Saline County [MO] E911 GIS Technician Brandon Wolfe said often small counties struggle to maintain a level of training with GIS. He explained that most people in his field have doctorate or master degrees specific to GIS, and often county employees only receive three-day training sessions. Most counties cannot afford to pay for someone with an advanced degree to maintain the system.
"It's a common problem throughout the United States," Wolfe said. "There's just no funding for it, and not enough people."
That statement explains one perspective on why the 2006 $161,000 GIS system wasn't fully implemented and updated. Now, Wolfe is cleaning up the assessor's data and making it more friendly. The hope is that assessor's office staff will maintian it thereafter.
Hamilton County, Nebraska had a data breach of survey and GIS data. The cost to recreate it from backups could cost up to $100,000 but the current thinking is it will be less.
That was good news for the county, but it came with a dose of bad news when Hamilton County surveyor Duane Katt told commissioners he believes someone entered his office at least twice after hours, breached the passwords and removed files before corrupting the hard drive and backups.
The Palmerston North City Council [New Zealand], as part of the Geospatial Information Consortium (GISCO), have used a flex-based mapping platform to configure and deploy Geo-Guide – an online solution for residents to easily find rating valuations, property information, Council services, planning zones and more.
The solution is built on ArcGIS Server and the council GIS (presumably, Esri). The consortium includes 17 council and organizational members. Perhaps more interesting: the councll has implement augmented reality solution LAYAR to access assessment information.
In a separate technology move the Palmerston North City Council is providing information using LAYAR, an information application for smartphones, to provide rates, capital and land value of property just by pointing a smart phone at a property.
LAYAR is an augmented reality application that uses the GPS on your phone to provide information about the properties around you. It will find the 50 closest rates valuations to your current location, and the range can be set by the user if needed.
Ohio's state-owned properties and buildings can now be searched via a new interactive tool from the state treasurer's office. Looks like Google Maps API and a database.
