping effort. With the implementation, however, came hurdles and issues that arise with any such project of this size. Killeen has taken an enterprising approach to make sure the implementation goes forward and is successful. This presentation discusses such common GIS program hurdles and how Killeen overcame them, such as: 1) acquiring a high-level GIS champion to promote and lead the program, 2) constructing a well thought-out and structured implementation plan to guide the City through the multi-year project, 3) achieving city council buyoff of the plan and budget by providing clear and relevant information, 4) providing a tangible product at every step of the implementation process to keep enthusiasm for the project high, and 5) other creative ideas to help the City implement its GIS in an efficient and timely manner.

Building a History

Introduction
The City of Killeen is the largest city in Bell County, Texas, with a population of about 92,000 people covering an area of 35.45 square miles, 22% of that area undeveloped. Located 79 miles north of Austin, Texas, Killeen is home to Fort Hood, the largest military post in the free world. Killeen currently has an extraterritorial jurisdiction boundary that extends approximately 3.5 miles out from the current city limits, encompassing a large area into which the City can grow. Killeen’s population growth has been steady since the City was established in 1882, with a large spurt in the 1940s with the establishment of Fort Hood and increasing an average of 12% per decade in the past. Population growth is expected to bring the City to a population of almost 115,000 by 2015. The City is home to Tarleton State University and Central Texas College and is in the process of building a new joint-use airport with Fort Hood that will have the capability of handling both military and civilian jet aircraft.

The Mapping Program History
All mapping needs within the City have been provided by either the Mapping Section of the City’s Planning Department or outside consultants hired by the various City departments to produce maps for specific projects. Nearly all the maps used by City staff are paper maps. The Mapping Section currently maintains a few maps in AutoCAD, but the primary focus of the City’s map automation to date has been generating specialty map exhibits for many of the City’s departments and decision makers. The Mapping Section currently has three mapping technicians who maintain both the paper and digital maps for many of the departments within the City.

Before the mid-1990s, the Mapping Section staff consisted of two mapping technicians who created and updated all required maps by hand. Two primary sets of map sheets which served as the City’s land base maps were maintained by the Mapping Section: 1) zoning maps attributed with lots, blocks, zoning classifications, and street names, and 2) block maps attributed with subdivision names, lots, blocks, parcel addresses and easement information. Both map sets were divided based on a grid system established for easy reference.

By 1995, it had become obvious that map maintenance times could be cut in half by combining these two sets of maps containing a good amount of duplicate information into one map and converting the map sets into digital format. The Mapping Section named the paper-to-digital map conversion initiative “Genesis” to signify the rebirth of their mapping project. For Genesis, the City hired an additional staff person to support the conversion project and selected AutoCAD to create their digital land base map in. Parcel boundaries were drawn from submitted plats and attributed with data from the Bell County Appraisal District’s tax roll and from the original zoning maps and block maps. The parcels were rectified to the 2002 digital orthophotos. This project was completed in 2002.

Other primary maps used by the City include the Public Works Department’s Water System and Sewer System paper maps prepared by a consultant in the 1990s, but are no longer complete and accurate. Public Works Department stores and maintains a number of paper maps that are used to support engineering design, development review and capital improvement projects. The Aviation Department currently has a consultant maintain a few paper maps to assist with the management of the airport.

Realizing the Need
In 1994, the Mapping Section purchased its first copy of ESRI’s desktop software, ArcView and the mapping technicians received one week of training on the software’s functionality. While the Mapping Section recognized the inherent benefits of GIS, the City was not ready to commit to the acquisition of any additional GIS resources. The Mapping Section, with its limited resources, continued to struggle to keep up with routine maintenance on the digital land base map while trying to fill all requests for specialty maps and information related to maps.

By 1999, some senior staff realized the City needed to implement GIS. Both the incoming Information Technology (IT) Director and the Planning Division Director had prior exposure to and experience with GIS and realized GIS would provide a significantly better tool for performing many of the mapping and information management tasks that were critical for the City’s operations. In addition, they recognized the negative impact the lack of a dedicated, centralized mapping program was having on decision-making in the City, often resulting in staff running around looking for disparate maps and data to help with a decision or for a city council meeting.

A GIS needs assessment and master plan was included in the first proposed budget submitted by the new IT Director in 1999. In November 2000, a request was made to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP), which was integrated into the Information Technology Master Plan in December 2000. During this timeframe, multiple briefings on GIS technology were given by the IT Department to the Council to promote understanding of the need and benefits of such a program. However, it became evident that the council and city managers still did not reach a comfortable understanding of GIS, and GIS was still referred to as the Great White Elephant, something that was going to cost the City a lot of money with few tangible results realized in some distant future.

Identifying a champion
In early 2001, Planning and IT staff were still convinced the City could benefit greatly from implementing GIS as an enterprise-wide initiative, but had not yet been able to convince City Council to give the approval of the IT Master Plan and GIS. The arrival of a new Deputy City Manager in 2001 gave GIS at the City of Killeen the high-level champion it needed to get off the ground. Mr. David Hall had served as a commander at Fort Hood prior to coming to the City of Killeen and was very familiar with GIS technology and its potential benefits. Fort Hood, at this time, had an operational GIS that served as a tool in many base operations.

Mr. Hall worked with Council members to understand what issues were at the heart of the Council’s hesitance to proceed with GIS. It became clear that besides the concern over the cost of the program, the council members were still unsure of what GIS would do for them. Mr. Hall worked to get the Council together for a few more technology sessions and demos, and explained to the Council the benefit to bringing in an experienced GIS consultant who would assess whether GIS would be beneficial to the City. The City Council approved the Information Technology Master Plan in April 2001 and an RFP for the GIS needs assessment and implementation plan project was issued June 2001. A GIS consultant was chosen in November 2001 to conduct the needs assessment and create a GIS implementation plan.

Building a master plan

Performing the Needs Assessment
The City’s consultant performed eight (8) days of needs assessment interviews in November/December 2001 aimed at determining opportunities and requirements for developing GIS capabilities that improve citywide information access and analysis, and that achieve increased levels of productivity by improving data integration, consolidation, and interdepartmental access to data. Walkthroughs were conducted with the following departments/entities to understand the department’s current working environment and work flows, and to identify department issues and needs related to their use of the City’s maps and records.

The main concern of participants was to make sure that their needs were fully explored and understood, and that they understood where GIS could support their work function. To accomplish the latter, the GIS consultant conducted a GIS orientation that reviewed GIS concepts and benefits, the goals and objectives of the City’s project, and the types of spatial analyses the GIS can perform, with examples oriented toward City work functions. Following the orientation, participants were divided into groups for a team building, interactive discussion designed to develop a common understanding of GIS opportunities for City participants. The groups, based on departments, discussed and listed current map and data resources, unmet map and data needs, and potential users for GIS within their departments. A presentation of the findings by each group helped to achieve a shared understanding of GIS opportunities while establishing a team spirit that extends beyond departmental boundaries.

Creating a Phased Implementation Plan
Research and experience reveal that systems fail primarily due to two reasons: 1) a focus on data when determining the development plan for a system, and 2) a lack of focus on the people side of developing the system. At the City of Killeen, an application- or workflow-driven approach was used to define the needs of the organization to ensure that the system implementation strategy addressed the core requirements of the City, including system integration and data and software procurements, when appropriate. To achieve enterprise success with GIS, the City realized the implementation strategy did not simply involve making technology decisions. It is critical that an organizational, managerial, and staffing structure be created that institutionalizes both the efficiencies made possible by enterprise GIS as well as ongoing support and coordination needed to sustain the system. The City and its GIS consultant used the following strategy to produce the City’s implementation plan:

Defining GIS Applications – A list of 69 potential GIS applications were identified during the departmental interviews that support work functions, programs, and service mandates of the participating departments, and improve City operations.
Prioritizing GIS Applications – To aid in determining phasing of the GIS program, applications were prioritized based on qualitative cost/benefit criteria. Criteria included number of users/frequency of use, ability to improve productivity or revenue capture, ability to improve access to information, support of community development and service delivery, support of public safety programs, database requirements, hardware/software requirements, and implementation complexity.
Defining Data Requirements – Once the applications were prioritized, data requirements for each application were added to a conceptual GIS database design. Preparing the database concept helped define and communicate the strategy for eliminating unnecessary data redundancies and for achieving improved access, consolidation, and control that will be necessary for managing the City’s GIS. Associated the data with the application prioritization enabled the database development strategy to assign a priority for data conversion (i.e., data for high priority applications would be included in Phase I of the GIS implementation, data required for low priority applications would be included in later phases of the GIS implementation.)
Defining Data Compilation Strategy – A database compilation strategy for constructing or improving data was prepared for each component of the proposed GIS conceptual database design. By completing this process, any major data conversion or acquisition issues were identified in the plan and accounted for in the implementation budget.
Defining Hardware/Software Requirements – Based on the application prioritization, hardware and software acquisition was also phased into the implementation. This phasing allows for the purchase of system components only when needed, thus spreading the cost out over a period of time.
Assigning Data Maintenance Responsibilities – Both spatial and attribute data maintenance responsibilities were assigned to the various departments based on the City’s existing business functions. During the plan review, a consensus was reached among departments on the data maintenance responsibilities.
Determining Staff/Organization Requirements – A strategy was developed to implement organizational models, management approaches, and an adequate staff training program that would result in a successful GIS program.

The needs assessment and implementation plan project achieved:

a city-wide consensus on the scope and capabilities of the City’s enterprise GIS
a GIS concept and plan that addresses the unique needs of each of the City’s user departments
a clear and well documented plan that describes and prepares a strategy for GIS applications, hardware and software, database development and organization support and staff responsibilities
a phased implementation plan and budget for incremental development that will allow the City to realize concrete, tangible benefits from each stage of system implementation while being flexible enough to support changes if funds or resources changed.

Achieving council Buyoff

Executive Presentation
Although department managers were sold on the idea that GIS would be very beneficial to the City, they wanted to make sure the GIS implementation plan was sold to and accepted by the City Council. To achieve council buyoff, the GIS implementation plan had to address the following Council concerns:

What are the costs versus benefits of implementing an enterprise-wide GIS?
How much money will need to be spent before a tangible output is produced?
Will the plan be flexible enough to allow an adjustment of a phase rather than pulling the plug on the project if a phase is not fully funded?

Upon completion of the implementation plan project in May 2001, the GIS consultant delivered an executive level presentation of the final Strategic GIS Implementation Plan to the City Manager, the Deputy City Manager, the Assistant City Manager, department managers, and GIS Steering Committee members. The presentation provided an executive summary review of the findings of the needs assessment, the proposed conceptual design, expected system development costs, and the proposed implementation plan. Specific topics included:

Why is GIS technology important to municipal governments? Covered under this topic were the primary drivers for information system projects, including the need to integrate “islands of information”, improving efficiencies and customer service, and the need for better information management across the enterprise.
How can GIS be used in municipal governments? A series of screen shots were presented of GIS analysis applications addressing such topics as public safety, economic development, and land or building utilization.
How does GIS benefit the municipal government? A list of benefits and their outcomes were presented, such as:

More Current Information -----> Better Decisions
Speed Information Access ------> Better Customer Service
What were the findings of the needs assessment? Primarily, the assessment identified that integrating the City’s spatial information with its existing databases and paper records would provide strong benefits to the City’s decision makers and end users.
How will the system be implemented? The phased approach for database and application development and hardware/software acquisition was presented. In addition, staff and departmental responsibilities were reviewed.
What will be the cost of implementing the enterprise-wide GIS? Presenting the cost for each task in each phase while discussing what would be accomplished in each phase of the implementation helped to set expectations of cost versus deliverable.

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.