2011 GIS Production Operations and Maintenance Plan

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Introduction [from the document]

This document describes the state of the King County Geographic Information System (KCGIS) as of December 2010. It represents the culmination of a collaborative effort by personnel throughout the County to delineate the 2011 GIS work programs for participating agencies. GIS is critical to the business of King County, as demonstrated in its use for property appraisal, permit review, emergency services, human services, election services, wastewater facilities planning, natural resource and parks management, waste management, public health, road maintenance, transit services, airport management, crime analysis, budget development, policymaking, legislative support, and growth management. This document provides the details of how GIS supports those and many other business functions.

The year 2011 marks the beginning of the tenth full year of operation of KCGIS under its current governance structure. Since the spring of 2001 enterprise GIS functions within King County have been organized under a single point of accountability – the Department of Natural Resources and Parks (DNRP) Director. At that time a coordinated management structure was established to govern enterprise GIS at both a technical and policy oversight level. The result is a streamlined, cost-effective organization for the performance of King County’s GIS activities.

A key mission of KCGIS is to generate an annual comprehensive work plan (known as the Operations and Maintenance Plan, or O&M Plan). This document is the 2011 edition of that work plan. It builds on the experience of the 2002 -2010 O&M plans. The plan includes information on the five major components of any GIS - hardware, software, data, applications and staff. Each of these is addressed in the context of current structures and planned changes for fiscal year 2011. The result is a comprehensive picture that details the King County GIS work program. As in previous years, the 2011 O&M Plan provides lists of data and applications, descriptions of current work tasks, details of agency GIS programs, and information on GIS budgets.

The document is organized in four parts:

• Introduction
• Organization
• Priority Initiatives
• Agency Work Plans

Four Appendices present supporting information:

• Appendix A – Summary Information
• Appendix B – KCGIS Center Services
• Appendix C – Committees
• Glossary

The Organization section details how GIS efforts are organized within the County. The Priority Initiatives section provides information on the GIS endeavors identified through the work of the governance committees as having significant benefit and hence high priority for accomplishment. These priorities change each year, with some new initiatives added and some initiatives carrying over from year to year until they are completed. The Agency Work Plans section provides information on the strengths, weaknesses, challenges and goals lying before the constituent agencies as they implement and manage their GIS programs. This section also includes a listing of each agency’s major GIS projects. Appendix A provides a concise and orderly assessment of each agency’s GIS staffing, budget, licensed software, data, applications and servers. Appendix B summarizes the KCGIS Center’s role and its functions in the enterprise GIS. Descriptive information on the various committees that make up the governance structure is contained in Appendix C. The Glossary provides a convenient reference for terms (particularly specialized terms) used in the plan.

A list of critical tasks is distilled from the plan by the Technical Committee annually and then distributed as a separate document. The “2011 O&M Work Task List” will serve as a core working document to identify and track the progress of GIS work program items throughout the year.

KCGIS embodies a rich source of data, a unique set of innovative applications, and a group of highly skilled and motivated professionals serving the public’s geographic needs. This resource is essential to the diverse business functions of King County, and the 2011 O&M Plan describes it fully. Support from the County Executive, management, and staff has provided a solid foundation for KCGIS to continue to grow and provide high-quality, cost-effective, and valued service to the citizens of King County. The annual King County GIS O&M Plan continues to be very much a working document, not a plan to sit on the shelf. The information in this document will be used to refine King County GIS through cooperation, coordination, communication and consensus.

Many of the priority initiatives in 2011 build upon those begun in previous years. For example, substantial progress has been made in the quality of the positional accuracy of the County’s cadastral layer. Collaboration between King County Assessments and the KCGIS Center will continue these improvements in 2011, and efforts will also be continued with King County cities. TNET data will continue to be updated to meet stakeholder agencies’ requirements or determine how business practices may be adjusted to best utilize TNET. Other priority initiatives will continue such as the open source GIS cost analysis, the definition of enterprise system resource characteristics, and census data analysis tools assessment.

New application, data, and organizational initiatives have been added to further development, sharing, and redefinition of data layers that are of interest across several agencies. High priority new initiatives include the creation of a master domain table for King County assessments data, the complete development of the annexation history in the City Boundary layer, the development of regional data layers, the conflation of 2010 census data, and the development of a plan to replace the iMap query tool. Storage solutions being explored include the development of strategies to store and serve digital imagery and a strategy to archive GIS data. Another initiative of interest is the publication of County base maps to ArcGIS Online, making them freely available to the public with a minimal impact to County IT resources.

The mutual benefits to be gained from collaboration, cooperation, and consensus should allow KCGIS to achieve the challenging goals set for 2011. Adequate funding is always at risk, but the value of GIS in meeting the business needs of the county is immense. KCGIS is prepared for both the challenges and opportunities ahead in 2011.

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Copies of our O&M plan for each year since 2002 are available by request. Contact us.