Location Centre Provides Economies of Scale for Two Councils
Description
Customer
Perth & Kinross and Angus Councils.
Challenge
Both Councils had no way of presenting geographic information effectively on their websites.
Solution
Location Centre – fully hosted intranet and internet solution.
Results
Two Councils can now develop and share GI solutions effectively and publish
data quickly.
Services
Hosted Service, consultancy and training.
Background
Perth and Kinross and Angus Councils worked in partnership to procure an intranet and internet GIS platform that would encourage data sharing and collaborative working. The goal was to derive significant efficiencies and cost savings by undertaking a joint procurement of a single infrastructure implementation.
Testimonial
"Adopting Location Centre as our enterprise GIS platform is making it possible to provide a wide range of business solutions both externally to our customers and internally to council staff. The flexible and extendible nature of Location Centre means that we can provide individual solutions meeting specific business needs with minimal development or deployment effort. It is the breadth of functionality and wide variety of ways the Location Centre can be exploited to the benefit to the Councils and our customers, that sets it apart from other GIS solutions. As Location Centre is a managed service, factors such as data quality, system availability and performance are all guaranteed, and are not dependent upon internal staff resources, who can instead focus on solutions delivery.
Forth Valley GIS have helped us (Perth and Kinross Council) and Angus Council ensure that we significantly enhance our return on investment and minimise administrative overheads. This is an excellent example of public sector partnership working in action".
Ewan Walker
IT Team Leader – Geographical Data Management
Perth & Kinross Council
Challenge
Perth and Kinross and Angus Councils wanted to change their existing intranet GIS as they had no way of presenting geographic information effectively on their websites and they also had a need to provide enhanced GIS functionality across each organisation.
The remit and requirements were broad for this project and included:
- Corporate intranet application with editing capability.
- Data publication through web services.
- Configurable maps that can be quickly inserted into each authorities' web pages.
The web GIS had to be to a common standard yet flexible enough to meet the different business requirements of each organisation and their data repositories.
Solution
Forth Valley GIS delivered all of these functions through our innovative hosted GIS service - Location Centre.
The flexibility and ease with which Location Centre can be deployed was appealing to both organisations. Furthermore, the security and uptime of Location Centre delivered through anindustry standard data centre ensures that there is access to GIS anywhere, anytime within the Councils and on their public websites.
Location Centre could offer Perth and Kinross and Angus Councils’ access to a broad range of functionality, from deployment of simple web mapping to bespoke applications that meet specific business requirements, without the requirements for costly desktop GIS or business system licences.
Working closely with staff at both organisations under a single project management structure, we were able to phase the deployment to tie in with their targets for information sharing and integration with key external systems.
Results
Location Centre has enabled both Councils to:
- Easily create map articles very quickly with minimum effort (for example, Perth and Kinross Council could deploy a Winter Maintenance Map – publishing gritting routes on their website within a few of hours – this was viewed by 1500 people in December 2010 alone).
- Produce bespoke solutions for specific user groups (for example, Projected Species reporting Sustainable Land Use monitoring, Property Asset Management system, School Transport Enquiry Management system and Development Constraints checking application.)
- Meet INSPIRE Directive obligations as it provides metadata management functionality which complies with INSPIRE standards.
- Easily share geographic information both internally and externally.
- Ensure that users are accessing the most up to date background mapping at all times.
All applications share a common interface design – this consistency makes training and support more effective.
Location Centre has reduced the burden on internal resources, allowing the Councils to focus on using geographic solutions for business benefits instead of lower value data administration activities.
Location Centre was fundamental to the success and value of the Perth and Kinross and Angus Councils partnership as it provides them with a mechanism to develop and share GI solutions effectively.
Without this robust platform for solution sharing the Return on Investment from the partnership would be significantly reduced. As a subscriber to the Location Centre managed service, both Councils benefit from the future developments of the solution.
The process is ongoing and we are working with the Councils so that they can maximise the use of Location Centre and its innovative web components including publishing and integrating web services and the extension of the system to provide specific business functionality.