Y2K issues and concerns that faced businesses throughout the world in 1999 provided the City Of Oshawa with the perfect opportunity to embark on a complete overhaul of their existing GIS and land related information systems. That overhaul led them to NovaLIS Technologies' Local Government Office.

"We were running a very old database on a VAX system which was difficult to work with, not friendly, and not available to all mapping staff, let alone staff who might need to access property information," says Sheila Glanfield, business analyst for the city.

Glanfield says the city began looking for a system that utilized the latest technology to integrate all the city's business processes. The vision was the streamlining and integration of land processes, and data management issues. The goal was to update data only once, instead of having duplicate tasks performed by different departments.

"We wanted a seamless system, so the links between spatial information and property information, land processes, and development application tracking would all be rolled into one environment where everyone would have access to all the information they needed when they were processing applications."

The city became convinced that NovaLIS' Local Government Office was the perfect solution after a presentation from NovaLIS' business partner, Wallace Macdonald & Lively (WML), about a year ago.

"Then ESRI came along and said we can work with that too, focusing on the property component of the system, and with NovaLIS, ESRI, and WML, we can do what you want - so we went for it," Glanfield says.

Implementation began last March, and is scheduled for completion this March.

"Three viewers are ready and being used right now," says Nancy Kemp, business analyst for the city.

"NovaLIS' Assessment Office viewers that were revamped by ESRI are in use. As well, the notification module that was developed is working very well, and we have Go To Map functionality by a button on the toolbar of our tabular Municipal Viewer."

Kemp says some of the staff are already using the new product. Close to 80 staff have been trained on the Municipal Viewers, as the new system will be rolled out to a lot of different employees that have never been exposed to GIS before.

"A wide variety of land related data - both tabular and graphic - will be shared throughout the whole municipality. Staff are very excited about that."

Kemp says the project is going very well so far, especially considering its scope.

"It's a big project because we're really taking a separate land information database, development tracking applications, and GIS, moving these platforms and databases, and putting all these pieces together."

Kemp says the project will achieve success through better customer services. She adds that although it is more difficult to measure success in terms of dollars and cents, she can already identify areas where time savings could result in greater efficiencies.

"We process about 3,000 zoning clearance letters every year. They are a good revenue generator for the city, but until now, our inspectors had to go to eight different databases to gather all the information they needed to determine if the property was in compliance with the city's zoning regulations," Glanfield says.

"Once the LGO system is up and running, it will create a one-stop-shopping environment. We can cut back tremendously on staff time spent producing these letters, saving time, and as a result, saving dollars."

Ultimately, Kemp and Glanfield agree that the key feature of the LGO system is complete integration and accessibility of the mapping information to anyone's desktop.

"We've gone from a handful of people having access to the data," says Kemp, "to a system that can be accessible on anyone's desktop."

Contact:
Gina Stack
mailto:gstack@novalistech.com
http://www.novalistech.com