GIS growth and the Advantage Program (part 2 of 3)

Most organizations these days have many aspects of geospatial capabilities across their organizations. Most, if not all, also have ideals and goals to fit all these pieces together. How can they be better leveraged, better connected, more optimized and improved so that you’re getting the most value out of your investment? Where do you even start? If you know where you are today, a forward-looking geospatial strategy can help you make the most out of what you have, and make a smart plan for the path forward.

Reliable geospatial information and analytical tools for solving business problems across GIS departments, organizations, industries and sectors are becoming increasingly important to executives and city managers. But how can you use these tools to maximize your investment in GIS? How do you prioritize your goals, objectives, priorities, activities and available resources? How do you visualize a roadmap with potential activities for several years ahead?

In part 1 of our “GIS growth and the Advantage Program” series, I went into detail about how customers are deploying and moving to Web GIS using services provided by Esri Canada’s Advantage Program. In that discussion, I showed how one customer in particular used a roadmap engagement to thoughtfully plan a transition to Web GIS.

The key there was really taking the time to understand how all of their existing technology, systems and processes fit together, then planning the approach using that understanding as a baseline.

In this, part 2 of the “GIS growth” blog post series, I’ll walk through how a different customer, the City of Red Deer, took the next step and used their roadmap as a basis for implementation. My hope is that you’ll see how GIS can be used to drive a complex organization toward its KPIs and strategic goals. Read on to see what the City did and what’s next for them.

Common challenge #2—How to take GIS from mapping tool to strategic driver

The City of Red Deer is a mid-sized city with a population of over 105,000. The third-largest city in Alberta, the City is in a growth phase. It’s a hub for transportation, supporting Edmonton and Calgary as well as industries in Central Alberta. City leaders also aspire to evolve Red Deer into a four-season destination supported by a safe community, a socially responsible region and economic leadership.

Red Deer has long been a maturing organization in terms of geospatial capabilities, but until recently, it was facing a challenge: its geographic information system (GIS) wasn’t mobile and couldn’t integrate with third-party financial and asset management systems. Leigh-Ann Martin, Red Deer’s GIS supervisor, understood that some changes needed to be made and decided to work with Esri Canada on switching Red Deer’s geospatial platform to ArcGIS. After making the switch to ArcGIS, the City gained access to an entirely new suite of cutting-edge possibilities, and so wanted to explore new ways to use GIS to support its operations.

ArcGIS really opened up a lot of opportunities for us. The software provided us with the tools we needed to advance the City’s strategic objectives, and then the services we obtained from Esri Canada helped us make optimal use of those tools. Now, GIS is a key part of business strategy at the City, helping drive key projects, discover opportunities and make the City more sustainable.

—Leigh-Ann Martin, GIS Supervisor, City of Red Deer

To help the City find the right opportunities to grow, Esri Canada ran a strategic benchmarking assessment of the City’s geospatial functions. The assessment revealed that in order to maximize its investment in GIS, the City needed a holistic geospatial strategy. This would help them modernize their GIS platform so that it could scale to meet the needs of the growing City and digitally enable the City’s fieldwork activities. It would also show the City changes in workflow and culture that would take them to the next level. 

To execute this strategy and the outflow activities, the City also invested in an Advantage Program engagement to help coordinate, provide knowledge transfer and provide agile advice.

One of the things to consider with the combination of Geospatial Strategic Plan and Advantage Program services is that you have a lot of flexibility in how you execute the strategy recommendations. In the case of Red Deer, they were able to gain the expertise to do many of the strategy activites on their own, leveraging the AP when it was optimal for technical discussions, knowledge transfer and advice. 

What it looks like in practice

By adopting a formalized GIS strategy, the City  gained the ability to educate its staff and executives on the value and power of GIS. Hosting strategic workshops has allowed GIS staff to capture the attention of senior City leadership, build relationships and secure buy-in for the strategy. 

The roadmap contained a prioritized sequence of essential projects arranged into a multi-year timeline so that senior leadership can easily see how the City’s GIS work aligns with its business objectives. It also shows the level of effort required to modernize each relevant workflow. 

An early recommendation in the roadmap was for City staff to increase skills through training activities, which Esri Canada tailored to the City’s data and needs. Using City data and systems as sources of examples within the training helped put lessons and exercises into context for the 40 learners who took the training. It also increased uptake of ArcGIS-specific skills.

With so many staff now proficient in ArcGIS, the City now has a solid knowledge base to build on. It’s also easier for them to onboard new named users into the system. This has allowed them to take on many of the strategy recommendations themselves with great success. 

Another recommendation in the roadmap, one of the first to be implemented, was for the City to implement a central data portal where City staff could find all the data they might need. In tandem with creating the portal, the City ran a GIS architecture assessment, then used the Advantage Program to design the optimal platform to meet their needs. 

The main goals here were for the City to gather requirements for its ArcGIS system implementation, and to ensure that its existing workflows would scale to the ArcGIS environment.

Year 2 of the roadmap recommended that the City conduct a Utility Network (UN) assessment, develop a UN roadmap and budget the adoption of a UN data model. This is currently still underway. 

Another growth-oriented project recommended to the City was for them to establish a Geospatial Community of Practice (COP) to help drive the adoption of GIS standards, essential processes and technology.  and it’s been a great success ever since. Now, 16 representatives from departments across the City get together every three weeks for two hours to share their problems and ideas and strategize about geospatial issues of specific concern to them.

Next steps for the COP include to develop a spatial data stewards working group, namely a manager-level committee that will steer spatial data governance within the organization.

The roadmap also recommended the adoption of ArcGIS Field Maps for the City’s mobile workforce. The City’s Advantage Program advisor was able to connect them with an expert in field mobility workflows from Esri Canada, from which point the City was able to design and run with the project. This has replaced dozens of paper-based workflows, allowing City staff to streamline their field data collection and inspection processes using easy-to-use digital apps. 

What’s next?

Overall, the City is well on its way to fully implementing this new geospatial strategy—and it’s already seeing results. The City has been able to streamline operations, enhance its decision making capabilities and better allocate resources to address the evolving needs of its residents. It’s harnessing the power of geospatial data to create a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive city for residents and visitors alike.

Upcoming projects under the Advantage Program seek to increase transparency with Red Deer’s citizens. These include a public-facing capital project tracking dashboard, which flows naturally from the City having implemented a central GIS portal internally. The City is also implementing an asset inventory that can be easily updated on mobile devices, powered by ArcGIS Field Maps, which will reduce human error in field inspections and generally save a lot of time.

If you have ambitious plans for your organization’s GIS function but need help implementing them, Esri Canada’s Advantage Program is right for you. Or, if you’re interested in a 360 evaluation of your organization’s current geospatial maturity that provides rapid time-to-value, consider our Location Intelligence 360 service.