Gwinnett County, Georgia’s Addressing Project
As of 2018, Gwinnett County was the second–most populous county in Georgia. The county just celebrated its 200th birthday and was named after one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, Button Gwinnett. The county is rich with history, parks, recreational opportunities, culture, and diversity. To that end, the county government is expected to deliver a number of progressive and innovative services.
Of a critical nature is the management of addressing in the county. Most of the databases housed at the county have some type of addressing component. Specifically, Public Safety, Planning, and Tax Department functions rely on accurate and updated addresses to perform their daily duties. Dax Flinn, County IT Manager, points out, “Accurate addresses are truly at the hub of effective service delivery at the county. Many of our departments cannot operate effectively without good address information.”
The county is embarking upon implementing a new E-911 system for emergency dispatch. The new system is Next Generation 911 compliant, which requires a very high level of accuracy for addressing. Mr. Flinn notes, “Our GIS team works closely with all departments at the county, to maintain key addressing GIS layers. The new Next Generation 911 takes this need even further by requiring fully–routable street centerlines and a highly accurate address point layer.”
Mr. Flinn understood that the addressing processes at the county had to move to the next level and explains, “This was the perfect opportunity to evaluate our addressing processes and databases in a holistic fashion.” To assist with this evaluation and work-plan evaluation, Gwinnett County contracted with Geographic Technologies Group (GTG) to perform an addressing assessment and recommendations document. Curtis Hinton, President of GTG notes, “GTG has had a 20–year working relationship with Gwinnett County. Additionally, we are a national leader in GIS addressing projects – having worked with over 500 agencies on their addressing needs. We were excited to bring our experience to the table to assist Gwinnett County.”
The study detailed key addressing concerns for the county, current addressing conditions and workflows for each key department, an organization and architectural analysis, an in-depth data review, and a series of recommended actions. Mr. Hinton asserts, “This study was imperative for the county. They had a number of projects that all rely on good addressing. Making sound decisions and implementing an optimal game plan for improving and managing addressing was a must.”
The county has taken the recommendations of this plan and began to implement the findings. The new 911 system will be implemented in 2020 and a host of addressing upgrades are now underway. “Our team at GTG lives by the old adage, ‘A fail to plan is a plan to fail.’ A clear roadmap for where you are going is what makes projects and people successful. This plan will ensure that Gwinnett County maintains the level of excellence that the residents of Gwinnett County have grown to expect from their county government. The final result of this effort will be a series of GIS layers and associated technologies and processes that will make service delivery easier and will make the residents of Gwinnett County safer,” concludes Mr. Hinton.
For more information about this project contact Dax Flinn at Dax.Flinn@gwinnettcounty.com or Curt Hinton at chinton@geotg.com. You can also reach the GTG team by calling 888-757-4222.
