Master Plan Shows Opportunity for Enterprise GIS Utilization

Introduction

Berkeley California is a city of over 122,000 people in northern California spread across approximately 10 square miles and located across the bay from San Francisco. The City of Berkeley is perhaps most famous for its University of California campus and the public Agricultural, Mining and Mechanical Arts College in Oakland. The City of Berkeley grew up around the site selected for the University.

The City is known for its academic achievements, scientific exploration, free speech and the arts. The City is home to several Nobel Prize winners and is ranked No. 5 on Niche’s List of Top 10 ‘Best Cities to Live in America’ for 2017. Though the City of Berkeley has much to be proud of, they are constantly working on improving the quality of life for their community.

Issue

As the City of Berkeley worked to build their Resilience strategy, which included a strategic goal to “excel at working together within city government to better serve the community,” City staff soon realized that their Enterprise GIS Program needed strategic direction; the GIS architecture, business application technologies, and staff resources had changed. The City required a wholistic re-evaluation of the GIS to ensure the effectiveness in providing critical services to all City staff and residents.

In May of 2016, the City decided to pursue a GIS Master Plan initiative, with the intent of finding a consultant knowledgeable in GIS Governance and technology best practices, who could conduct a GIS needs assessment and provide a GIS Master Plan for the City. The City of Berkeley selected Geographic Technologies Group (GTG), pioneers in GIS Strategic Planning, to help them create a roadmap for development of an enterprise and sustainable GIS.

The GIS Master Planning Project

Ultimately, the City wanted to develop a comprehensive GIS Needs Assessment Report, Technology Readiness Assessment, and an Organization Readiness Assessment culminating into a GIS implementation plan. This implementation plan and associated industry best practice recommendations would act as a roadmap for the City’s future Enterprise GIS. The following are the six milestones established by the City to reach this roadmap.

Milestone 1: Needs Assessment

GTG conducted a needs assessment for the City of Berkeley’s various departments. This involved using an online questionnaire, onsite departmental interview process, and GIS benchmarking analysis.

Milestone 2: Technology Readiness Assessment

The City of Berkeley’s hardware, software, and network were evaluated on its ability to support an Enterprise GIS. GTG created a scalable conceptual system design for the City.

Milestone 3: Authoritative Data Source Assessment

For the third milestone, the City focused on the quality of their GIS data. GTG created a data assessment on the parcel and address datasets, based on their completeness and accuracy, and identified the gaps between the data sets and future needs.

Milestone 4: Organizational Readiness Assessment

Focusing on industry best practices, training, and staffing plans, GTG created a report detailing guidelines for organizations structures and governance models.

Milestone 5: Implementation Plan

To deliver the implementation plan, GTG needed to provide a clear roadmap of how the Enterprise GIS system would be improved. This plan contains all information and reports from Milestones 1-4, including a cost-benefit analysis and a high-level project timeline.

Milestone 6: Final Presentation

The last deliverable for the City was a presentation of the entire GIS Master Plan covering everything from the first interview questions to the delivery of the implementation plan package.

The Master Plan defined six goals the City of Berkeley wanted to achieve in order to implement a robust enterprise GIS that was scalable, sustainable, and enduring. These goals included:

  1. Implementing a formal GIS governance model
  2. Establishing GIS procedures and workflows
  3. Developing a GIS staffing plan
  4. GIS Training, Education and Knowledge Transfer
  5. GIS Data improvement
  6. Building an infrastructure to sustain an enterprise GIS.

Solution

The scope of the seven goals identified above translated into a contract for seven follow up projects with GTG to place the City’s GIS on the road to an enduring enterprise GIS. These projects were directly linked to the results of a GIS assessment, which led to recommendations based on Berkeley’s needs as well as industry best practices. Utilizing the Esri software platform and the Enterprise License Agreement the City of Berkeley has with Esri, GTG proposed to:

  1. Conduct a comprehensive GIS data quality assessment.
  2. Deploy a Public web GIS Solution utilizing ArcGIS Server, Web AppBuilder, and ArcGIS Online.
  3. Develop enterprise GIS policies and procedures following industry Best Management Practices.
  4. Develop a Mobile GIS Deployment Action Plan.
  5. Develop Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or Measures for GIS for the City of Berkeley to measure the performance and progress of every task identified in the Master Plan.
  6. Plan and design a digital newsletter to maintain a GIS culture of collaboration among stakeholders.
  7. Develop a comprehensive GIS training program and web platform for the City utilizing all resources available such as online and classroom workshops, videos, blogs, social media, and brown bag lunches and provide a plan for knowledge transfer.

The City of Berkeley has invested in its enterprise GIS vis implementing the recommendations in the strategic plan roadmap and as a result has an enduring, scalable, and sustainable enterprise GIS.

Outcome

The City received their final implementation plan in the summer of 2017. Cristi Delgado, the GIS Coordinator for the City of Berkeley, raves about her experience working with GTG: “The staff at GTG had the knowledge and expertise in creating implementation plans that we were looking for. I could not be happier with their work!”

Since receiving their plan, the City has taken several steps towards updating their Enterprise GIS, including improving communication amongst departments via the new GIS Newsletter, The Pin Drop. The City has also begun pursuing other projects with GTG, including deploying a Public web GIS solution, which enabled the City to openly share GIS data for areas such as property and planning, recreation, and city services. This public-facing portal is accessible 24/7 and serves to increase transparency while reducing public information requests and the need for a personal staff response.

The City has also moved forward with the creation of a comprehensive Mobile Action Plan. There was previously no mobile GIS available, so the GIS Master Plan recommended a plan to provide a roadmap for fully implementing mobile technologies for City staff. This project helped them to realize the return on investment in utilizing mobile GIS and applications for City operations.

Cristi Delgado said she appreciated the work that Geographic Technologies Group (GTG) did to analyze and highlight how GIS has the potential for greater use and impact at the City of Berkeley. The professional analysis of the GIS provided an independent view that she could share with decision makers that helped her make the case for applying the recommended changes to the enterprise GIS. She said, “It also made GIS stakeholders feel they were being heard.”

The City of Berkeley is working hard to maintain the best GIS the City has seen and create a benchmark for other organizations to follow. The GIS data assessment identified areas of opportunity to improve quality of data for reporting to deliver high-level analysis. Berkeley City staff are now enabled with better decision-making tools and with better data. GIS has been implemented at all levels of the organization, and the City is committed to continuing education for all team members to ensure the highest return on their GIS investment.

For more information about GIS Strategic Planning with Geographic Technologies Group, please visit geotg.com or call our team at 888.757.4222.