This paper does not present an academic review of Corporate GIS implementation, nor will it provide the reader with a way to select the best GIS for a given organization. This paper does focus on the existing management infrastructure and culture within BC Environment that has enabled the corporate implementation of GIS. The term "corporate" in this paper is used in the context of all business functions within BC Environment that are affected by spatial information.
"Just give us the tools and we will be successful."
This comment was said in frustration by a respected BC Environment employee who knew there was a better way to meet business needs in our Regional offices. This employee was asking for GIS as an automated tool to the help manage spatial data at BC Environment. Assuming this person was extremely motivated and had the time and willpower to embrace GIS, a degree of success could have been realized by making some level of the technology available. In fact, on a project by project basis this person could have benefited. But, would the organization as a whole have benefited from this strategy? I am convinced the answer is no.
Unfortunately, implementing corporate GIS is a complicated process. BC Environment has a very diverse set of business drivers, and a corporate implementation would fail if it did not address every spatial information requirement. The challenge was to implement quickly as everyone wanted GIS at once, but at the same time to address as many business objectives as possible. The problem with our large and complex organization is that "quickly" has taken years. This has frustrated many of our business users.
For BC Environment staff involved with the GIS implementation, the process continues today three years after the first Regional implementation prototype and five years after the acceptance of the BC Environment GIS Action Plan. Patience on the part of the sections that were not first in line for GIS played a crucial role and contributed to the success.
In 1990 a GIS Steering Committee was created to put a corporate GIS action plan together. Through a team effort, with representation from all aspects of BC Environment, a GIS Action Plan was developed. This plan is referred to as our GIS Implementation blueprint. It provides the direction and actions that must to be met. This paper focuses on the following actions from the GIS Action Plan:
The common theme throughout the GIS Action Plan, and this paper, is recognition of the importance of spatial information management.
Each year we perform an audit of the GIS Action Plan against progress made to date. Accomplishments and shortfalls are identified that we feel will affect the overall success of the implementation. The plan is then modified to reflect these changes and new version of the GIS Action Plan becomes our driver for the next year.
The first activity of any GIS Implementation is to select one corporate GIS product...correct. This process alone took three years for BC Environment to complete. Although a tremendous amount of effort went into the RFP and the requirements as we believed them to be in 1991, it wasn't until 1994 that we came to corporate consensus on one product. Up until that time we were not truly working together. We all had the same goal but we were using three different products to get us there, and the lack of a standard was significantly hampering our progress. In the end we selected one product based on an internal GIS Assessment that was undertaken by our GIS Steering Committee and the GIS Working Group. The process did not include the typical technical vendor evaluation because we agreed as a group that it was more important for us all to use the same product rather than argue over which of the three products we were using was better technically. The product was selected based on our business requirements and also on the business requirements of BC Government in general.
The selection of one GIS was not our initial focus for a successful GIS implementation as we continue to be focused on making spatial information accessible by all our professional business users. The fact that we did not have one common GIS product made the task of spatial data management much more difficult, but we proceeded convinced that we would reach consensus on one product.
One reason it took us three years to migrate to one product was because we had allowed three products to become entrenched in different business areas not realizing at the time that we could only have one product in our regional offices. In the end the operational units (our Regional offices) provided the business case to move to one product.
Today every GIS responsibility center within BC Environment uses the same GIS product for the capture and use of spatial information. We have been able to capitalize on our existing culture, resulting in a very functional cooperative approach to the implementation and operation of GIS. We are working together and sharing the tasks associated with the implementation, rather than working apart which is so common in government and large organizations.
"Can management be educated?" you might ask, but I cannot answer that question. GIS education, not training, has been a key ongoing task, giving staff at all levels a better understanding of what GIS contributes to spatial information management.
We started by recognizing that everyone in the organization required an understanding of the issues we would be faced with. We structured a GIS Information Session geared for our management level, and then invited all BC Environment staff to attend. We then took this GIS Information Session to every Victoria program and every Regional office. This process alone took two years. These sessions did not include any GIS demonstrations, which frustrated some, but rather the audience was presented with the actual issues we would be faced with. We were not out selling GIS but letting our staff know the level of effort it was going to take for us to be successful. If our staff wanted GIS then we were committed to let them know the price they would pay for it and that it was going to take a team effort before any benefits would be realized.
The sessions had two specific goals:
One of the biggest traps of implementing GIS is the setting of false or unrealistic goals. This is quite an easy trap to fall into given the assistance we have by the GIS vendors themselves. How many of us have been told by GIS vendors that their product will solve all our problems? I suggest that the acquisition of GIS is just the start of a new set of problems. The marketing by the vendors coupled with our own egos can make for a very dangerous combination when implementing at the corporate level.
We started out by convincing the majority of our staff that implementing GIS was going to be a great deal of effort because of the effort it would take to manage our spatial information. We accomplished this through realistic examples rather than fancy demonstrations that promised the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The message at the end of the GIS Information Session was that GIS technology could help us, but we had a long way to go and would not be successful until we could effectively manage our spatial information and present it in a form that made sense to the business users. We have focused on two main aspects of spatial data management; data capture and data use.
For us at BC Environment, GIS has proven itself to be a viable tool. From day one our vision has been to put spatial information onto the desktop of our business users in a way that allows them to benefit from the spatial information, not for them to become GIS gurus. We have accomplished this by developing a simple access tool within our GIS and we are managing the spatial data to meet this goal. Once the business users gain an understanding of how GIS can be used their requests become more complex.
Our GIS coordinators do not judge themselves by the number of maps they produce but rather on their ability to manage spatial information effectively for the business user. Our GIS coordinators are in fact database administrators.
The ability of a large organization to work together is an inherent part of the organization's culture. It is not present in many organizations but is part of the culture within BC Environment. This fact alone has contributed largely to the success we have seen to date. The GIS infrastructure under ENVIC has existed now for three years and continues today because it (the structure and the people), accept the responsibility for the implementation's success. Working together as a team and sharing the implementation tasks is what we are doing.
ENVIC: BC Environment's executive Information Committee is responsible for setting and implementing the overall Information Technology direction. Membership is senior management, chaired at the Assistant Deputy Minister level.
GSC: BC Environment's GIS Steering Committee is responsible for setting and implementing the corporate GIS direction. Membership is line management with representation from each GIS responsibility center, chaired by the Senior GIS Coordinator. This committee reports to ENVIC.
GWG: BC Environment's GIS Working Group is responsible for setting and implementing the GIS technical standards and for day-to-day operations. Membership is GIS coordinators from each GIS responsibility center, chaired by the Senior GIS Coordinator. This committee reports to the GIS Steering Committee.
GIS Action Committees: These committees are responsible for identifying the business needs and setting priorities. They exist at each GIS responsibility center in the Victoria programs and at each Regional office and are chaired by the GIS Coordinators. These committees report to the GIS Working Group.
We would fail without these committees, and the commitment of their members to work together .
The only way you can secure funding for any government activity is to ensure that you have support at the senior management and executive levels. The only way you can maintain this level of support is by proving that the activity you are performing is addressing critical government initiatives efficiently.
The GIS Steering Committee agreed the best way to gain support from our executive was to demonstrate successes. We are committed as a team to work toward small successes that, when standing alone may appear to be insignificant, but when grouped with other successes, become significant. This process has proven to be functional and has contributed to a more efficient and effective way of conducting business at all levels of BC Environment.
We also agreed that initial and continued support from our executive meant that they had to hear about these successes from the business users not the GIS staff. The only way we could gain the support of our business users was to provide them with the spatial information they needed at their desktops in an efficient manner.
We continue to show our executive this through examples of business successes rather than GIS successes. Our business users continue to share these examples with senior management, our executive and other staff. By sharing these business successes with other staff through yearly GIS Information Sessions we have attempted to earn a level of respect and trust from those staff not yet exposed to the technology.
As you can tell by now the success we have seen to date in relationship to our corporate GIS implementation is not due to any one activity but rather to a combination of many ongoing activities. Our implementation has a reasonable degree of success to date because we have:
BC Environment System Services Branch
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Phone: (604) 387-9611
E-mail: gcooney@ssbpost.env.gov.bc.ca