GIS Shared Services From Ground to Cloud

GIS Shared Services

From Ground to Cloud

IPMA Forum 2012May 22, 2012Panel Discussion

Speakers & Topics

Joy Paulus, OCIO – BackgroundMichael DeAngelo, DFW – Vision, Governance & BudgetTim Young, DFW - Technology & StaffingRon Holeman, DNR – Sharing Data and ServicesAlan Smith, WSDOT – Benefits of Cloud ComputingDan Saul, ECY – Considerations of “Freeing the Data”

Background

Joy Paulus, Office of the CIO

Background

geography.wa.gov

Vision, Governance & Budget

Michael DeAngelo, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

Vision Most, if not all, data will have spatial elements Consumers of the data will expect a spatial dimension Build the capability to:

Allow more agencies to participate Rapid deployment of new services Share costs in an equitable way Incentivize innovation, sharing, and adoption Make it easier to share data with the public Make the data easily consumable

Budget Historical Budget challenges

Hat-in-hand approach won’t scale Level of funding was limiting:

Deployment of new services Public access to data

Agencies incurred higher costs to maintain services that had a shared value

Structure discouraged innovation and collaboration Individual Agencies left holding the M&O bag

Governance Rules/parameters/process for making data and

services available to the public Authoritative sources of information Organization and descriptions of data

Rules/parameters/process/agreements around making data and services available to other agencies Ownership and maintenance of data Change management of the service Rules of consumption?

Technology, BC

Tim Young, Dept. of Fish and Wildlife

Technology Timeline

Kickoff

Kickoff

1977 Cartography, Manual Workflow

Printed Circuit Board Design

Innovation

1977 Digital Mapping System

Shared Data and Applications

Shared Data & Applications

Technology Mainstreaming

Technology Mainstreaming

GIS on the Web

GIS on the Web

Google Earth

Shared Services

Shared Services

The Cloud

The Cloud

The Cloud, Epilogue

Action 12 Study how to attract and retain highly skilled technology staff and build up technology interest groups that function as robust communities in state government

Sharing Data and Services

Ron Holeman, Dept. of Natural Resources

Sharing Data: Sneaker-net to Internet

25 year history of sharing GIS data Cooperative data collection Evolving with technology

Sneaker net Internet

Much data, many sites

Example: geography.wa.gov

From Data to Services 2009 created GIS Services Sharing Group

Why not share? Federated vs. centralized approaches 200 GIS services – 5 agencies Why haven’t we succeeded?

May not be part of core business Lack of capacity to serve the ‘world’ Not wanting to hand over control

Needed to Facilitate Sharing Governance Security Discovery Configuration Management Change Management

Benefits of Cloud Computing

Alan Smith, WSDOTDelivering Scalable, Sustainable, Spatial Information Products

Incident Location Tool

Client Application

Map ContentTools/services

Vendor

WSDOT

WA GeoPortalWSDOT

Vendor

WA GeoPortal

Enterprise UseMap ContentTools/services

WSDOT

WA GeoPortalWSDOT

Vendor

WA GeoPortal

Field Crews

Business Areas

Public

Operations Center

Vendor

Delivering scalable, sustainable, Spatial Information Products

Spatial Information Products Geo-referenced Data – X,Y, street address,

measure along a feature, distance/direction from a feature

Cartography – map service, feature service, image service

Geoprocessing services – find an address, find a map feature, measure, query spatial relationships

Applications – A collection of the above, designed to perform a specified function

Delivering scalable, sustainable, Spatial Information Products

Scalable Scale - The extent of consumers from small work

group to global/public Scale - From Single server to large cloud Scale - The consuming platform from one to many

(server, desktop, web, mobile…)

Delivering scalable, sustainable, Spatial Information Products

Sustainable Generic functionality – generally useful is more

sustainable than highly customized Minimal dependencies – “hot swappable” data and

service interfaces Modular - plug/unplug components (Geo-

referenced Data, Cartography, Geoprocessing services)

Benefits of implementing a services based architecture

Easier to share products (maps and services) across business areas and applications

Data and/or services can be replaced with minimal impact

Relatively easy and frequent reuse increase ROI

Benefits of a cloud hosted services based architecture

Automatic seasonal/event scalability Easier to share products (maps and services) across

departmental / organizational boundaries Reduce redundancy (data, services) Exposes redundant information products, published

by different organizations.

Risks/Challenges (opportunities for improvement)

It’s an additional environment to manage. If badly managed it can lead to orphaned data and

service. Could expose “bad” products (data, service), requiring

some action. Products are more easily discovered and used by less

informed consumers. It’s difficult to know who/what is consuming your services.

“Free The Data” - Easier Said Then Done

Dan Saul, Dept. of Ecology

Implications of Freeing your Data

exposure to a range of new classes of users new users that you may be surprised at attempting to “mashup” your data into new

combinations more eyes on your data your data may be misunderstood more errors, omissions reported expectations that problems be corrected

What do we know about users of Freed Data?

high expectations and curiosity are familiar with Google and Bing Maps expect that your map will perform and interact similarly

to the big boys won’t waste time on your site if they can’t quickly

understand it are curious about their neighborhood or a particular

cause just want to solve their problem and move on

Get ready for Freed Data easy to display and digest consider normalization and generalization scale appropriate presentation suitable basemap to put under your data metadata presented in a convenient format present in the Web Mercator projection for mashups? enable users to comprehend, analyze and detect

trends

Presenting the Freed Data carefully consider the user interface recruit the assistance of a good web designer consider the many platforms available to consume

your data: Desktop/laptop computer tablet smartphone

resist the temptation to add lots of tools and widgets provide a “contact us” form to gather feedback

Parting Thoughts

Keep It Simple - be minimalist and only implement what is needed

Usability is paramount to your success

Questions?

Panelists:Michael DeAngelo, DFW CIOTim Young, DFW GIS Data Services ManagerRon Holeman, DNR GIS Team LeaderAlan Smith, WSDOT GIS Branch ManagerDan Saul, ECY GIS Manager

Moderator: Joy Paulus, State GIS Coordinator