This article was originally authored by Locana, which is now part of TRC.
Convert policy to practice, streamline workflows, and increase collaboration using location intelligence.
The public call for government innovation
In 2022, the digital trend in government will continue at a staggering rate. According to Gartner, 75% of governments will have at least three enterprise digital automation initiatives launched or underway in the next three years. These “hyper-automation” plans can deliver connected and seamless public services.
The two primary drivers of this era of digital government transformation are budget concerns and new public demands. One survey reported more than 75% of respondents listed these two factors as key concerns driving the need for transformation. Together, the global pandemic, supply chain shortages, inflationary concerns, and economic priorities have created increased scrutiny of how government agencies spend money, meet business objectives, and engage citizens. And enterprise technology offers tremendous value delivering against all of these areas.
Yet, as is often the case, with innovation comes unforeseen complexity. Siloed systems, duplicate data, and error-prone processes add up to inefficiency. This means government IT professionals must effectively implement more modern solutions that meet mission demands and new business expectations. And this includes geographic information system (GIS) modernization.
The good news for government—and the constituents they serve—involves modern geospatial solutions. Today’s GIS technology drives innovation in new and exciting ways to help personnel carry out programs and evaluate policy outcomes.
Modern GIS works seamlessly within the overarching government IT infrastructure, integrating diverse data types to support evidence-based decision making and policy development. Users perform powerful location analytics, support data-driven decisions, and increase transparency with public stakeholders while maximizing resources.
Challenges
For government agencies of every kind, from departments of Agriculture, Interior to Defense, Transportation, Homeland Security, and others, digital transformation poses substantial data challenges. Where historically independent government units, regions, state offices, or districts had been isolated, agencies are challenged to develop a common vocabulary of data standards and scalable best practices to overcome fragmented and often competing or redundant workflows.
These issues around fragmented data and historically stove piped technologies matter because they impact an agency’s ability to secure funding for program modernization and sustainment. Even at the most foundational level, leveraging technology matters because it transforms how an organization can transform policy into practice. Managing public lands, community development, maintaining public safety, and managing assets require scalable tools to help public servants answer the question, “How will I cultivate scalable best practices to inform decisions with relevant authoritative data?”
Those agencies who employ geospatial technology may still struggle to communicate the important value that GIS provides to both internal stakeholders and to the public. That’s because modernizing geospatial solutions can be a tremendous challenge. Software changes, version upgrades, and new capabilities add complexity and time to an often already busy IT staff within an organization.
Ultimately, technology and data, including GIS, are only successful when they meet mission requirements. Agencies must ask—what do my staff need to be successful in meeting the mission? What do my land managers, conservationists, firefighters, law enforcement and others need to carry out the business of government?
Modern GIS technology helps agencies overcome these challenges. Organizations can replace multi-step, manual methods with optimized digital tools to create, capture, integrate, and analyze diverse data. Dynamic web maps, mobile apps, dashboards, and sophisticated modeling increase efficiency across the workforce using the power of location intelligence.
Transformational GIS
Advancements in GIS are digitally transforming government operations, from infrastructure to sustainability, clean energy, citizen apps, and e-services, to help effectively manage people, assets, resources, and services. It also supports science-based government, improving everything from wildlife habitat management, to utility network management and modeling, resource allocation, stakeholder education and engagement, and more.
Modern GIS acts as an integration platform for agile government and sustainable communities. You can collect, manage, produce, and share data for your region or jurisdiction to facilitate the creation and use of authoritative geospatial data.
This includes managing diverse data types with flexible and intuitive modern mapping solutions. You can deliver relevant, timely, accurate data updates and remove redundant, outdated, and incomplete data that result in error-prone decisions. With proper data governance, you ensure better tracking, transparency, and usability. You can quickly develop and publish information products that meet and often exceed user expectations while spending less time managing and updating data.
Location-based tools ensure that mapping products are complete and readily available to collaborate. Modern GIS applications and dashboards enable data exchange and engagement opportunities between departments and other federal, state, and local agencies that provide shared situational awareness and coordinated data-driven decision making.
In addition, modern GIS technology enables government agencies to take advantage of open source data and technologies that also leverage GIS software vendors, like those from global leader Esri. It gives agencies the flexibility to develop low-cost apps.
Solving a myriad of problems using geospatial tools
Using the right technology and best practices, a modern geospatial enterprise allows government to add tremendous value to their data using a common data vocabulary—maps and location.
Modern enterprise GIS technology leverages data from legacy systems and makes it easier to develop policy and provide public justification and accountability. Lean, intuitive applications can be quickly configured and published, allowing business users to communicate and share with each other and the public. As a result, agencies and departments of every kind achieve better business for every aspect of governance, including:
- Strategy and planning — Robust GIS analysis and data visualization provides a holistic view to prioritize objectives, enhancing positive outcomes while avoiding negative impacts. You can design resilient and sustainable ecosystems and communities, infrastructure, and management strategies that best meet stakeholder needs. Data-driven maps also communicate value, secure funding, and help build public trust.
- Facilities and asset management — Effective management of buildings, property, and resources is enhanced by location analytics and geo-intelligence. You can monitor and maintain assets and analyze lifecycle performance. Sophisticated modeling allows you to predict failure and plan replacement, improving performance and lowering costs.
- Infrastructure development — Create cleaner environments and more resilient communities, and spur economic growth, while optimizing development of infrastructure. For example, you can accurately manage, visualize, track, and adjust new work orders, asset allocation, field inspections, and more in real-time with a spatially enabled government enterprise.
- Forest and land management — Agencies can modernize ecosystem management using modern GIS to collect, analyze, and maintain authoritative location-based intelligence. At the national level, they can leverage the power of geospatial technologies to develop standards, cultivate best practices, and connect regions using relevant, actionable, shared data. GIS briefing templates and shared operational GIS dashboards enable regions and departments to communicate, collaborate and make informed decisions.
- Emergency management — GIS provides real-time situational awareness that enables faster, safer, and more comprehensive emergency management operations at all levels and departments of government. Real-time data allows emergency operations personnel to view events as they evolve and better understand their current and potential impact.
- Defense — Leverage GIS data to flow seamlessly from headquarters to individual service members with role-based applications. These tailored solutions provide commanders and staff a comprehensive view of the operational environment, while linking to live data feeds and sensors.
- Mobile government — Mobile geospatial solutions for government supply a precise and cost-effective means for collecting data. In addition, mobile GIS enhances collaboration between field and office to expedite workflows and requires little training to make it easy to use for every field operator and public stakeholder.
Why TRC Companies for government modernization?
For more than 30 years, government organizations have worked with TRC Companies to meet their mission using enterprise GIS. We help government clients focus on defining strategy, mission, and vision to solve problems that matter to their stakeholders and constituents.
TRC maintains an expert team with a track record of successful geospatial deployment within government agencies. We specialize in the full spectrum of GIS services, from strategy and design to mapping, build, analysis, integration, adoption, and support. We are both an Esri platinum partner as well as technical experts in leveraging open source as part of any overarching strategy.
We provide expert project management, data stewardship, and application development that augment your organizational knowledge, skills, and capacity. For example, we can help cultivate scalable data governance that inform program priorities and replace historic workflows. These geospatial routines, integrated with cohesive best practices, facilitate collaboration among GIS professionals, program managers, and senior leadership, to ensure successful project outcomes.
With TRC as your geospatial partner, you can take advantage of unique skills, knowledge, and expertise.
- PM/scrum agile methodology
- Enterprise understanding
- Standards development
- Esri technology
- Esri/pen hybrid solutions
- Mobile
- Online web applications
- AGOL
- Tableau
- UI/UX design
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To find out more about how you can deploy superior government services with modern GIS, contact us today or visit our government page.