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Track: Local/State Government, Cadastral, Land Records
Andrew Dickman
State of Florida
401 NW 2nd Avenue Suite N-1007
Miami, FL 33128
Telephone: 305-377-7639
Fax: 305-377-5504
Panos Tsoumpas, Sifu Zhou
GIS Supports Social Services Planning in South Florida
Defining Issue: Allocating social service resources to needy communities and populations in a fast changing, multicultural urban region is becoming even more complex due to welfare reform and the trend for disinvestment of social support systems. GIS Solution: In 1993 the Miami district of Florida's Department of Children and Families began building a GIS to better define South Florida's social pathologies and to support public policy decisions that previously relied upon inadequate information. Today the Office of Research and Planning is using GIS to assist with national and state welfare reform, a neighborhood-based decentralization of the Department's programs within a two county region, and the charter Metro-Dade County Social Services Master Plan. Furthermore, previously inaccessible social data is now available to grass roots organizations for grant applications, planning, monitoring, and evaluating of neighborhood programs. Methodology: Client data from department databases and from contracted
service provider databases are extracted and cleaned in order to bring it to the format required by ArcView and ArcInfo. After the data are geocoded, the resulting point coverages are aggregated by polygon areas such as census block groups, municipal and neighborhood boundaries, county commission districts, state senate and house districts, and school board districts. The data are then analyzed according to the above planning areas based on population, social characteristics, and other criteria important to social services policy makers. Based on this analysis, the Office prepares strategies and recommendations along with GIS maps and charts, which are published and presented to a multigovernmental audience responsible for implementing social programs in the region. Software: ArcInfo, ArcView, ARC Macro Language (AML), dBASE IV, and MS Excel are all part of the application described above that converts confidential client records into legally safe, yet meaningful informational products that can be
displayed for multiple purposes.
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