by
<a href="mailto:gis@awcnet.org">Andy Meyer</a> | Jan 17, 2018
A needs assessment is a great place for any to start strengthening GIS at an organization. Read how we helped City of Pullman capture their GIS baseline and create a roadmap of recommendations for how to move forward and achieve their GIS functionality goals.
Client: City of Pullman
Location: Pullman, Washington
Our team conducted a GIS needs assessment for the City of Pullman to objectively evaluate their current use of GIS, and provide recommendations for optimizing their use of GIS in the future. We conducted a series of on-site interviews with city staff to better understand how they were currently implementing GIS and their ultimate usage goals. The assessment resulted in a three-year road map for the city that included over 20 prioritized recommendations.
We evaluated:
- Short and long-term goals and objectives
- Resources and responsibilities of city staff
- Use of software
- Day-to-day workflow within and across departments
- Spatial data repositories
- Hardware, server, and network resources and mobile devices
We identified:
- Spatial data repositories
- Methods for transferring institutional knowledge
- Mechanisms to allow better access to city maintained data sets
- Opportunities for increased ROI, especially in the areas of process automation and capacity building
We also recommended the development of particular tools and apps, estimated staff capacity needs for a more robust GIS program, and pinpointed areas where there would be a large ROI if a more robust program was implemented. Over-all, the GIS needs assessment allowed us to identify the steps that needed to be taken to get the city of Pullman where they wanted to be with GIS.