NWGIS 2018 Conference

King County and local agencies are working to plan, develop, and operate a collaborative approach to regional GIS. The goal is to maximize benefits and minimize costs for GIS for all regional agencies into the future. A key outcome will be an optimally sustainable GIS that reduces costs for all and enables low-cost entry for medium and small agencies for state-of-the-art GIS applications for all public agency business needs. In Washington, public agencies face a budget challenge every year by a hard 1% limit in state law on the increase in property tax revenue. At the same time there is significant duplication of effort and expense in local GIS operations. A collaborative regional approach to GIS would help ensure sustainable GIS for all agencies.

More than 150 GIS FTEs work for public agencies in King County. If only five (~3%) could be repurposed from duplicative data maintenance and non-value added back-office administrative functions, and applied to developing direct service GIS applications and end-user support, GIS would become more affordable, sustainable, and deliver increased ROI for King County, Seattle, Kent, the Snoqualmie Tribe, and other agencies across the region. This presentation provides a status report on this multi-year effort. It will include the perspective of two the agencies that are participating on the project Steering Committee: The City of Kent and the Snoqualmie Tribe.