Building on a Foundation: A Tactical Plan for Data-Driven Decision Making and Technology Expansion
Town of Caledon GIS Strategic Implementation Plan Project
As the largest municipality by area in the Region of Peel in the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, the Town of Caledon is comprised of both urban and rural communities facing the challenge of balancing growth with the protection of natural heritage features.
In April 2020, the Town of Caledon engaged Geographic Technologies Group (GTG) to develop a 5-year comprehensive enterprise GIS Strategic Implementation Plan. The Town required a plan that provided a clear vision and achievable action plan to position the Town of Caledon to utilize GIS tools, infrastructure, and services to best support the IT Strategic goals of automating internal processes, optimizing service delivery, building a tech-savvy organization, and improving IT processes.
The intent of the plan was to develop and establish a framework on which to build GIS and improve data-driven decision-making by leveraging the existing technology and investment made. The mission of the project was to give the Town’s IT department a stand-alone plan; one that gives the Town a tactical approach, including priorities and costs listed with a focus on governance.
Using their 3-phase, 7-step process for GIS Strategic Planning, GTG performed an assessment of how GIS is currently used by the Town of Caledon and by each department and service area. The information gathered to produce the Needs Assessment was collected through a stakeholder questionnaire and departmental interviews.
The Chief Administrative Officer and 11 town departments were interviewed by GTG’s team. GTG used the information gathered about existing conditions to benchmark the Key Performance Indicators and prepare a SWOT analysis. Anticipated benchmarking was also charted to reveal where the Town would be by Year 3 if the recommendations in the plan were achieved.
In terms of GIS maturity, the Town of Caledon is on its way to achieving strategic and operational efficiency. GIS is incorporated throughout the Town operations with protocols in place for system and data management, and there is a central GIS Team in the Information Technology (IT) Division. The IT infrastructure is well-equipped to handle the network, web, and storage needs of the current GIS system and is also capable of supporting future expansion. There has been some integration with business systems along with outreach to the public, which includes maps for address searches, broadband service, Town facilities, and trails.
Strategic Plan Summary
The first year of implementation of the Town of Caledon’s GIS Strategy Implementation Plan outlines a buy-in, expansion, and data update phase focused on building on the foundation of the existing GIS components to establish governance, provide useful information and tools to staff — such as ArcGIS Hub — and to communicate with the public.
Year 2 encompasses the continued deployment and data creation phase, which focuses on continuing to fulfill the governance components, build key datasets, expand integration, and deploy operational applications to assist various Town departments.
The focus of the third year of the GIS strategic implementation plan is on enhancing operations by implementing more advanced technology, continuing to build datasets, and deploying Story Maps to engage the public along with showing a return-on-investment for the GIS effort. The user base is projected to more than double from 103 users to over 225 users by Year 3.
By Years 4 and 5, the Town’s GIS should be fully operational and strategically aligned with corporate goals. To continue the GIS strategy implementation, the GIS Team should become involved in enterprise project management to maintain a culture of collaboration and coordination. To cap the five-year strategic implementation, the GIS system will enter an enterprise phase with new and emerging technologies, increased usage, and corporate-wide GIS involvement.
GTG’s GIS Strategic Implementation Plan gives the Town a roadmap to a future where people, data, and systems work together to improve the operations of the government and enrich the lives of the citizens.
Geographic Technologies Group (GTG) has also been engaged to prepare plans for the other two Peel municipalities — Mississauga and Peterborough. With this foundation for GIS in place and a strategy for expansion, the area is in an excellent position to explore a regional approach to GIS growth.
To learn more about GIS Strategic Planning Services from Geographic Technologies Group, please visit GISPlan.com. You may also speak to our team by calling 888.757.4222 or emailing moreinfo@geotg.com.
