Nelson City Council had great ideas about where they'd like to take their GIS services, however they had a lot of work to do to achieve this vision. GBS assisted the organisation by delivering a comprehensive spatial information strategy that is continuing to help them achieve their goals. Who are Nelson City Council? As a Unitary Authority, the Nelson City Council has combined responsibilities as a local and regional council. This is different from most other local governments in New Zealand; more often a regional council is a separate organisation with several local authorities (city or district councils) or community boards within its borders. Nelson City Council serves a relatively small but populous physical area. It is bordered on the west and southwest by the Tasman District Council and the east and southeast by the Marlborough District Council. Their Requirement Nelson City Council provides a wide range of services to the local community, a large portion of which include a spatial component and they are keen to ensure that the ongoing provision of council services is supported by the effective use of spatial information and systems. Nelson City Council was an early adopter of spatial technologies with CAD in 1991/92 and GIS (ESRI) in 92/93. These systems developed independently for many years such that by 2005 the organisation had multiple software platforms, duplicated data and supporting processes and fragmented resources. The organisation wanted to develop a geospatial model and in 2005 began exploring options for an integrated spatial data infrastructure. Immediately they identified a huge gulf between the legacy environment and the integrated model they had identified. The dilemma however was that most of their existing resources were committed in supporting the legacy environment leaving little capacity to plan, let alone implement a migration work plan. How GBS Helped Geographic Business Solutions brings a large range of skills to Nelson City Council. Through the development of a Spatial information Strategy, Geographic Business Solutions and the Information Management team identified a 2 to 3 year development programme which enables the organisation to meet their core service demands whilst putting in place a scalable spatial data infrastructure capable of supporting their needs well into the future. GBS are continuing to work closely with Nelson City Council to assist them in developing a spatial data infrastructure strategy which will see them deliver wide scale benefits to the organisation over the next 3 years. "GBS were able to work closely with us in turning our ideas for an integrated geospatial model into a strategy before drilling down into a 36 month work programme of tactical and operational projects. We still have some ways to go but we now have a clear road map to get there due to a large extent to the ongoing partnership between GBS and NCC" Martin Erasmuson - Nelson City Council Data Management Manager. |
