Interview Summary

Interviewee: Bob James, City Manager / Interviewer:Brian Sobers, GIS Manager / Date: January 25, 2008
Topic / General Questions / Notes
Introduction /
  • Use pre-prepared PPT to describe:Who I am and why I am here
  • What is GIS
  • Why GIS is important
  • Summarize GIS use to date

Baseline / What are the main business issues that you face?
What are your main technology concerns?
What would you consider your accountabilities or success criteria to be?
For this particular strategy/roadmap, what are your key objectives that you want to be sure are fulfilled ? / The City is expanding rapidly but with the new development cutting into the surrounding natural forest areas there is great concern about loss of the City’s green character. Most of the growth is fueled by low-end service sector jobs; to maintain the existing socio-economic profile the City needs to attract more high skilled firms.
Historically, the City has not used technology much to solve problems. In the ‘Sustainable Growth forSpringfieldThrough High Technology Investment’ report that was agreed by the City Council, he showed how new technologies such as GIS could benefit the City. Hiring a GIS Manager and starting the process of creating a City-wide GIS initiative should be a major step forward for the City. This initiative will need to look at all areas of City activities as well as infrastructure issues such as hardware, software, central data and applications, support, standards and best practices procedures.
In the past the City has not been well integrated with each department being a stovepipe. The Council has mandated Mr. James to encourage collaboration and sharing between departments.
The existing technology used for GIS is quite outdated and will needs to be replaced. The landscape is effectively clear for the new initiative. Only in the Public Works dept. is there any strong technical skills and so all other projects will need to be supported from IT.
Although the City is growing it is short of cash because of all the new capital expenditure on infrastructure. The GIS initiative will have to be self-funding over the long term.
The key issues are self-financing over the medium to long term, managing urban development while at the same time preserving City values, and contributing to Springfield’s green agenda.
Vision & Goals / What are the key business outcomes you think that atechnology solution should deliver?
What areas of the business or key functions should be supported?
Is the vision you have common across the business, or is it fragmented, e.g. others ‘doing their own thing’?
Are there key metrics, or performance indicators that the technology solution could impact or influence?
How do you feel the technology should be delivering value in the following areas:
Community Service
Public Works
Community Development
Police
Fire
Economic Development / The key new initiatives were described above. Departmental directors will also have their own projects.
Will need to build up IT to support GIS across the City.
Thinks everyone will support it at the high level, but there may be a few laggards in specific departments. Doesn’t see much happening in Fire because the director, Roman Holiday, is on long term disability leave.
Would like to see an ROI of 20% over four years.
More appropriate to ask Department Directors.
Technology - Application development & deployment / What type of applications do you envisage building to support the initiatives identified above?
Who do you see building those and operationalizing them with help desk, support, upgrades, backups, etc?
Do you have defined application development life-cycle processes you’ll follow to define, design, build, test, deploy, and maintain these applications?
Is the technical infrastructure upon which these applications are delivered part of the mainstream IT infrastructure of the City? / Thinks there will be a mixture of desktop systems and servers that house key data sets and application services. The GIS should also integrate with existing billing and work order management systems.
The City does not have a sophisticated software development group and will be looking to buy in expertise or use commercial applications off the shelf.
No.
Current IT infrastructure is weak and one of the goals of the GIS project is to establish some standards and some on the ground IT systems.
Data / What are the metrics related to data volumes? / Ask Department heads.
Process / How do you see the technology applications ‘changing how people do their jobs’ and what changes to you foresee in process? / GIS has the potential to help in many ways. At the last city we used it to make money, save money and to improve the overall quality of services. For Springfield it’s more about bringing the City in to the present century from a technology perspective.
Organization / Delivery / Support / Once the technology ‘project’ has delivered, what do you envisage the team/department composition and function to be? Additional FTEs?
Executing these types of projects can be challenging without the right governance – do you feel the right control, structure, accountability, timeline/management, milestones etc. are agreed and in place?
It appears that Springfield utilizes contractors and uses internal experts to help shape, guide and manage the delivery of value for vendors…is this accurate? / IT should be responsible for setting up and managing IT infrastructure which is used by more than one department. Once existing projects are complete in a few months staff should be available for new initiatives.
Plans to be the Chair of the top level governance group and the head of the IT division will help with the technical side of things.
Yes.
Wrap-up / What challenges do you foresee with the strategy/business case development?
Any other topics of concern you think should be covered? / Is relying on me (GIS Manager) to put the case together. Since a similar exercise at last City showed a big ROI doesn’t envision many problems at Springfield.
Will need to make the case clear and simple for City Council. Also, will need to ensure that everyone of the Director’ buys in.

19/13/2018