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GIS Cooperative Meeting

City of Tucson - Information Technology

Friday September 14, 2001

10:00 - 11:30 AM

Present: Donald Ijams, Ron Platt, Linda Lopez, Robert MacArthur, Ves Zinn, Teri Schultz, Clint Moss, John Keefer, Jessie Sanders, DJ Parslow, Christine O'Connor, Fran LaSala, Dan Falkner, Daniel Casey, Steve Whitney, Linda Buczynski, William Burris, Cheryl Van De Beuken, Sandy Elder, Anna Sanchez, Mary Szczepanski and Kristi Jenkins

Update from Pima County DOT/Tech.Serv./GIS - Steve Whitney

The current effort to rubber sheet Pima County base layers is continuing and is nearing completion.

As background, in 1998 we received around 570 sq. miles of highly accurate digital ortho aerial photography. Since then, we have been working on taking our parcel base files and adjusting them to these ortho photos, which has become a very involved process.

Part of the process we are using to do this was to develop a database of adjustment vectors that are used to adjust the parcel layers. The same factors are being used to adjust other layers as well.

Currently, we are starting to receive the product from the 2000 ortho photo flight. This information will not be rubber sheeted right away, as we will initially take time to process and review it against what we've learned previously.

CityScan/Master Address Database Project Update - Ves Zinn

A demonstration was performed of CityScan at the last meeting, which went over various aspects of the project, with eight different categories of information available for selection. You can select local government, education, recreation, public safety, and others. This will bring up a map screen that has pan, zoom and other tools for use. The left side lists layers available. The right side contains data related to what you are looking at, such as Councilmember websites if you selected local government. We are currently working on some enhancements to this.

The CityScan site will be reconfigured to reflect the common web style that is on the City's main web site. Other enhancements will include expanded tools such as a rubberband zoom and dynamic pan.

John Keefer is working on a buffer, which allows you to create a radius around wherever you are and gives you a list of distances to select. He is also working on integrating BLMS data for use in CityScan.

Training Needs

The 40+ people who initially attended the GIS Concepts course during April 2001 submitted evaluations, which were used to improve the design of the class. Some of the changes will be a new introductory section and a more productive classroom arrangement. The location for the upcoming session is expected to be the amphitheater-style Fire training room at Park & Ajo, which is available on November 19 from 8:00 am to noon. Please share this information with others who would benefit from and are interested in learning about GIS.

Due to the number of copies of ArcView purchased and distributed in the fiscal past year, we now appear to have a need for software training. The ERSI ArcView class, as usually configured, may not be as useful to our local needs as would a customized course. So we have toyed with the notion of creating our own version of this training. It has been suggested to design the course to cover the basics using local data with plenty of tips and tricks, since some of the more advanced topics and generic data may not be relevant to many users.

Consultants

There is an effort to renew the GIS consultant contract with Veridian. A newly signed contract is expected in early October 2001.

ESRI Users Group Regional Conference

The ESRI Southwest Users Group GIS Conference will be held here in Tucson October 22-26 at the Radisson Hotel City Center. Steve Whitney is one of the main co-hosts of this regional conference. Registration is $125 which includes presentations and roundtables. People interested in obtaining GIS Cooperative funding support should request an application form from Don Ijams, and upon acceptance, complete a DA-23 from their departments with the appropriate account number from Don. He will then sign-off on the paperwork for the registration fees.

Christine O'Connor mentioned that the conference is a great opportunity to network and get new insight into GIS. We should take advantage of the fact that the conference is located locally this year.

Intergovernmental Agreement

The City of Tucson and Pima County intergovernmental agreement covering shared GIS activities expired on 6/30/00. The City Council agreed to a renewal of the revised agreement on 8/3/01. Pima County Supervisors have it on their agenda for approval on 10/2/01.

Address Verification/Cleaning/Geocoding

Business/Occupational License Data

A meeting was held with members of the City Finance department and the Coop to discuss our needs in accessing and linking to these important datasets. Preliminary authorization to proceed was obtained, and work to spatially enable business privilege and occupational privilege data is now under way.

Development Services - Jessie Sanders:

One of the first projects for Development Services was creating five web sites that accessed their permit information. We went out to the user community and asked them what they would like to see. They identified a set of web sites to get at necessary information.

Mayor and Council frequently need to access information related to development activity, so a GIS-related web site is being created for their use to help answer development questions.

Development Services new primary web-based access site was demonstrated.

Customer Relationship Management - Jessie Sanders:

The City has engaged in a CRM project, which we have renamed "Constituent Relationship Management". In five years, it is hoped that all citizen calls coming in to the City will be logged in the system. The system will have a web-based, self-serve component to it. Information such as booklets and forms will be able to be printed by the citizens.

In order to bring this system up, the problem of addressing needs to be looked at. We need to ensure that the addresses we input into the new system are good. Siebel, a leader in CRM, suggested that there are two ways to do this: the first is use of an address master, the second is by using special function software from a company like First Logic (partnered with Siebel). Use of customized, special function software though expensive is preferable, but will produce a situation where it is would become a standard for the City. We would need to determine if this product would work with other projects and applications. A demonstration can be scheduled if there is sufficient interest; contact Jessie Sanders or DJ Parslow.

Semaphore Corp. ZP4 Address Cleaning Demonstration:

This is a product similar to the First Logic product, but is less expensive. It was demonstrated during the meeting.

Current Events and Accomplishments / Troubleshooting

We have previously discussed ways to improve GIS Cooperative meetings, such as fine tuning meeting times and enhancing the agenda. It was suggested to share more information about accomplishments and what GIS events were going on. Another suggestion was to have GIS software running during the meeting, for troubleshooting and/or mini-lesson purposes.

Other Business

The Economic Development Office's new web site has been placed on the Mayor and Council's Study Session agenda for review.