Project Profile

City of Corvallis, Oregon GIS Strategic and Implementation Plan

Client:
City of Corvallis, Oregon

Location:
Corvallis, Oregon

Timmons Group was hired by the City of Corvallis Oregon to develop a GIS Strategic and Implementation plan to leverage and consolidate its existing GIS initiatives into an Enterprise GIS. Timmons Group evaluated the current GIS status and developed strategic recommendations necessary to achieve successful Enterprise GIS services, development, and implementation.

Timmons Group tasks include:

• Assessment of the current systems, work processes, and user requirements
• Development of an enterprise GIS Vision and Mission statement
• Identification and application of Best Practices in enterprise GIS for local government
• Development of recommendations for Enterprise GIS
  • Organizational structure, governance, and staffing
  • Funding strategy and management
  • Data management and sharing
  • Training and education
  • Infrastructure (network, hardware, software)Relationships with external organizations (data sharing, regional initiatives, standardization, etc.)

Deliverable products

• GIS Strategic Plan document
• GIS Implementation and Migration Plan documentation

Project Profile

Transportation-Focused Enterprise GIS Strategic Planning

Client:
Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT)

Location:
Statewide, Virginia

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) contracted with Timmons Group to review their GIS strategic direction for the upcoming years and looks to integrate newer technologies such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and web services. The end goal of this project is to strategically position VDOT to better their data and more rapidly turn data into information and solutions from which intelligent decisions can be made.

This project will define short and long-term operational and strategic actions and associated deliverables to meet the overriding vision of streamlined data availability and information delivery. To meet these objectives, Timmons Group will deploy technical, operational, and management consulting expertise to address the following functional areas at all levels of VDOT’s GIS user community:

• Data Requirements/Management; including Metadata Standards/Change Management, Data Collection/Development Standards, and Data Maintenance/Synchronization
• Web/Map Service Requirements; including Map Services; Web Services, and Web Services Management/Enterprise Services Bus (ESB) Technologies Application
• Discovery/Requirements (Custom/COTS) review and recommendations; including In-house (desktop, Internet), Mobile, Existing COTS, and New Applications Identification an Functional Requirements Scoping
• Governance/Organizational Structure Review; including Committee and workgroup structure, Services; Data, Applications, Business Process Definition/Chain-of-custody, Change Management, and Public Relations/Outreach/Training/Support
• Best Practices Due-diligence; including peer review and identification of best practice agencies within the DOT community.
• Consulting Skills Required
  • Strategic Planning/Needs Assessment
  • Business Process Refinement
  • Application Architecture Experience
  • Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) knowledge
  • GIS/Geospatial Applications Expertise

Project Profile

Enterprise GIS Business Plan

Client:
Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA)
Virginia Geographic Information Network (VGIN)

Location:
Statewide, Virginia

The VITA Information Technology Investment Board (ITIB) designated the provision of geographic information systems (GIS) services as an “enterprise system.” To implement the intent of the ITIB, the Chief Information Officer of the Commonwealth contracted Timmons Group for the development of a Business Plan for the provision and operation of enterprise GIS services.

Business Plan Goal and Objectives
The goal of the VITA GIS Business Plan is to demonstrate how existing decentralized GIS resources and activities can be marshaled into a comprehensive enterprise suite of GIS services, providing improved business support at the same or lesser collective total cost of ownership. To accomplish that goal, the plan met the following objectives:

• A common definition (i.e., model, template) of what constitutes a GIS resource, in terms of hardware, software, common geospatial data layers, personnel, and related support services
• A comprehensive inventory of GIS resources in the 20 Virginia State agencies with current GIS operations.
• Based on GIS resource inventory, a compilation of geospatial applications and their related data layers.
• Reviewed best practices of states recognized as leaders in GIS services
• Identify technical issues (i.e., security, network capacity) that may impact the delivery performance and interoperability of geospatial services
• Identify Enterprise GIS options for GIS consolidation, including services, the appropriate technical architecture/configuration, related hardware/software requirements, staffing and organizational structure. Estimate the cost/benefit for each option associated with the enterprise consolidation.
• Identify any factors potentially impacting transition from the existing GIS landscape to the optional enterprise operations outlined above.

Town Hall Meetings
To facilitate agency participation and group discussion/feedback, the project plan included collateral development and facilitation of several (7) GIS Town Hall meetings. Survey forms we generated across multiple functional areas including data, applications, web services, and other resources. The initial Town Hall meeting was hosted by the Commonwealth’s CIO Lem Stewart. The focus of this meeting was to illustrate why GIS Services are an excellent candidate for cost savings and improved services via a “shared services” approach, as well as opportunities for state agencies to participate in the business planning process. Over 30 representatives from 14 state agencies with current or proposed GIS operations, including agency heads, deputies, and GIS managers, participated in this session.

Additional Town Hall meetings included a technology/security issue overview, discussion and overview of the GIS survey instruments given to each agency, the results of the survey instruments and a final analysis overview of the Business Plan.

Project Profile

911 Infrastructure and Software Needs Assessment

Client:
City of Salem, Virginia

Location:
Salem, Virginia

Timmons Group was hired by the City of Salem, Virginia to assess the current state of the 9-1-1 Information Technology and make recommendations for improvement.  The goal was to create an IT environment that will enable the support of new technologies (Next generation 9-1-1) within the 9-1-1 center and support integration with other City IT efforts.

Timmons Group tasks included:

• Assessment of the current systems, work processes, and user requirements
• Development of recommendations for
  • Infrastructure (Servers, Networking, backup work processes)
  • Disaster Mitigation and Recovery
  • 9-1-1 mapping systems
  • Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)
  • Police Records Management (RMS)
  • Data management and sharing
  • Staffing, Training and education

Deliverable product:

• 9-1-1 Infrastructure and Software Needs Assessment Document

Project Profile

ArcGIS Server Replication for Automated E-911 Update

Client:
Harrisonburg/Rockingham Emergency Communication Center

Location:
Harrisonburg/Rockingham County, Virginia

Timmons Group was hired by the Harrisonburg/Rockingham Emergency Communication Center (HRECC) to design and implement a solution that supports near-real time Geospatial updates of critical infrastructure and address layers by both consolidating disparate data sets and facilitating the consumption of these layers into E-911 mapping system. The solution integrates ESRI’s ArcServer, ArcSDE, and the HRECC mapping software using ArcServer replication and automated extract, transform, and load (ETL) tools to seamlessly extract the updates from multiple sources, integrate data GIS data, and update the mapping system.

Tasks included:

• Assessment of the current systems, work processes, and user requirements
• Development of recommendations into a functional requirements document
• Implementation of the infrastructure, software, applications, workflows, a defined in the recommendations

Project Profile

South Dakota Wildlife Information Land Management Application (WILMA)

Client:
South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks

Location:
Statewide, South Dakota

The South Dakota GFP is working with Timmons Group to build a centralized, web-based enterprise information system that will integrate GIS functionality with land management activities allowing for temporal tracking of land resources, management activities, land inventory, planning and goals and objectives reporting. The application will allow GFP managers, conservation officers, and other constituents edit enterprise geodatabases online.  The Enterprise Land Management Internet application will enable the agency to spatially manage all Game Production Areas (GPA’s) and their corresponding 5-year plans.  In addition, the powers of geospatial analysis will enable users to easily and readily extract information out of the application through custom reporting, mapping, and querying.

Timmons Group will be building the Enterprise Land Management Internet application utilizing ESRI’s ArcGIS Server, ArcSDE, and ArcIMS software to facilitate the creation, editing, validation, storage, and management of spatial data elements. The incorporation of web services adhering to the principles of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) will allow the GFP to have access to a suite of geospatial functionality through the lands management application and provide the added benefit of a reusable design model to be leveraged by future applications.

In addition to the enterprise internet application, Timmons Group will be developing a field-based mapping and data collection application.  The mobile solution will complement the web application and enable field users to check out attribute information (inventory data) for a GPA onto their mobile device and add, edit, and update data.  Upon returning to the office, mobile devices can be docked and data seamlessly synchronized back to the enterprise ArcSDE database.  This solution will utilize ESRI ArcGIS Mobile and SQL Server Compact technologies.