In the News...
REGIS Brings Multi-Disciplinary Inter-Government Agency Cooperation to a New Level
Massive Undertaking Will Make Grand Rapids, Michigan Tops in Citizen Services
Put more than five people into a room together, and what often starts as a meeting soon becomes chaos.
But that hasn't been the case in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where nearly 20 cities, townships, Kent County and quasi-governmental organizations have joined forces in one of the largest, most comprehensive multi-participant geographic information systems implementations underway today. Called REGIS, for the Regional Geographic Information System, this massive project is using Environmental Systems Research Institute's ARC/INFO, ArcFM and Spatial Data Engine (SDE) software to serve the needs of the autonomous, self-governing REGIS agency, made up of members of the Grand Valley Metropolitan Council.
"This has been a long term project that began with a vision back in the early 1990s," comments Sharon Steffens, Supervisor of Alpine Townships and Chair of the REGIS Agency. "My own township, for example, obtained ARC/INFO as a result of a watershed grant from the state. Our entire township has been mapped, but REGIS will expand what we're current doing -- we'll have more data, greater data accuracy, and all the common databases will be updated REGIS participants, rather than each community individually. More opportunities for regional planning can be achieved through REGIS."
The Grand Valley Metropolitan Council is a voluntary consortium of local governmental units that embrace regional planning and inter-governmental cooperation, including 27 communities in seven counties of western Michigan.
Convergent Group was retained to form the REGIS project and was one of the first systems integrators to be involved in other large-scale municipal government projects in Indianapolis, Indiana and Columbus, Ohio. Convergent Group's 13 years of industry experience translated into a solid strategic and implementation plan for REGIS -- along with the methodologies and project management strengths needed to meet very aggressive schedules.
Getting Started: The Pilot Project
A project like this naturally started with a pilot. In just over eight months, some 500 digital documents and databases along with 2100 paper source maps were converted and integrated using ARC/INFO
The result?
Complete documentation of a nine-square mile area including the government-run utilities (water, sanitary sewer, storm sewer, and electric), assessors, public safety, parks and recreation, clerks, engineering, zoning, traffic, and streets and roads. The robust REGIS database now contains 800 individual data layers. As a result of the pilot project, REGIS elected to use ArcFM as its primary data editor for the entire project -- both for its municipal operated utility data and its land record and cadastral data.
Eric Frazier, Convergent Group's Project Director for REGIS, comments that the rich feature set offered by ArcFM made it an ideal choice for maintaining complex data. "Projects like REGIS require up-front testing and a validation of the project's design," he notes. "It's particularly important when you're dealing with a complex database design to thoroughly test and validate the system in advance. By doing so, we were able to readjust some critical areas without giving ourselves additional headaches later on."
REGIS' Steffens adds, "We actually use our initial pilot data and our existing ARC/INFO system on a day-to-day basis, and it's become a very important tool. For instance, we've successfully mapped our township's census data, worked extensively on watershed management, and analyzed our farmland preservation programs. But this just begins to hit the tip of the iceberg."
Now, REGIS is moving forward with full implementation. And that means satisfying the spatial data management needs of some 40 REGIS agency departments.
REGIS is now a three-year project involving 865 square miles of data that needs to be converted and integrated into a single database.
"This is without doubt, one of the largest, best organized, and most comprehensive multi-participant GIS projects ever undertaken at a local government level," says Glenn Montgomery, Convergent Group Chief Executive Officer. "The effort being made by the participating agencies to work together to pool their resources and develop a technology-enabled business solution that can meet all of their needs is commendable, to say the least."
Convergent Group's Frazier agrees. "With a team that includes ESRI, Convergent Group, Analytical Surveys, Miner and Miner and the fine team at REGIS itself, this is one of the best opportunities any of us have had to fulfill the promise of a complete enterprise-wide GIS."
Data Conversion and End User Applications
One of the most critical aspects of the project is the conversion of data. Convergent Group's Frazier says, "What we're really doing is bringing this region into the 21st century, and the quality of the data that underpins the system is critical. What we're doing is building a data model and database of information that will stand the test of time."
As a major metropolitan area, REGIS represents a hugely complex data conversion effort. With the task of first getting the data, the next major hurdle will be to develop the applications required to effectively maintain that data.
During the first year, applications development focuses on data maintenance, which everyone using the system will need. Once those applications are in place, the team can turn its attention to other applications the users have demanded.
Lessons Learned
As in other large projects, there are lessons to be learned. Says Frazier, "When a project like this gets started, it needs outstanding executive leadership, and REGIS certainly had this from its mayors, supervisors and city managers. Secondly, the largest risk facing REGIS is that the system won't meet the needs of the end users. Now, we're starting to methodically train end users on GIS and how they can effectively use the first applications. Transferring knowledge and training end users is critical to this project's success."
Steffens agrees, particularly in how the team communicates. "We have everything from small townships to large cities, and we've been able to adjust well to the needs of each of these organizations," she says. "But communication is absolutely critical in a project like this. And telling our story to the general public will be equally important. When the public can actually use this data themselves -- and use it successfully, they'll see that this is a wise use of taxpayer money."