2010 Esri Federal User Conference

GIS as a Gov 2.0 Platform (ETT)

Fulfilling a Fundamental Tribal Government Role by Providing Efficient Services to a Tribal Community

—David Wyatt, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) is the only federally recognized Tribe in North Carolina. Historically the Cherokee tribe was one of the largest tribes east of the Mississippi covering approximately an 8 state region and today consists of approximately 56,000 acres. EBCI's Governmental departments are challenged to provide efficient and accurate services to Tribal members—decision support and permitting, services applications essential to integrated land management and departmental collaboration with Federal/State governments. To meet these challenges, EBCI developed an enterprise GIS, the Tribal Integrated Geographic Information System (IGIS), to serve as the central repository of geographically related tribal government services and business workflow information tied ultimately to its tribal land record management system. The EBCI is using GIS as the core component of improving geographical related workflow operations in the services driven economy. The IGIS system supports a number of web services/based applications for real estate evaluation, land records management, economic assessment/planning, and building site project review, inspection, management, and permitting. The applications integrate business requirements and evaluation by EBCI departments such as housing, utilities, engineering, and cultural and environmental resources. IGIS provides integration of business, archeological, environmental resource management, disaster planning, and EMS/e911 services. The IGIS fulfills one of the fundamental governmental roles of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians by providing efficient services to the Cherokee community. Specifically, the IGIS is designed to support EBCI by meeting the following requirements:

• Transparency of Tribal Government projects and services
• Interagency/inter-government lands records information exchange with USDOI, BIA, BLM and state/ local governments
• Interagency/inter-government federal/ state information exchange with DOI, BIA, BLM, EPA, USACE, USFWS, NHP, NCDENR, and NCDWQ with reporting requirements such as influent/effluent water quality, wetlands survey, flood plain management, environmental permitting, NEPA and overall sustainable land and natural resource management goals.
• Interoperability with Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)
• Efficient data maintenance standards by requiring all contractors to deliver project data in specific compatible IGIS data schema format
• The incorporation of governmental and business workflows not commonly found in GIS such as Contract/Lease Management, Services applications (Housing, Management, Project Management, Federal/State Permitting Coordination)

EBCI's IGIS benefits the Tribe and federal/state governments by reducing time to gather information and make decisions. The IGIS serves as an example of the next generation of enterprise systems designed to provide efficient governmental service to all stakeholders and beneficiaries.