Planning for Excellence in GIS
Bay County, Florida has a rich and varied history. St. Andrew’s Bay was frequented by famous explorers to include Narvaez and DeSoto. In the early 1900s, Coca-Cola used the artesian water from the county for all its products. Naval stores have been a big industry in the county with numerous plants still in operation. The Bayous were rich in the materials needed to become a large supply area of turpentine. Bay County became an official Florida county in 1913, and the area has long been a favorite place for sports fishing, water sports, and vacation getaways.
Bay County experiences steady growth, so the County government expands services to accommodate residents and visitors alike. To fully envision and create the vision they had for the county, officials created an overarching Strategic Plan to act as a roadmap for achieving their goals. They also wanted the plan to give transparency and accountability to the County. This “Bay County 2018-2022 Strategic Plan” laid out aggressive goals focusing on safety, service delivery, maintaining a family-friendly community, good stewardship of natural resources, and promoting a healthy business climate. Their plan identified action items and tasks for each department at the County. By all measures, Bay County has one of the most successful and far-reaching GIS programs in the country. One of the required actions was to create an Enterprise GIS Master Plan.
The GIS team, led by GIS Manager Jennifer Morgan, has a laser focus on customer service and ensuring that GIS is not seen as a “technology” but instead as a “decision-making platform.” Once Ms. Morgan and her team were given the green-light to create a GIS Master Plan, they immediately knew that this plan would be anything but ordinary. Ms. Morgan explains, “Our team is driven to enable the county (staff and residents) with the very best GIS tools to understand the world they live in and to make pertinent decisions that impact their job duties and their lives. With that said, we were looking for an innovative vision that would push us and give us a roadmap to become the very best GIS program possible.”
After an exhaustive search in 2019, the County selected Geographic Technologies Group (GTG) to assist with their GIS Master Plan. Curt Hinton, co-owner and President of GTG, states, “We were very excited to partner with Jennifer and Bay County. One of the sayings that inspire us at GTG is, ‘If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.’ We fully understand that to be successful you must have a plan for success. When we began working with Morgan and her team, we quickly realized that Bay County’s GIS was not ordinary. They have accomplished things that most organizations only dream about. Also, we knew that this plan had to push the County and had to become a companion document of the County’s overall Strategic Plan.”
To that end, the resulting GIS Master Plan is innovative and exhaustive. It was created to be a clear roadmap for continued success and to present the vision for GIS in a very customer-friendly way. Mr. Hinton points out, “We involved our best strategic planners and our marketing team to create a showcase document that not only lays out a plan but inspires the organization.” The plan focused on creating Key Performance Indicators from which to gauge current status and areas for improvement that can be tracked over time. Time was also taken to identify how GIS can help achieve the goals laid out by the County Commissioners in the County’s Strategic Plan.
The final deliverable was a magazine quality document that identified goals, objectives, and KPIs to continue to push the County and help them succeed as a leader in GIS. Ms. Morgan states, “We are beyond pleased with the final GIS Master Plan. It identifies a clear path forward and tangible goals, objectives, and activities that we need to pursue. We want to be second-to-none and provide meaningful services to staff and residents. The GIS Master Plan is informative, instructive, and inspirational. We have a renewed vigor for GIS and this document not only inspires us but allows the entire organization to understand how GIS will benefit them.”
For more GIS Strategic Planning, visit GISPlan.com.
