Geographic Information Management in Local Government - Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9 Case Study — Bristol City Council BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL AT A GLANCE Key Facts Local authority name: Bristol City Council Local authority type: Unitary council Population: 400,600 Current state of operation of GIS: Multi-supplier/Authority-wide GIS Main GIS products in use: ESRI’s ArcView (50+ licenses), ArcLLC/ArcInfo (11 licenses), and ArcIMS, SDE, MapObjects, LPGTools (1 license each); also AutoCAD (50+ licenses), MapInfo (36+ licenses, FastCAD/Map (1 license), ParkMap (28 licenses), and AccMap (4 licenses) Applications: Map production, gazetteer, local land charges (LLC), development con-trol, engineering, traffic management, parking, lighting, abandoned vehicles, housing, education, and social services Land and Property Gazetteer status: Fully operational Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) that was developed initially as the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) pilot system for the National Land Information Service (NLIS) GIM/GIS strategy status: Corporate GIM strategy (approved September 1997) Forum for steering GIS: Geographic information group (GIG) with separate corporate property group for managing property assets and associated geographic information Staffing for GIS: No central unit — each department makes its own staffing provision for GIS Contact details: Information services manager (telephone 0117 922 3117) What Makes Bristol City Council Distinctive? Bristol City Council’s Land and Property Gazetteer (LPG) was the pilot NLPG that put BS7666 into practice for the NLIS. The Bristol pilot project was begun in 1994 and launched operationally in mid-1998 as a collaborative venture among Bristol City Council, HM Land Registry (HMLR), Ordnance Survey (OS), and the Valuation Office (VO). The project focused on streamlining the conveyancing and local land charges process through the sharing of data among 12 different organizations based upon a common unit of land and property.The pilot was so successful that the council ©2004 by CRC Press LLC received awards from the Association for Geographic Information (AGI) and British Computer Society (BCS). Bristol City Council has capitalized upon the project to its advantage as the impetus to achieving effective implementation of its LLC system, GIS, and LPG. The council was the pioneer organization at the forefront of testing the LLPG concept before the NLPG program was rolled out to other local authorities, and its experience has significant lessons for others. Key Stages in the Implementation of GIS Stage 1 (1989 to 1993) — Early steps in GIS starting with use of AutoCAD within the engineering and planning functions for manipulation of OS maps and OSCAR street network data. Development of Bristol’s first street gazetteer (linked to digital map-ping), which was used initially by the cleansing system, then as the springboard for development of the embryo property database using “wheel bins” data. Stage 2 (1994 to 1998) — Development of business case for LPG and associated implementation of the computerized LLC system, which created a “head of steam” for the city council’s lead involvement in the pilot NLPG/NLIS project. Approval of the council GI management strategy in 1997. Live running of the LLC system and integral LPG by mid-1998 as part of the pilot project. Stage 3 (1999 to 2002) — Rollout of Internet-based GIS to all departments modeled on Bristol City Council’s LPGWeb (Internet-enabled Land and Property Gazetteer, OS maps, and high-interest spatial data), metadata database (register of datasets and projects compiled through an extensive information audit), and library (of GIS and information management standards and how-to-use advice adopted and pre-scribed by the council). Voluntary registration of the council’s land and property holdings with the HMLR began in 1999. Positive Drivers and Success Factors for GIS • Strong champions with vision and understanding of information management principles • High levels of skills and awareness of data management issues by key staff • National pilot project that acted as catalyst to achieving Bristol City Council’s ambitions • Engineering function’s need for comprehensive street and property data • Planning function’s need for computerized map-based information • Pressure upon LLC service to improve performance • Widespread enthusiasm across departments to use the data available within GIS Problems that Threatened Success • Major reorganization of Bristol City Council into a unitary authority (April 1996) • Lack of corporate top-down commitment to GIS • Poor appreciation of data management issues by middle management Practical Benefits from GIS • Improved performance of LLC function • Reduction in duplicated updating and improvement in data quality and updatedness • Improved communication with the public (e.g., faulty light reporting and abandoned vehicles systems with GIS interfaces) ©2004 by CRC Press LLC • LPGWeb intranet system facilitated coordination between officers and the public on problems and activities at an individual property level • Improved communication across the council and with the public and external organizations 9.1 WHY WAS BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL CHOSEN AS A CASE STUDY? Individual local authorities have to decide on their positioning in relation to new technology projects. While some are keen to take a leading role and to promote themselves as go-ahead and at the cutting edge, this can often be a lonely, risky, and uncomfortable position to be in. Many local authorities shrink from being at the forefront, deciding deliberately to adopt the safer approach of not being a pioneer and watching and waiting for systems and initiatives to become stable before they consider implementation. Bristol City Council is an excellent example of the former — a local authority that has been keen to be on the crest of the first wave and to become the pilot site for the NLPG and NLIS. The energy that the council, together with its partners, has devoted to making a success of the project, has been capitalized upon, enabling it to put in place very early the framework for coordinating exchange of information on a land and property basis within the Bristol area. It has also brought kudos to the city by ensuring that it is clearly seen as far sighted, skilled in land and property systems, and able to take a leading role in projects of national significance. Bristol City Council won the AGI award in 1997 for the LPG, and (together with HMLR) won the British Computer Society award for NLIS in 1998. As background to the establishment of the NLIS pilot, and the associated benefits that accrued from it in a local context, this case study has much that is relevant to all local authorities considering the justification for implementing LLPGs. 9.2 THE BACKGROUND — WHAT HAS BRISTOL CITY COUNCIL DONE? Bristol City is a large unitary council with over 16,000 employees within 5 major departments (central support services; neighborhood and housing services; environ-ment and leisure services; education and lifelong learning, and social services and health). The council is an example of the implementation of a multi-supplier/author-ity-wide GIS, using the terminology that we introduced in Chapter 8. The council has a relaxed policy of allowing each business function to purchase and use the GIS product that most meets its own requirements. Products from the following six different GIS software suppliers are in use across the authority: ©2004 by CRC Press LLC • ESRI GIS — with ArcView (50+ licenses), ArcIMS/MapObjects (1 license each), LPG Tools (1 license), ArcLLC/ArcInfo (11 licenses) used across all departments (for map production, socioeconomic demographics, street lighting, abandoned vehi-cles, housing management, LLC purposes, and planning application processing) • AutoCAD (50+ licenses) within central support services, neighborhood and hous-ing services, and environment; transport and leisure (for map production, engineer-ing, 3-D modeling, development planning, landscaping, and property management) • MapInfo (36+ licenses) within neighborhood and housing services and environ-ment, transport, and leisure (for map production and general business mapping) • FastCAD/Map (1 license) within environment, transport, and leisure (for map production and general business mapping) • ParkMap (1 license) within environment, transport, and leisure (for mapping of available parking) • ArcMap (4 licenses) within environment, transport, and leisure (for traffic man-agement and planning purposes) Development and implementation of GIS has taken place over three major stages: Stage 1 (1989 to 1993) — Over this period the city council took its first formative steps in GIS and began to build its expertise in street and property gazetteers. In 1989 the former city engineer’s department (now part of neighborhood and housing services) began to use AutoCAD for engineering purposes and for the display of OS digital maps and OSCAR (road-center line) data. By 1992, the Bristol Street Gazetteer (which had been developed as a text system in the late 1980s by the research section of the former planning department, now part of environment, transport, and leisure) was linked to digital mapping (again using AutoCAD) in order to support the development of a new cleansing system for the city engineer. The street gazetteer was subsequently extended to become an embryo property database using the data available in relation to wheel bins, and began to be used by other major corporate computer systems. The planning department started to exper-iment in the use of GIS for map production, plotting of planning applications, digitizing of local plans, and highways and transport schemes. At the end of 1993, a major impetus to corporate working was put in place with the setting up of a second-tier property and land user group (PLUG), which came unanimously to the conclusion that the prior and overriding need for the future was the implementation of a central land and property referencing system. Stage 2 (1994 to 1998) — This was a critical period in the history of GIM within the city council and is why it is given major attention within this case study. It was a phase of corporate foundation building during which attention was focused upon developing the business case for creating the LLPG and computerizing the LLC service, while working closely in conjunction with external partners. A major stim-ulus to establishing the council’s infrastructure for holding land and property infor-mation came with the coincident publication of BS7666 (see Part 2 of this book — Specification for a Land and Property Gazetteer), coupled with LGMB’s invitation to the city council to join the NLIS pilot. ©2004 by CRC Press LLC Participation in NLIS was seen as an important means to raise the degree of officer commitment for creating a corporate gazetteer and testing it out in the context of a new LLC system. The whole thrust of NLIS was to: • Promote the sharing and exchange of land and property information • Facilitate access to local and central government information • Enable the conveyancing process (of which LLC formed a major part) to be carried out online The authority had suffered a succession of cuts in resources over recent years that had placed high priority services under threat. Participation in NLIS was seen as a means to offset this deterioration in services by: • Improving information management as an ambitious means to upgrade the quality of services • Drawing the attention of politicians and senior managers to the fact that problems in LPG creation were of national importance and not merely the preoccupation of particular officers • Providing the prospect of revenue generation through the marketing of local authority data, which might offset a substantial element of the cost of LPG creation and maintenance Bristol City Council operated within tight financial constraints. It was keen to develop an LPG compliant with BS7666, but members were insistent that this had to be funded through the computerization of the LLC service. As a prerequisite this meant that a business case had to be made that the project would be entirely self-financing from the revenue and savings that it generated. The desire to comply with BS7666 was entirely pragmatic at this stage, in that it would: • Achieve the best opportunity for stimulating the convergence of existing city council data sets • Maximize the scope for the exchange of data with other organizations (e.g., via the NLIS), which was considered to be key to successfully generating revenue from the information services and achieve a degree of self-financing The reason for LGMB inviting the city to join the NLIS was to enable field trials of BS7666 to be carried out in a heavily populated city area. Babtie Consultants undertook an initial study of the council’s land and property datasets in August 1994. Using the go-with-the-flow data modeling approach developed by the LGMB, it identified duplicate data stores, processes, and flows in relation to land and property that suggested that potential savings were likely to accrue from implementing the LPG. The study confirmed the intuitive perceptions of Bristol City Council officers that there was considerable waste and inefficiency in the current systems that could be overcome through the use of a corporate gazetteer. The study also confirmed in broad terms, the findings of the earlier Tyne and Wear Joint Information Study in the 1980s. Disappointingly however, it was unable to quantify the benefits that were likely to accrue from a corporate gazetteer. The consultants’ report highlighted that ©2004 by CRC Press LLC ... - tailieumienphi.vn