interface municipal · trios training centres 23 news advertisers index misa news across canada 5...

By Lawrence MouleCo-Editor, Municipal Interface

The cities of Calgary and Edmonton have accom-plished what no other Canadian municipalitieshave ever done – joined forces to build an elec-

tronic-services-delivery solution that has saved moneyfor both cities and the private sector, too.

The two Alberta cities are now moving forwardtogether to develop more online services, sharingtechnologies and development costs.

Their first joint project, called the IntermunicipalInternet Permitting System, won an Award of Excellencefrom the Canadian Information Productivity Awards(CIPA), which was presented at the 2002 CIPA GalaBanquet in Toronto on November 27.

”Our ultimate goal is to have permits and licencesaccessible to the public through the Web, identicallythrough the site of both cities, wherever the businessrules and processes are similar enough that it makessense,“ says Joni Mines, program manager, e-business,in Edmonton.

Calgary and Edmonton implemented the first phaseof their Intermunicipal Internet Permitting System inNovember 2001. It has drawn raves from buildingcontractors and construction companies, many ofwhom operate in both cities.

They no longer have to wait days or weeks toobtain building permits and inspection results. This isno small matter in these booming cities: between them,Calgary and Edmonton issue more than 140,000building and trade permits a year and complete about465,000 inspections.

Contractors can obtain permits in seconds viaeach city’s Web site: www.gov.calgary.ab.ca/doing_business in calgary or http://permits.gov.edmonton.ab.ca.

When an approved contractor enters the datarequired to obtain a permit, such as one for an electri-cal installation in a new house, the required fee isdebited to the contractor’s account, and the contractorcan view any related inspection status information as the work progresses. Procedures are identical inboth cities.

Obtaining permits online saves about 10 hours aweek for Robin Wain, service manager of SignatureLighting & Fans in Calgary, who processes about 120residential installation permits a month.

“I find the program extremely user friendly,” shesays. “Being able to pull permits instantly helps mebecause I am not waiting a week for the permit number.”

How did such an unlikely collaboration developbetween two longtime rival cities, 300 kilometres apart?

(Continued on page 6)

MUNICIPAL

Alberta Cities Set PrecedentBy Developing Joint Services

J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 3 , V O L . 1 0 , N O 1

Managing spatial dataPAGE

Using GIS to manage documents 7

Hamilton joins spatial, asset data 10

Cities share GIS applications 11

Building 911 data from scratch 12

Chatham-Kent’s interactive maps 17

Also In This Issue

InterfaceNational Journal of the Municipal Information Systems Association

3

MUNICIPAL Interface JANUARY 2003

Page

Direct IT Canada 29

ESRI Canada 13

GEOTec Event 16

Intergraph Canada 30

Marmak 9

Orion Technology 18

Panasonic Canada 26

Pen Systems 32

Teranet Enterprises 2

Toshiba Canada 36

triOS Training Centres 23

Advertisers Index NewsMISA news across Canada 5

Municipal news 33

FeaturesBurnaby manages documents using GIS technology 7

Hamilton system incorporates spatial, asset data 10

Ontario municipalities share GIS applications 11

Peace River district creates 911 data from scratch 12

Chatham-Kent introduces interactive mapping 17

Steps to implement real-time information delivery 19

Kitchener’s award-winning fleet management system 22

Building Fredericton’s fibre-optic network 24

Virtual City Hall wins accolades for City of Airdrie 25

Oakville implements online ticket payments 27

Are you ready for the hacker? (part 2) 31

Table of Contents

Journal of the Municipal Information Systems Association

Suite 910, 2680 Skymark Avenue,Mississauga, ON L4W 5L6

Phone: 905-602-4564 Fax: 905-602-4295

www.misa.on.cawww.misa.bc.ca

Journal ProductionChair, Communications Committee:Kathryn Bulko (Toronto) 416-397-9921

Co-Editors:Lawrence Moule 416-458-4410;Jane Morgan 416-488-4961

Design: Natalie Coombs

Printer: Select Printing, Toronto

Advertising Rates$1,350 pre-printed insert

$1,200 back page

$900 inside front

$600 1 page

$400 1/2 page

$250 quarter page

$150 business card

Articles are subject to approval by the Communications Committee.The views expressed in this journal are those of the individual writersand do not necessarily reflect those of the Municipal InformationSystems Association.

No part of the publication may be reproduced by anyone without priorwritten permission from MISA.

© 2003 Municipal Information Systems Association

MUNICIPAL

Interface


4

KEEPING IN TOUCH

Bold New BeginningsMark New Year For MISABy Frank MayhoodPresident, MISA BC

Apalindrome is a number that reads the sameforwards as is does backwards. The specialsymmetry of the palindrome is what makes

it notable. 2002 is such a number – and for MISA,2002 was definitely a notable year, with symmetry ofbeginnings and endings.

We have two new MISA chapters, MISA Maritimesand MISA Prairies, which broaden communicationamong municipalities across the country on issuesconcerning information and communications technolo-gies. In this new year, these chapters will undoubtedlyexperience the many benefits of sharing informationthat those in Ontario and BC have long appreciated.

The coast-to-coast organization, MISA Canada, willpresent many opportunities not only to improve sharingamong municipalities but, even more importantly, acrossthe different levels of government. This will not be easy.It may take years to realize even small successes. Butthe potential for improving the delivery of services to the public and the effectiveness of government areworth the effort.

In British Columbia, 2003 also brings new begin-nings. We will register as a society. As part of thateffort we met in early December to do some long-overdue strategic planning and developed a renewedstatement of purpose:1. To promote efficient and effective local government

through the application of information and com-munications technology;

2. To be the recognized authoritative voice for mattersrelating to local government information and com-munications technology;

3. To create opportunities for the sharing of resourcesbetween MISA members.These relatively simple statements summarize why I

believe strongly in the value of MISA membership andparticipation. They encapsulate all MISA BC’s activities,

and they will, once approved by the membership,enable us to check new proposed activities for rele-vance. I hope they resonate with you as well.

Another bold beginning is the launch of a nationalMunicipal Interface, featuring a new design to reflectour focus coast to coast. We can reflect on the passingof the old Municipal Interface, which, though it reflectedits origins as the newsletter of MISA Ontario, served uswell as a mechanism for communication and providedinspiration for many a project.

This January issue focuses on management of spatialdata (which, as a former GIS manager, is a topic closeto my heart). So many municipal activities depend, atleast in part, on location-dependent information, andthe tools have improved so much over the last decadethat we can now realize most of the dreams we hadfor GIS technology when it first was applied to localgovernments in the early 1980s.

Beginnings inevitably bring endings too, and it’s fitting to pay tribute to those who may have left ourside of the industry but who contributed so muchalong the way. Debbie Barrett, formerly of the City ofMississauga and now with Chartwell Inc., played a sig-nificant role in establishing both MISA and MunicipalInterface as important voices for the municipal sector.

As 2002 moves into 2003, there will be new voicesin this journal. The president’s column will rotateamong the four chapters. By the time that it is BC’sturn again to fill this space, my term as MISA BC’spresident will be past, so we have one more ending.

I see the new national MISA continuing to grow.Looking backward, I see the real value my organizationhas received from MISA membership. Looking forward,I envision even more valuable collaboration. I hope youagree, and will join in the effort to make it happen.

[email protected]. n

MUNICIPAL Interface

The Associate MembersLuncheon, an annual net-working event of MISA

Ontario, will take place Friday,February 21, from noon until 3:00 p.m.

Representatives of associatemembers are invited to come to theNorth York Memorial CommunityHall, 5100 Yonge Street in Toronto,in the Gold Room on the main

floor, to meet MISA Ontario execu-tive members and other municipalIT professionals. The luncheon is free.

For registration, please contactMark Lehmann at Hewlett-Packard(Canada) Co., 905-206-3419 [email protected].

The luncheon will feature a presentation about the MISAOntario Annual Conference, the

most important business event ofthe year in the Ontario municipalIT market.

The 2003 conference will takeplace June 1-4 in Hamilton, withthe theme of “Integrating IT andGovernment Services.”

Conference coordinator Fred Snelling has information at 905-540-6059 [email protected].

JANUARY 2003

5

MISA NEWS ACROSS CANADA

The new Prairie chapter of MISAhas formed a MembershipCommittee to develop plans to

recruit members among municipal-ities throughout its three participatingprovinces.

At the inaugural meeting of thechapter in Calgary on November 20,representatives of 11 cities fromAlberta, Saskatchewan and Manitobagot down to the business of formallyorganizing the chapter, includingestablishing an operations manual andsetting up a membership structure.

The Membership Committeeconsists of chair Chris Fisher ofRegina, and members Joni Mines of Edmonton and Art Sawatsky ofBrandon, Manitoba. They will bedevising the membership drive anda communications strategy.

Recruitment will be timed tothe collection of annual fees, to beundertaken early in 2003 with the

assistance of MISA BC, chapterpresident Peter Bennett ofWinnipeg reported.

The BC chapter also provided itsrecently revised operations manualfor use by the Prairie chapter, whichwill adapt it with modificationswhere appropriate.

“I think they are off to a goodstart, with lots of enthusiasm andinterest,” said Per Kristernsen, pastpresident of MISA BC, who attendedthe Calgary meeting. “They will bea very strong chapter in a couple ofyears.”

The Prairie group decided toconduct one-day meetings during2003 instead of planning an annualconference. Members will beencouraged to attend the MISA BCFall Conference in Prince Georgein September.

George Tapley of Calgary willtake charge of setting up a chapterWeb site at www.MISAprairies.ca.

Executive TeamEstablished OnEast Coast

Donna Waddell, director ofcorporate services for theCity of Charlottetown, is the

new president of the MISA Atlanticchapter.

Since the inaugural meeting inMoncton on September 27, 2002,the chapter has named four execu-tive members, but has not yetassigned specific titles other thanpresident.

Other executive membersinclude: Maurice Gallant ofFredericton, who served as interimpresident at the chapter’s founding;Bill Todd of Saint John and ChuckKeith of Halifax.

Seven municipalities from New Brunswick are represented in MISA Atlantic so far, along withCharlottetown and Summersidefrom PEI, and Halifax.

Charlottetown is planned as thesite for the next chapter meetingthis coming spring.

Associate Member Luncheon Coming To Toronto

New Prairie ChapterPlans Membership Drive

6

JANUARY 2003MUNICIPAL Interface

Prairie Cities Working Together(Continued from page 1)

It helped that the main administrative sponsors ofthe project – Joni Mines and Kevin Griffiths, managerof business operations in Calgary – are old friends.They attended a meeting in Calgary in the fall of 2000 where the intermunicipal permitting project was conceived.

It progressed through a series of meetings in Red Deer– halfway between Calgary and Edmonton – with thehelp of vendor allies. They included Auld & CompanyManagement Consultants for project management;Computronix for technical expertise, and PangaeaSystems and Sierra Systems for Web development.

“The challenging thing was learning how to worktogether,” Mines recalls. “Our cities have very differentcultures. We had to establish trust between the two par-ties. That took a long time and we had to be patient.”

Griffiths agrees: “Everyone kind of stepped up andsaid let’s make this work.”

“Joni and I go back a long way,” says Griffiths,who worked for the City of Edmonton years ago. “Wehad our moments, but we saw the benefits of workingtogether. There are fundamental differences in the waywe approach things, but we realized we had the sameneeds. We understood the importance of this andworked our way through it.”

Ultimately the cities found that they could cut about25 per cent from normal project costs by sharingresources, including the individual applications thateach one developed.

Common Workflow SystemThe permit application is built using a workflow

product called POSSE from Computronix in Edmonton(www.computronix.com). POSSE is a customized 5th-normal-form Oracle database, which stores data as well as dynamic configuration information.

POSSE is based on a client/server architecture thathas been used for years by both Calgary and Edmontonto manage licensing and permitting workflows.

“Enabling the building trades to ‘self serve’ wasreally a matter of extending the functionality and cus-tomized workflows already stored in the system to theInternet,” says Robin Auld, who was project managerfor the Intermunicipal Internet Permitting System.

This was accomplished by adding to the POSSEtoolset a DCOM object, which dynamically createsASP pages based on the underlying user interfacestored in the Oracle database. XML is used to cus-tomize the look and feel of the cities’ Web sites.

Since the entire user interface is then expressed inHTML, users of the Internet system only require anInternet connection and a standard Internet browser(Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Navigator).

There is no requirement for the public to load anyspecial software or browser plug-ins on to their com-puters. The entire session is password protected, andcritical data is SSL encrypted to ensure privacy.

Rapid Data EntryGriffiths says that some elements of the system

were designed with input from managers of constructionand renovation companies, who attended some of theplanning meetings.

“It was really important for us to know it was whatthe clients wanted,” he says. “Rapid data entry wascritical to them.”

“So when a contractor goes to the site and validateshis or her identity, the system recognizes that personand will produce a series of permit forms with every-thing filled out except the change of address. The contractor can process a row of condominiums in onequick session.”

The project team is now enhancing the system withother types of permits and licences. Mines says that itis being applied to business licence renewals and petownership licence renewals as well as trade permits.

The two cities are cooperating in other ways, too.They have negotiated jointly for software site licences,are sharing Web site technologies and experiences,and have saved money by combining software-trainingsessions.

Senior management teams of the two cities meetregularly, and even their councils are cooperating onprovincial issues.

“Within two years, we want to be fully online with all of Calgary’s business services,” Griffiths says.“Everything we are doing, we are sharing withEdmonton. It’s not the old way of holding our cardsclose. We are going together.” ■


MANAGING SPATIAL DATA

7

Burnaby Finds A Better Way ToManage Spatial DocumentsGIS Technology Produces Low-Cost, Effective System

By Jeff JewellCity of Burnaby, BC

This article is based on a presentation made at the MISABC Fall Conference in Kelowna on September 24, 2002.

Finding and storing municipal documents electron-ically can be a costly business. Part of the challengeis that there can be many answers to the question,

“What are the things this document talks about?.” Atext-based document index with accurate, up-to-dateinformation is challenging to construct and maintain.

The City of Burnaby, faced with the need to elec-tronically manage a vast store of engineering documents,has developed an innovative solution that answers asimpler question – “Where are the things this documenttalks about?.”

It took six years, but we now have a document-access service that is accurate, cost-effective, scalableand potentially accessible to the public. It is a Web-based system built on geographical information systems(GIS) technology, which enables users to quicklyaccess any drawing, using a browser from any PC, bysearching for the area of interest.

BackgroundThe City’s Engineering Department owns approximately30,000 engineering drawings pertaining to the publicinfrastructure such as roads, signage, and water andsewer networks. Drawings older than about 10 yearswere produced manually, in varying sizes. Some dateback to the early years of the 20th century, and all areunique and invaluable records.

In late 1996, $40,000 was allocated to finding away to preserve, store, and retrieve our documentselectronically. Any new system, to be an acceptablereplacement for the existing hardcopy filing system,would require effective indexing, as well as a simpleand user-friendly document retrieval solution.

How could we do it? When we talked with othercities, we learned that the typical solution was to scanall their old documents and set up text-based documentindexing, by contracting out the work. The cost was$6 to $10 for each document. At that rate, $40,000would not go far enough.

There were other disadvantages to a conventionalsystem. A text-based document index database wouldneed typically six to eight attribute fields, totalling 50to 100 characters for each document, including somedescriptive form of location. The cost and staff timerequired to construct such an index database werebeyond our means.

Besides, text-based document indexing is not aneffective access mechanism for spatially related infor-mation. It is difficult to determine and encode the spatially related information into fixed fields – especiallygiven the variability of engineering drawings. Anychange of address creates an immediate problem. Text-based indexing is also prone to error because of the largeamount of information that must be manually enteredand often produces incomplete results from a search.

A New Kind of SolutionIt was a nearby vendor, Micro Com Systems Ltd. ofVancouver, that came up with a better solution for pre-serving the engineering drawings electronically. Thesolution was to microfilm every drawing and then toscan the microfilm images automatically. We werepreviously unaware of this solution but found it attrac-tive because it was significantly less expensive andpermitted complete backup of the documents right away.

Within our $40,000 budget, we contracted withMicro Com to copy all of our documents to microfilmand automatically scan them to produce raster digitalfiles. The original microfilm is retained in off-site storage,so all of our precious old drawings are backed up. Thecost was about $1.20 for each drawing.

The scan conversion was monochrome and stored

in TIFF file format. This gave us satisfactory qualityfor most drawings, but we hope that technologicaladvances will permit grayscale scanning from themicrofilm images in future. For original documents ofpoor quality, the automated scanning did not producethe best results either. Those will need to be rescannedin future. Offsetting these disadvantages, the monochromedocuments are less than 50KB in size, compared withmore than 10MB for grayscale.

Spatial Index ToolOur project began before the existence of online map-ping technology. We knew, however, that we couldbuild an indexing system for our scanned documentsto use the power of GIS.

We developed what we call our Spatial IndexingTool. The concept is simple. Each of our drawings pertains to some part of the city, which can be identifiedby co-ordinates on a digital map. For every document,we created a digital polygon corresponding directly to the area that it covers on the map. Because the spatial index is geographic, it is not subject to addresschanges.

The Spatial Index Tool was developed to Burnabyspecifications by GDS & Associates of Vancouver,using ESRI’s Map Objects and Microsoft Visual Basic.With the digital mapand engineering docu-ments linked in thisway, the GIS systempermits a user to findany document pertaining to any point on the map.

It can tell whether a point is located within a poly-gon. The point could be a hydrant, for example. A usercan find which drawings pertain to the area surroundingthe hydrant. Or the user could ask, which drawingscorrespond to this water main or this parcel of land,and so on.

The solution ensures that, once the complete set ofengineering documents is indexed, a user will be guar-anteed to find everything within a selected area. Therewill be no worry about whether a street name wasspelled correctly, or whether a street name or addresshas subsequently been changed.

Indexing of all documents, of course, takes consid-erable time and money – and some years there was no

funding available for this project. Using students to dothe work, and at a rate of about 1.5 minutes for eachdocument, we have just completed indexing all of ourdocuments into the GIS system.

Web-based MappingMeanwhile, along came online mapping. Our GIS staffdeveloped the Burnaby WebMap application withconsulting support from Inform Systems Ltd. ofVancouver. It is a three-tier client-server application.The spatial database engine runs under Oracle on adual-processor Sun/Unix server.

We realized that providing query access to theengineering drawings via WebMap, using ESRI’s ArcGISonline mapping technology, was simply the most effi-cient and user-friendly way to deliver this service.

Today, users access WebMap through a browserand from a pull-down menu select “Create a report/engineering drawing.” Zooming into the desired dis-trict on the map, they select a rectangle to specify thearea of interest. Then by clicking on “Select a report,”they generate, in a separate window, a report of alldrawings contained within the specified area.

By selecting drawings by attributes, such as year orproject number, it takes less than 10 seconds to return100 drawings from a test database of about 7,000

documents. To select asingle drawing takesabout two seconds.We will formally launchour engineering drawing

service within WebMap in the early part of 2003. Itwill initially be an intranet service for our staff, but wewill have the capability to transport it to the Internet asa public service in future.

Costs to date, beyond the initial $40,000, totalabout $90,000 for software, scanning and printinghardware, and student staff for document indexing.

We encourage municipal IT professionals to consider this kind of solution in your environment as a way to manage any kinds of spatially related documents.

Jeff Jewell is manager, engineering systems for the City of Burnaby. He can be reached [email protected]. n


8


The system eliminates worriesabout errors or omissions

At the Fourth annual Municipal 2002 GIS Conference,

Marmak celebrated its 10th Anniversary.

Marmak would like to thank our technology partner:

Autodesk Canada

and all of those who participated in making this event a

tremendous success.

Special congratulations to the following clients on their

award winning presentations:

The City of Barrie

The City of Cornwall

The City of North Bay

The City of Windsor

10

By Valerie GreenIntergraph Canada Ltd.

When six municipalities merged to form thenew City of Hamilton on January 1, 2001, a unique opportunity was created – to con-

struct a GIS database for infrastructure and geospatialinfrastructure management that was capable of sup-porting the technological demands and expectations of the new City.

Comprising the original city plus Ancaster, Dundas,Flamborough, Glanbrook and Stoney Creek, Hamiltonis situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Ontario,right along the second-largest and busiest corridorbetween Canada and the United States. It boasts apopulation of more than half a million people and hasan interesting history as a centre of Canadian industry.

The Great Western Railway was founded there inthe mid-19th century. Known as the Birmingham ofCanada, Hamilton progressed from small industrialworkshops to nationally important factories at thebeginning of the 20th century, then to the most tech-nologically advanced industry at the beginning of the21st century.

Since 1992, the City and the Region’s municipalitieshave stored their spatial and asset data in a sharedgeospatial information system (GIS) environment usingMicroStation and MGE. With the increased demandsresulting from the merger, the City realized they neededstreamlined information management, updated tech-nology, and integrated databases and applications.

The Public Works department had two paralleldatabases – one containing geospatial data usingGeoMedia and another containing infrastructure assetdata in the Hansen infrastructure management system.

The two systems were maintained independently,resulting in redundant data entry and data synchro-nization problems. The department required a bi-directional interface to move information seamlesslybetween the two databases.

Louis Shallal, chief information officer, says theCity made the decision to build a GIS environment to

store graphic features and associated database attributesas unified records within an industry-standard objectmodel database.

After examining proprietary software, the Citydetermined that the GeoMedia-Hansen interfacewould provide an open, integrated environment forspatial and asset data. Data is now entered once inone system and is automatically synchronized with theother system.

Within the new GIS environment, the City is running GeoMedia, GeoMedia Professional andGeoMedia WebMap for data viewing and analysis.

Jim MacAulay of the Transportation, Environmentand Operations Department and Al Little, GIS manager,say that the City chose the GeoMedia-Hansen interfaceso field users could improve efficiency. Integrating spatial information with tabular assets within theinterface provides the following benefits: 1) Ability to select or locate assets on a map; 2) Improved decision-making processes with the ability

to visualize asset information and work-order historyspatially; and

3) Ability to select several assets spatially, enablingthe creation of multiple work orders or a singlework order against multiple assets. With these benefits, costs can be distributed across

multiple assets to more accurately account for depart-mental financial expenditure

Ease of use is a tangible benefit that generates ahost of positive outcomes, including soft cost savingsand cost avoidance opportunities, according to Shallal.

“The GeoMedia-Hansen interface was simple toimplement and is very user friendly. We expect onlygood results from our decision to implement this technology,” he says.

Valerie Green is marketing and communications coordinator for Intergraph Canada Ltd., an associatemember of MISA Ontario. She can be reached [email protected]. n



Hamilton’s GIS EnvironmentIntegrates Spatial, Asset Data


By Lawrence MouleCo-Editor, Municipal Interface

Agroup of municipalities in Ontario are helpingeach other to develop applications for manage-ment of spatial data – in effect, acting as each

others’ software providers, at low cost or even for free.“It’s like a wheel and we are all kind of spokes,”

says Stephen Wintle, design & records supervisor withthe City of Cornwall, of the informal arrangementinvolving about 20 municipalities.

The hub of the wheel is Marmak InformationTechnologies, a Brampton-based provider of public-sec-tor solutions and services and a value-added reseller of Autodesk Canada’s GIS products. About four yearsago, Marmak brought together various municipal usersof the Autodesk MapGuide GIS platform into what itcalls the MapGuide Municipal User Group. The group’smembers simply call it a partnership.

“The idea is to collaborate by exchanging informationand ideas,” says Jennifer Escott, manager of geographicinformation systems for the City of Windsor. “In principle,we are interested to identify a small-to-medium appli-cation of interest to all of us and collaborate on itsdevelopment so we can all make use of it.”

For instance, the City of Windsor was looking for a tree-management program, and Escott learned fromCarolyn Glaser, GIS support analyst at the City ofBarrie, that Barrie has a program called Trims, pur-chased from a California company.

“We talked to Barrie’s city forester, and he sent ushis evaluation and the research he had done,” Escottsaid during a recent meeting of the group. “We areprobably going to get the program.

“Barrie, though, doesn’t have its tree inventory systemlinked to graphics. We want to integrate ours with thegraphics in Mapguide. And when we do, we will turnaround and say, ‘Barrie, this is how we did it. Here’sthe code.’”

Carolyn Glaser was one of the founders of thegroup. Four years ago, she was working in what was

then the Town of Lindsay (now part of the City ofKawartha Lakes) and, with John Tarantino, vice-presi-dent of Marmak, designed a desktop toolset called GISFramework, which sits on top of MapGuide.

GIS Framework was put to use by Lindsay’s engi-neering department to make spatial data available on the Town’s intranet. Since then, members of themunicipal partnership have begun to adapt Marmak’stoolset for various other purposes, without having topay development costs from scratch.

Dufferin County, for example, has adapted it to putroad-maintenance data on its intranet, and WindsorWater Utilities is using a version of the same tool tocapture and digitize information about hydrants,valves and water lines.

The City of Barrie, in partnership with Marmak,has developed a tax-roll inquiry application that hascaught the attention of the City of North Bay. Glasersays the Web-based application is accessible by anyoneat a terminal in Barrie’s City Hall. It makes availableall municipal tax information relating to any propertyin the City, linked to maps.

Scott Bradford, manager of information systems atNorth Bay, became interested in acquiring the applicationthrough the group partnership.

“This group has been meeting annually for severalyears now, and some of us wanted to see some successas a partnership. I had expressed that interest to John(Tarantino). John said, ‘Here is something that the Cityof Barrie is doing, and because of the way that yourdata is structured, we could implement it in North Bayat a very reasonable cost.’”

Group members see an advantage in co-develop-ment of applications that might not be affordable byan individual municipality.

“That is certainly true,” Wintle said. “At the City ofCornwall, we are looking for engineering applicationsrelated to tracking of water and sewer facilities. Whenwe come to a forum like this, I can speak to Scott,who confirms, ‘We’re doing the same thing.’ And ulti-mately our comparing of notes may lead to the sharingof an application.” ■

Municipalities Share ApplicationsGIS Partnership Saves Development Costs For Members


11

12

JANUARY 2003

Regional District Tackles Job OfBuilding Reliable GIS DataBy Tat MaPeace River Regional District, BC

This article is based on a presentation to the MISA BCFall Conference in Kelowna on September 24, 2002.

Some municipalities have become expert managersof spatial data and can use the data to deliver servicesthat are ingenious and sophisticated. Many others,

however, mostly regional districts, are at a beginner’slevel, partly because they do not have reliable spatialdata in the first place.

Our experience in the Peace River Regional Districtin northeastern British Columbia may be helpful, espe-cially for those who are still struggling to answer the primary question – Where is it? – concerning propertieswithin their boundaries.

BackgroundThe Peace River Regional District had been investigatingthe provision of 911 emergency services for a few yearswhen the decision was finally made to provide theseservices after reviewing a consultant’s recommendations.

The 911 implementation began in November 1999after the necessary by-laws were passed. A critical com-ponent was the assignment of a civic address to eachrural resident. As many regional districts will understand,this seemingly simple task was in fact impossible untilwe devised a multi-step solution.

The Peace River Regional District geographicallycovers 12 million hectares but with a dispersed populationof 19,826 (2001 census). It requires 967 BC GeographicSystem (BCGS) maps at a scale of 1:20,000 to cover theentire regional district. Approximately 500 maps, how-ever, can cover the areas where there are residents.

Rural residents previously used descriptive methodsto find locations. Locals have been able to locate indi-viduals or places using community landmarks, mentalmaps or legal land descriptions within the Peace RiverBlock, which was established for the most part using thetownship, range and section system.

For example, one could find Mr. X by looking forthe white house with green trim on the southwest corner

of Section 10, Township 78, Range 20. Or, travel southon Highway 2, past the weigh scales, across the tracks,turn left/east on the third road after passing the large restarea, follow that road for a mile and . . . .

It was obvious that the project should be done in a digital environment. The digital map data was storedand manipulated using AutoCad at the time of theimplementation. Unfortunately, most of the data was notgeographically located. None of the more than 15,000subdivision plans were in their proper geographic loca-tions. Therefore time had to be spent on moving theseto proper locations.

A consultant was contracted to develop a ruraladdressing system as part of the implementation. Theresult was that three house-numbering grids were usedto cover the regional district. Each grid is a set of parallellines running primarily in north-to-south and west-to-eastpatterns. Basically, a house number is assigned by measur-ing the distance it is offset from the reference grid line.

This implementation was under way when I cameon board. Four temporary technicians were hired tolocate the residents and assign house numbers. Theprovincial Ministry of Transportation (MoT), which is an important partner in the project and responsible forroads and their maintenance, decided to change thenames of some roads for 911 purposes.

DeliverablesThere were no deliverables clearly identified in thebeginning, since the focus was on assigning house num-bers to the residents. I made the decision, after evaluatingthe experience and expertise of the staff, the accessibilityand availability of resources and the time frame for the911 “turn-on” date, that we needed a geographic infor-mation system and a relational database managementsystem.

The Master Street Address Guide required by Teluscan be produced using Microsoft Access 97. The Accessdatabase can also be used to maintain the changes ofroad names by MoT.

A letter to each resident to inform the owner(s) of theassigned house number was sent before the turn-on dateso the house number could be made and displayed. The

MUNICIPAL Interface


MUNICIPAL Interface

letters also served to confirm that the house number wasin fact the correct property in question.

Then, we acquired a GIS product to establish thelinkages to the data stored in Access and generate mapoutputs. We selected ArcView 3.2a because it is easy touse, has the needed functionality, and requires minimalstaff training.

As the project progressed in its frantic way, it becameapparent that we needed more than one kind of map.First of all, we needed wall maps to show all the roadswith their names and to serve as overviews. But emer-gency-service departments requested maps for useinside vehicles.

In response, we created two atlases on 11x17 paper,containing maps of various scales that can be viewedsafely inside a vehicle. A mosaic of many map sheetsbased on the BC Geographic System was devised tomap all areaswhere there areresidents for thewall maps. Thescale ranges from 1:5,000 to 1:50,000 and gives a con-tinuous coverage without holes or overlaps.

ProcessThere are five major components to the process for the 911 project:1) Calculating and assigning the civic address2) Importing and converting data for use in ArcView3) Manipulating and exporting data using Access4) Generating maps5) Generating and sending the mail-outs.

1) Calculating and assigning the civic addressThe initial scope was to assign house numbers to prop-erties with buildings with assessed values of more than$3,000. We found these by importing data from the BCAssessment Authority into Access and conducting a query.

To accurately locate the properties, we consultedmap data such as the provincial Cadastral DatabaseManagement System, existing subdivision plans and digitalorthophotos. Roads were digitized or extracted fromdata from the Ministry of Transportation, Oil and GasCommission, Ministry of Forests and Ministry ofSustainable Resource Management. The Transportationministry provided the names of roads and the initial digital road network.

We pinpointed the location of a particular house orbuilding using heads-up digitizing with the orthophotoas the background or by capturing the coordinates froma global positioning system unit.

The civic address has two parts: the house numberand the street name. We calculate a house numberbased on the distance it is located from where the roadintersects a reference grid line on our wall map, north-south or east-west. Potentially there can be 100 housenumbers between any two referencing grid lines; thisstandard is used to anticipate future growth.

For example, if a house sits 50 metres along a roadrunning in an east-west direction, between numbers1000 and 2000 on the north-south grid, then the housenumber will be 1005. The rational is to have potentially100 house numbers within the 1000 metres in distance;therefore, each number is equal to 10 metres.

We initially used AutoCad to map the properties butchanged to MicroStation, since the calculations and theimporting of data into ArcView are more efficient.

2) Importing and converting data for use in ArcViewTo create our maps and atlas, we compile the digital

data from the computer-assisted design drafting files(MicroStation, AutoCad) and convert it inside ArcViewto shapefiles.

The database (DBF) file associated with each build-ing’s shape file is modified whenever a folio number ismanually entered. This folio number is the linkage tothe data from the BC Assessment Authority, which isstored in Access. It includes information such as theowner’s name, legal land description, mailing addressand taxation. The house number and the street nameare also keyed in manually to ArcView.

Every road must be broken at the boundaries of thecommunities or telephone exchanges, so the minimumand maximum house-number can be established forthat particular section of the road. This is difficult todetermine in the rural areas; in the urban areas a roadhas a definite beginning and an end. An alternate butacceptable approach to this is to obtain the actualhouse numbers by determining the buildings withineach boundary of the communities. This can be done

JANUARY 2003

Emergency agencies lacked maps and addresses


14

15

MUNICIPAL Interface

using the “spatial join” option under “geoprocessing” in ArcView.

An index is very useful to help the reader of a mapfind the location of a road or house number. We generatethese files using the “intersect” option for roads and the“spatial Join” option for buildings.

We also use Feature Manipulation Engine softwareby SAFE Software Inc. for other map data conversion as required.

3) Manipulating and exporting data using AccessArcView provides simple database table tools for DbaseIV files, and therefore we use Access for any datamanipulation that can be done more efficiently. Theminimum and maximum house-number ranges for theMaster Street Address Guide are calculated using struc-tured query language (SQL).

Access also provides useful techniques for querying.For example, to display a series of house numbers on a street in order, in Access Query, you must select thefields: house number, street name and house numberagain. The first house number would be set for display,the street name would be set for sorted ascending anddisplayed, and the second house number would be setfor sorted ascending but not displayed.

4) Generating mapsMaps are designed and composed in layouts in ArcView.We use a modified Avenue script to place the values ofa database table on to the layout because the one pro-vided in ArcView is inadequate and with limitations. Wegenerate plot files from the layouts for specific printer orplotter, depending on the sizes of paper.

5) Generating and sending the mail-outsData such as house numbers, street names and folionumbers are stored in the DBF file that is associatedwith the shapefile. The folio number is the link to alldata from BC Assessment Authority that is stored inAccess. Data such as the land’s legal description, own-ership and mailing address are extracted in Accessthrough queries. Whenever data is updated, each landowner with a civicaddress assigned will receive a letter stating the housenumber, street name and legal description for confirma-tion. We write the letters in MicroSoft Word 97 and usethe mail-merge function to merge all necessary datafrom the Access table into the letter.

ChallengesToday the Peace River Regional District provides digitaldata and maps free to all 911 emergency service agencies.This does not solve all of our problems, however. Thoughwe can generate spatial data, we cannot control whetherit is used effectively and efficiently.

Because the RCMP and BC Ambulance are bound toproprietary software and data agreements, they cannotuse the data that the Region provides. The data providedto Telus is manually re-entered into its system instead ofimporting it because Telus has its own database system.

We create arbitrary linkages for those First Nationbands living in reserves, and for whom BC AssessmentAuthority has no information.

The Master Street Address Guide data for Telus iscritical for the 911 dispatching personnel, yet Telus doesnot provide the proper telephone exchange boundariesor community boundaries so we can generate the dataefficiently. In some cases, Telus creates its own datausing local knowledge – customers tell Telus in whatcommunity they belong. The spatial data provided doesnot cover the entire regional district, and there are holeswhere Telus does not provide services.

An added complication is that Northwest Tel providestelephone services to some residents living in the northernpart of the region, which means the data required by911 have to be incorporated into the Telus database.Because Northwest Tel stores its data differently thanTelus, the data from Northwest Tel must be formatted tofit into the Telus database.

The PresentThe Peace River Regional District is committedto update all data and maps for 911 emergencyservices three times in the year 2002 and thenbi-annually in the years afterward. We continueto work closely with all agencies to provide thebest response to residents when emergency ser-vices are needed, and we will continue to do ourbest to maintain up-to-date and correct data. I am extremely proud of my staff, in particular BethThola, GIS technologist, for completing this project –starting with virtually no digital data – in one year.

Tat Ma is manager of information systems for thePeace River Regional District, which is headquartered in Dawson Creek, BC (http://www.pris.bc.ca/prrd/). He can be reached at [email protected]. n

JANUARY 2003


17

MUNICIPAL Interface

By Bri-Ann StuartMunicipality of Chatham-Kent, Ontario

The Municipality of Chatham-Kent in southwesternOntario has launched interactive mapping capa-bilities within its community Web portal. It marks

the first time in Canada that a municipal portal hasgiven users the capability to easily generate custom-designed maps and information.

The service was launched October 29, 2002, as thefirst initiative in a three-year project to make interactivegeographic information available online to businesses,residents, visitors, municipal politicians and staff.

Jeff Ham, manager of the AM/FM/GIS Centre atChatham-Kent, says that the interactive mapping service permits users to interact with the community’sspatial data by clicking graphical maps and zoomingin to areas of interest, using a browser from any Web-enabled device.

“Embedding interactive mapping within our com-munity Web portal makes our portal unique in the waya municipality serves its community,” Ham says.

“For example, our predominantly agricultural com-munity can access high-resolution aerial photographyfrom the portal and, from the comfort of their homes,make length and area measurements of the field todetermine the amount of fertilizer required.”

The service is built on GIS technology calledOnPoint, developed by Orion Technology Inc. ofRichmond Hill, Ontario, and the OnPoint AdministrationTool permits non-technical staff to manage map content.So far, more than 3,000 different locations within theChatham-Kent Web portal have links to interactivemapping.

“Until now, interactive mapping was restricted tothe technically sophisticated,” explains Shafik Jiwani,vice president of Orion Technology. “With this portal,every citizen can make maps and ask questions.

“For example, a student who wants to invitefriends to a birthday party can access the portal, makea map with the directions, e-mail the map, or generatea URL and embed this URL in an e-mail to all friends.When friends click on the URL, they will get the latestmap showing the young student’s home.”

Users have a choice of basic or advanced mapinteraction. They can tailor their GIS experience totheir needs and interests: investors can determineselection sites for development, municipal staff canplan according to geographic requirements, and resi-dents can stay informed on municipal services.

Chatham-Kent has also enabled local businesses toadd interactive mapping capabilities to their own Websites. If a local businessperson wants to display thelocation of her business, she can generate a map at theappropriate zoom level within the Chatham-Kent portaland click a ”Generate URL“ button, which creates aURL to the map. This URL can then be embedded inthe Web site of the business.

With support from the Connect Ontario program ofthe Ministry of Enterprise, Opportunity and Innovationand the Geosmart initiative of the Ministry of NaturalResources, Chatham-Kent plans a series of GIS initiativesthrough 2005 as part of the Chatham-Kent CommunityWeb service.

Services now available include:1. Community Directories: People will have the ability

to request specific information about features orpoints of interest within the community.

2. “Map-it” viewer: People who request an address or intersection will be able to view a map of themunicipality showing the location, add their ownpoints to the map, save the map, print it, or e-mail it.

3. Economic Development Vacant Industrial LandSearch: Investors will have the ability to search themunicipality for available vacant industrial land.

4. Utility and Infrastructure Information: Users willhave access to specific utility information. Initially,a representation of the location of fire hydrants willbe shown.

5. World location information: People will have theability to view a map of the world and request asearch for locations. The location will be shown ona map that can be further customized.

Bri-Ann Stuart is the e-service project marketing coordinator in Chatham-Kent’s Information TechnologyServices department. She can be reached at [email protected]. n

JANUARY 2003

Chatham-Kent IntroducesInteractive Mapping On Portal


‘On

-the-F

ly’ H

igh

Qu

ality

Map

s o

ver th

e W

eb

“In

staM

AP so

lves m

any p

roble

ms fo

r us.

It ush

ers in

a n

ew

era

where

web g

enera

ted

maps a

re n

o lo

nger sy

nonym

ous w

ith p

oor

quality

maps.

Our u

sers n

ow

have se

lf-serv

e a

ccess to

num

ero

us ca

rtogra

phic q

uality

map se

ries

over th

e w

eb. B

est o

f all, v

alu

able

GIS

staff

reso

urce

s are

not sp

ent p

roducin

g th

em

.”

Jeff H

am

, M

anager, A

M/F

M/G

IS S

ectio

n

Munic

ipality

of C

hath

am

-Kent,

Onta

rio, C

anada

A W

eb

-GIS

So

lutio

n

“O

nPoin

t 4 is th

e p

erfe

ct add-o

nto

ESRI's A

rcIMS 4

. It is a v

ital

build

ing b

lock

, giv

ing w

eb a

dm

inistra

tors

the a

bility

to ta

ilor h

ow

ArcIM

S

serv

es o

ut sp

atia

l and n

on-sp

atia

l data

. . . . . . . O

nPoin

t is easy

to u

se,

flexib

le, a

nd ca

n a

dju

st to a

ny w

eb site

. C

usto

miz

e to

your h

eart's co

nte

nt”

.

Art H

addad,

Lead S

oftw

are

Engin

eer

ArcIM

S T

eam

, ESRI In

c.

19


By David Baum

Many municipalities are starting to see the wis-dom in creating real-time information deliveryenvironments for data access and reporting.

Rather than transforming and loading legacy data intodata marts – then acquiring proprietary tools for infor-mation analysis and reporting – they are providingaccess to production data and delivering it to users viacommon tools and utilities, such as Web browsers ande-mail programs.

Government workers and citizens, instead of relyingon dated information that is only periodically updatedin a data warehouse, are accessing real-time datadirectly from operational systems and viewing thatinformation in familiar Web-based formats, such asAdobe Acrobat and HTML.

With the right enabling technology, real-time self-service query and reporting capabilities can be pro-vided quickly and affordably. The information is alwayscurrent, can be accessed from any source and deliveredto any platform – even to ‘untethered’ wireless devices.

This article explains the essential ingredients for areal-time information delivery architecture, with attentionto how government agencies are using technology fromNew York-based Information Builders to streamlinedata access, reporting and electronic service delivery(ESD) requirements.

Where We StandMost civic agencies have experienced the exorbitant

cost of developing Web-based systems from scratch, as well as with re-engineering existing systems to fittoday’s Internet requirements. These complications arepartly due to the difficulty of combining data from adiverse back-end infrastructure.

Most municipalities rely on many systems to supportplanning, service delivery, evaluation and internaladministration. Their systems have evolved independentlyover a period of decades, resulting in a potpourri ofplatforms and databases.

Presenting data to users in a homogeneous fashionis a challenge. Government agencies at the local,regional and national levels are all looking for theoptimum way to present information online, both tointernal constituents and to the general public. Whiletraditional data warehouse applications and proprietary

reporting tools remain important for some aspects ofinformation delivery, forward-thinking agencies are dis-covering a more direct route to meeting ESD requirements.

Rapid Development – A US ExampleThere are some excellent precedents in the US.

Consider the US Federal Emergency ManagementAgency (FEMA), a federal agency that coordinates disaster response activities during hurricanes, earth-quakes and fires.

In the past, most of FEMA’s important insurancedata was buried in mainframe databases and printedmonthly in cumbersome “green bar” reports. FEMAneeded a way to generate reports faster and reducehuge printing costs. The agency brought in consultantsto construct a more modern environment using real-timeinformation delivery.

Today, FEMA staff no longer leaf through paperreports to find the data they need. Instead, they browseinsurance data posted on the new BureauNet intranetsite, select just the information they want to see, andget an onscreen report or download the data as anExcel spreadsheet.

“We were able to skip a lot of steps [in the devel-opment process],” says Bill Barton, a project managerfrom the consulting firm. “The resources we needed todo this were very small.”

Barton estimates that using conventional Web anddatabase software to export data from FEMA’s mainframe,store it in a new database, and link that to a Web serverwould have cost about 100 times as much – more than$500,000 – and taken about two years to complete.Instead, using proven Web-based business intelligencetools to build the BureauNet system, it only took sixmonths, and the agency saved more than 90 per centof the development cost and time that conventionalsolutions would have required.

Mike Miles, a computer scientist from the consult-ing firm, spearheaded the FEMA development effort.

“In some cases, FEMA would ask for a new type ofreport one day, and Miles would have it on BureauNetthe next day, thanks to the speed with which he couldcreate new reports with the Web-enabled businessintelligence tool Mike used,” says Barton. “They hadnever had that level of access before, never had beenable to just click on their desktop and generate suchdetailed and specific reports.”

Integrated Cadastral Initiative ERP

20


Step One: Integrating the DataMaking e-Government a reality requires a complete

redesign of the internal operations of the governmentand the operating systems of the broader public sector.According to reports posted by the Corporate ChiefInformation Officer (CCIO) for the Province ofOntario, three of the essential building blocks include:• A common I&IT infrastructure (networks, systems and

processes) to ensure inter-operability and consistencyacross the government ministries and agencies;

• Common service delivery components to enable re-use and integration of I&IT components, to delivera range of services, and to facilitate cross-ministryclient relationship management; and

• Common progress reporting and impact assessmentto measure results consistently, show progressacross government, align priorities, and understandhow clients, partners and citizens are affected.Internally, governments need tactical information,

which typically must be combined from multiple sources. For example, a municipal government might need

to calculate the cost of road maintenance over five yearsin a certain region or the cost of long-term health carebased on current demographic information. Regionalgovernments must often collaborate with municipalgovernments to facilitate this exchange of information,representing a continual cross-pollination of systemsand activities. Meanwhile, smaller cities are combiningoperations to share larger infrastructures, such as when sixcities combined forces under the City of Toronto umbrella.

While these consolidation exercises ultimately sim-plify operations and reduce costs, integrating back-enddata sources is a massive undertaking. Many organiza-tions are beginning to realize the value of a commonlayer of connectivity to collect information for reportingpurposes. This not only simplifies the process of com-bining entities, but also enables government agenciesto effectively take advantage of their investments inexisting information systems.

It is not sufficient for an information delivery solutionto provide access to only a limited number of datasources. The solution should access, integrate, andcross-reference new data, external data and legacydata. Cross-referencing data with multiple public datasources increases the value of information and makesdecision-making more accurate and timely.

Having common standards for connectivity shieldsdevelopers from the task of writing code to supportdata access, transformation and movement, dramaticallysimplifying the development process.

Step Two: Building an Effective ReportingArchitecture

Of course, integrating data sources is only the firststep. To be truly useful, information must be deliveredin a format that meets the needs of various types ofusers, whether its for compliance and enforcement,financial accounting, policy decisions or distributionto the public.

Extending government information to citizensdoesn’t simply mean pushing information in a passiveway. Many users want to be able to independentlyinteract with the information – to obtain it on theirterms, when and where they need it. This implies adhoc data query, reporting and business intelligencecapabilities.

Each user and each organization has different typesof reporting needs. Some want alert-based reporting,meaning they only want to see a report when somethingchanges. Others want to receive periodic summaries,yet have the ability to drill down into the data whensomething perks their interest.

Some users need action statements that permit themto set other activities in motion. Still others want to benotified immediately via their pagers or cell phones.

The right information infrastructure will easilyaccommodate all of these types of reports, so users canaccess them using familiar tools. Most organizationshave made tremendous investments in e-mail, spread-sheets, search engines, Web browsers and other commonproductivity tools. Rather than forcing users to learn aproprietary decision support environment, why not letthem retrieve and analyze information using the toolsthat are already ingrained in the business process?

This same line of thinking applies to the devicesthat users prefer, whether laptop computers, mainframeterminals or personal digital assistants. Informationshould be delivered to the point of business – to theplaces where decisions are made, to the people whoneed it – whether via a local network, the Onternet orvia a wireless device.

An extended information-delivery architectureshould use the technology that companies alreadyhave in place, ensuring that there is no learning curveand no technology barrier, and allowing information toflow right into their existing business processes.

Step Three: Online CollaborationThe City of Richmond in British Columbia was one

of the first Canadian municipalities to use wirelesstechnology for real-time information delivery. Situated


21

on an island, the City monitors its critical water andsewage systems via handheld devices.

For Richmond’s wireless application, InformationBuilders’ technology summarizes the data across multiplesystems, putting real-time intelligence in the hands ofCity workers, whether they are in the office or out inthe field.

“By using business intelligence tools with AvantGoEnterprise, workers from the City are able to downloadinformation from government computer systems directlyto PDAs for viewing and analysis, any time,” says EdwardHung, manager of the City’s Advanced Research andTechnologies team.

Other municipalities and provinces are breakingnew ground in early warning systems for disease alerts.

According to Ed Carubis, the chief information officerfor the New York City Health Department, most bio-logical agents that might be used by terrorists manifestthemselves in the early stages as flu-like symptoms,which challenges health-care professionals and agenciesto properly identify a potential epidemic. Carubis andhis team worked with Information Builders to devel-op a surveillance systemthat integrates data fromthe emergency rooms of38 hospitals. Hospital ITdepartments send complaintdata via the Internet in avariety of formats, including Microsoft Excel spread-sheets, XML documents and other standards, using different transport protocols such as FTP and Web services.

The new information system helps the City spottrends that indicate a disease cluster is occurring inspecific locations. New York City is reusing the sametype of technology to share restaurant health inspectioninformation with citizens via the Internet. Users don’tneed to bother with any special tools to find relevantinformation; they simply check their e-mail or log intothe Web to find pertinent information.

Step 4: Architectural ConsiderationsMany municipalities believe they will have to build

real-time information-delivery systems from scratch.But, with the right access to multiple database systemsand the right business intelligence environment fordelivering the results, existing applications and databasescan be incorporated quickly and efficiently.

The information delivery environments featuredhere use a server-based architecture to simplify softwaremaintenance, streamline report distribution, and mini-mize network activity. Thanks to their thin-client orien-tation, there is no software for end-users to install,resulting in a rapid learning curve for most businessintelligence solutions. Users simply need a standardWeb browser to access self-service reporting applications.

When complex queries are submitted, only theanswer set should be sent to the requesting user, mini-mizing network congestion. If an organization needs todistribute 10 different versions of the same report to 10different people, some business intelligence tools forceyou to run and distribute the report 10 different times.More mature business intelligence environments letyou run the entire report, then use an automatic burstingmechanism to distribute each part of the report to theintended recipient according to the formats they specify,such as Excel, PDF, Word or HTML.

Built-in integration with mobile computing platformsenables the information delivery environment to pushcritical information to wireless devices as well as to

pull information fromproduction informationsystems via e-mail.The Internet has fueleddemand for instant communications among

government agencies looking for more efficient ways to fulfill their mandates. Government organiza-tions were among the first to recognize the potential of Internet technologies to deliver information to thepublic, as well as streamline access to the tacticalinformation that is used internally for managing government programs and communicating with partner companies.

Today, astute agencies are devising standardapproaches to data connectivity, business intelligenceand information delivery to improve the services thatthey can offer to citizens – and better equip governmentstaff to manage and monitor program delivery withshrinking budgets.

David Baum is an independent writer and consultantwho specializes in business intelligence software. This article was contributed to Municipal Interface byInformation Builders Canada, an associate member ofMISA Ontario: www.informationbuilders.com. ■

Support services for Linuxare becoming available

22


Kitchener Wins Award, Cuts CostsWith Fleet Management SystemBy Mike BolgerCity of Kitchener, Ontario

Staff at the City of Kitchener, Ontario, are improv-ing business processes and winning awards fortheir efforts.

An innovative software package developed by Citystaff has improved efficiencies for fleet and inventoryoperations – and has been given the nod of approvalfrom Showcase Ontario. Kitchener won the DiamondAward in the Business Solutions Through InformationTechnology category at the annual information-tech-nology conference and exhibit presented in Septemberby the Ontario government in Toronto.

The story began before the century turned. As partof its Y2K initiatives, the City reviewed its existing fleetsystem. This system recorded the work-order activity inthe garages and enabled the Fleet department to monitorrepair and maintenance of the vehicles.

As a result of this review, the team found the needfor change, due to both software and hardware con-cerns. Open to anyalternative, the teamchose to develop an in-house application.

A primary consider-ation for a custom solu-tion was the relationship between the stockrooms andthe Fleet division. Recognition of the tight integrationrequired between the two groups would require sig-nificant effort to tie together any solutions purchased.The need for new software in the stockrooms meantthe project would expand in scope but would dealwith both groups’ needs simultaneously, resulting ina streamlined approach.

Integration with the financial and payroll systems,and future expansion into the Utility Department,would require significant IT efforts. These considerationsand others led to the decision to put our programmingefforts into an in-house solution that was customizedto the staff’s needs.

A six-month design period led to interesting devel-opments. As project leader and designer of the system,I spent this time working directly with the staff in the

garages and stockrooms, watching employee patternsand discussing staff requirements on a daily basis.

As a result, the vision for the application shiftedsubstantially. The direction for the product moved froma system that was similar to the existing record-keepingstyle system to a solution that required minimal key-board entry.

Before the new system was implemented, Fleetpersonnel used written work orders and punch clocks,and transposed information into the computer system.The information may have been accurate but the statusof the vehicle or employees’ time was not known untila clerk entered the information – sometimes as muchas a few days later.

A plan was proposed and accepted to implement a real-time system. Information would be entered asevents occurred. Others could view the status ofemployees, equipment and parts without having toenter information repeatedly.

The new system does not use paper documents.Work orders are created and assigned to staff online.

The mechanic signson to a job through atouch-screen.When the mechanicvisits the stockroom,the stock-keeper

scans the part and hands it to the mechanic. The part isautomatically associated to both the mechanic and thevehicle being worked on.

When the job is completed, the mechanic uses thetouch-screen to log off. With very few keystrokes, thejob is accurately timed, the mechanic’s time is recorded,the part is assigned to the correct vehicle, inventory iskept current, and the supervisor knows the vehicle isready for the customer.

Managers at City Hall can watch the activity in the garage area, as it happens. The system capturesinformation at all stages of the business process.

The use of touch-screens, handheld barcode readersand intuitive GUI screens has resulted in all Fleet staffusing the application. The mechanics, stock-keepersand supervisors have all been receptive to the newsystem.

Procedures that once took daysnow are completed in minutes

Originally, mechanics thought that the systemwould impede their work because this was the firsttime they had been asked to use the computer as partof their daily activities. Everyone quickly realized,however, that the touch-screen and the availability of information to the mechanics assisted in their effec-tiveness and that computerization has not had a nega-tive impact on this environment.

The City has realized significant savings since thissystem has been implemented. Preventative maintenancescheduling, payroll processing and monthly billinghave been reduced from procedures that take days toprocedures that take minutes.

The preventive-maintenance scheduling determineswhich vehicles require maintenance. The system gen-erates a work order for the fleet supervisor and notifiesthe vehicle’s owner by e-mail of the need to schedulean appointment.

The large proportion of the garage activity generatedthrough this procedure means that half of the workorders in the system are created, worked, and billedwithout the need for keyboard entry.

These business-flow improvements permit staff touse their time in other ways. As there is no entry ofinformation required by clerks, the Fleet division nowrecognizes savings of at least $70,000 a year. The savingsrealized since the application was implemented inNovember 1999 have paid for the IT development effort.

The Showcase Ontario awards recognize informa-tion- technology achievements that promote innova-tion in project management and enhance the qualityof public service.

A successful project in the Business SolutionsThrough Information Technology category must deliversignificant benefit to customers. It must also demon-strate an ability by the information technology team to see a problem from the customer’s perspective bydesigning a solution that is both innovative and easyto use.

Mike Bolger is IT manager, business systems and services,with the City of Kitchener, Ontario. He can be reachedat [email protected]. ■


24


By Brad Janes

This article appeared originally in The Daily Gleaner,Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Anew kind of telecommunications companycalled e-Novations wants to become an invest-ment in Fredericton’s future. The company, up

and running for almost a year and a half, is makingsmall and quiet inroads in that direction, but there’sstill a lot more room to grow.

The company is a non-profit, City-owned corpora-tion that is building and managing Fredericton’s ownfibre-optic network.

That network is up and running with fibre andwireless connections to the fibre backbone, meaningbusinesses or residential users can connect acrosstown, the province, country or the world, helpingwhat those at e-Novations say will unlock the NewBrunswick capital’s business location potential.

“It’s certainly a big plus for the network that this isan economic development initiative by the City,“ saysGlendon Vye, e-Novation’s director of marketing. ”Thetechnology communications business is growing inhuge leaps and bounds. We are permitting people inthe community to get connected.”

There are some 50 other similar projects going onnationwide in municipalities.

The objective is to offer access to a data communi-cations network with virtually unlimited speed andcapacity at a low cost. The network is a combinationof fibre-optic cable and wireless devices that permitshigh-speed connections to destinations all over the map.

The City of Fredericton will be a large user of thenetwork for daily operations, but the service is therefor the business and residential sectors as well.

Customers directly connected to the system willreceive network speeds of at least 100 megabits a sec-ond. Those getting wired will be charged an annualfee and hook-up charge.

e-Novations was granted a non-dominate carrierlicence from the CRTC, which permits it to build andmaintain a public data communications system.

In one way, it does offer competition to such outletsas Aliant and Rogers when it comes to communicationsservices such as the Internet.

“We have a high speed service that is quite a bitdifferent than the services, say, Aliant or Rogers offer,”Vye says. “We have a service offered through the City,which gets its return on the investment through themunicipality if it encourages business and growth. TheCity gets it back on tax revenue and other sources.”

e-Novations received a major injection of helpwhen the Greater Fredericton Airport Authority startedusing its services. Two hotels in the city, the FrederictonSheraton Inn and the Fredericton Inn, are also connected.

“It can take time to get the message out there,what we’re doing and what we're about,” Vye says.“We’re taking calls now from people outside of thecommunity wanting to know what we‘re about.”

One of those examples was from a business holdinga conference in Fredericton, seeking information onthe network’s capabilities to use information technologyto enhance the conference and presentations.

It’s about spreading the word, says e-Novationspresident Maurice Gallant, who works with vice-presi-dent Mike Richard, Vye and others on staff to promotethe program.

“People are always cautious to invest, but this isan investment in technical infrastructure,” saysGallant, who is also president of the MISA Atlanticchapter.

“Essentially, it’s a municipal organization that hasbeen created to provide leading-edge infrastructure in Fredericton.

“The City is e-Novations’ own best customer rightnow, but it’s something that can better our community.

“It can make our community smart so businesseswant to stay here or move here and set up. Peopledon’t have to move away.” ■

Building Fredericton’sFibre-Optic Networke-Novations, a non-profit, City-owned corporation, promotes development

25

MUNICIPAL Interface

By Georganne DupontCity of Airdrie, Alberta

With its small-town atmosphere, access to hiking trails and 15-minute proximity tobooming Calgary to the south, it’s no sur-

prise that Airdrie, Alberta, is one of the fastest growingcities in Canada.

In the late 1990s, City Council had a zero-tax-increase mandate, but a population that was climbingas fast as seven per cent a year. We knew the traditionalmethod of handling growth – keep adding more staff –wouldn’t work, so when the IT team saw an onlinesystem demonstration at a conference, we decided to pursue it.

We went to the Province of Alberta and receivedsome grant funding and then we took it before Council.They were very supportive, though transferring citizenservices to the Web was a gutsy move for a city of22,000 people.

The provincial funding came with a tough one-yeardeadline, but it permitted the City to go online acrossthe board instead of phasing in the system.

The Virtual City Hall system (VCH) lets customersobtain property tax and assessment information, checkutility accounts and make payments, purchase tax cer-tificates with immediate fax-back, and register and payfor recreation programs such as swimming lessons viathe Internet (www.airdrie.com) or touch-tone telephone.

The system is available 24/7, a welcome feature forAirdrie’s substantial population of commuters, whofind it difficult to access local services during office hours.

The City established a secure section on its Website using encryption technology to protect customers’personal information and financial transactions. Real-timeaccess to the financial system was not feasible, and soa nightly data export updates financial transactions forthe tax/utility system.

There were times when we wondered if the teamwould make the one-year deadline. The biggest challengewas not realizing the poor quality of the data we hadand the impact it would have on staff time.

Existing data had to be cleaned up to removeinconsistencies such as “St.” versus “Street.” New hires were not allowed, so staff had to put in substan-tial overtime.

Staff recognition was critical during the implemen-tation period. A big part of what I had to do was motivateand encourage people. Everyone knew that when VCHwas up and running, however, their workloads woulddecrease. It was short-term pain for long-term benefits.

Virtual City Hall has won many fans since itslaunch in November 1999, particularly residents regis-tering for programs and real estate lawyers. To give citizens an incentive to opt in, Airdrie offered earlierprogram registration for people who booked online.That was enough to encourage them to make the effortto obtain a personal identification number.

For lawyers, the benefit was clear. Instead of wait-ing two or three days for a tax certificate or propertysearch, they could get what they needed to close adeal in five minutes. Once they became accustomed (continued on page 28)

JANUARY 2003

Virtual City HallWins Accolades ForCity Of Airdrie

Georganne Dupont, below, poses withAirdrie’s awards. At left, the team thatimplemented Virtual City Hall.

Now any workforce can stay connected no matter where they go, or what they do. The Toughbook family of wireless, extremely portable computers. To liberate your team, visit www.panasonic.ca

CF-P1 Handheld• Only 1 lb.• 3.5" colour touchscreen • wireless options include: CDPD

( GPRS & CDMA, Fall 2002 )

CF-07 Wearable• 1.5 lb. wireless display• works up to 150 ft from

Toughbook 07• daylight readable 8.4" touchscreen

Notebook• 4 models to choose from:

CF-28, CFM-34, CF-72, CF-48• CF-28 and CFM-34 offer

complete rugged construction• all models are wireless ready

Notebook• 4 models to choose from:

CF-28, CFM-34, CF-72, CF-48• CF-28 and CFM-34 offer

complete rugged construction• all models are wireless ready

CF-P1 Handheld• Only 1 lb.• 3.5" colour touchscreen • wireless options include: CDPD

( GPRS & CDMA, Fall 2002 )

CF-07 Wearable• 1.5 lb. wireless display• works up to 150 ft from

Toughbook 07• daylight readable 8.4" touchscreen

27

MUNICIPAL Interface

By Allan ShaverTeranet Enterprises Inc.

The simplest technology ideas often have the mostprofound effects. Consider, for example, how abasic idea like sending a text message from one

computer to another created the phenomenon knownas e-mail.

Here’s another example: an ordinary parking ticket.Nobody likes getting one, but they are a fact of life.Now, what if you could at least make settling the fineeasier by paying it over the Internet? It’s convenientand it sounds straightforward but, as the Town ofOakville, Ontario, will tell you, it’s the first step inredefining the way citizens interact with local govern-ments for many services.

“We are a growing community here,” explains LynnHorlor, assistant director of financial operations forOakville. The town’s population grew 12.7 per centbetween 1996 and 2001, twice Ontario's rate ofgrowth in the same period.

“We are continually looking for ways to deliver services faster, smarter and better to Oakville ratepay-ers,” Horlor continues. “Rather than adding moreadministrative staff toprocess payments, onlinepayment has the poten-tial to reduce staff timeand increase convenience to our ratepayers.”

The solution was provided through paytickets.ca. A portal developed through a partnership with TeranetEnterprises Inc. and RBC Financial Group, paytickets.cais the first online payment service provided by theTown of Oakville.

In January 2002, Oakville entered into a three-phasepilot project with paytickets.ca that permits people to pay any parking ticket issued in Oakville online,either through the Town’s Web site or directly at thepaytickets.ca portal. People simply enter their ticketinformation, payment amount and credit card number– and technology takes care of the rest.

The phased-in implementation strategy for the pilotproject permits changes to the system to occur organi-cally at each phase, so that any early bugs are workedout as the system evolves. And since this is a pilot,

there are no upfront development costs to the Town of Oakville.

“Teranet provides the complete transaction processingengine for paytickets.ca,” explains Antoni Wisniowski,e-government program manager for Teranet Enterprises.“We then connect to the Royal Bank to complete theultimate funds transfer.”

Teranet uses the company’s back-end technologystructure to manage the ticket payment process. Thisinvolves managing the Web site, collecting all transac-tions flowing through the site, and initiating online creditcard validation with credit card processor Moneris,partly owned by RBC Financial Group.

At the end of each day, Teranet’s system creates anelectronic file of all transactions, which is sent to RBCwhere payments are forwarded to the financial institu-tions holding the accounts for various municipalities.RBC is also involved in marketing and raising awarenessof paytickets.ca with residents.

“Teranet was the logical choice for us to partner with,”says Jim Hart, senior manager, market management,RBC Financial Group. “They’ve been in the businessof e-commerce with government for a number ofyears, and they have a good, solid infrastructure.”

Citizens can settle a parking fine any time, any-where, in a simple transaction. Under the old systemin most municipalities, including Oakville, parkingtickets had to be made in person, during businesshours, at City Hall, by phone or by mail.

The Town of Oakville also benefits. There are fewerpeople coming in person to pay tickets, and fewercheques to process. That frees staff time for other tasks.Electronic payments also tend to be more reliable.

“Convenience and speed for the Town and the customer is a win-win situation for us both,” says LynnHorlor. “And if for any reason we reject a payment –Teranet will take care of it.”

By all accounts, the pilot has been a resoundingsuccess, and more people chose the online paymentmethod than first predicted. By the end of the firstweek, eight per cent of parking tickets were paid

JANUARY 2003

Online Parking Ticket PaymentsEliminate Trips To City Hall

Town of Oakville project may lead to others

28


City Of Airdrie Becomes A Leader

online (from an original estimate of two), and this figure reached 16 per cent on some weeks.

This success rate has raised the potential for othermunicipal services to migrate to the Internet.

“The simple idea of paying parking tickets onlinemay break ground for other services to be deliveredonline,” says Terry Scott, of the Town of Oakville’sInformation Technology department.

“Once you’re paying parking tickets online, whynot obtain licences and permits, and register for parksand recreation programs and so forth? The possibilitiesare numerous.

“We always strive to provide convenient and effi-cient service to our citizens, and online payment of

parking tickets is a very good test for us to determinehow our citizens feel about e-service,” adds Scott.

A key feature of the paytickets.ca system is its flexi-bility and an ability to accommodate the various needsof different municipal departments.

With that in mind, Teranet and RBC are workingclosely with Oakville’s Information Technology depart-ment to collaboratively build a platform that can meetfuture demands.

Allan Shaver is director, new business and tecnicaldevelopment, for Teranet Inc., an associate member of MISA in Ontario and British Columbia. Inquiries orquestions for Allan may be directed to [email protected]. ■

(continued from page 25)to this, they jumped on the bandwagon. (Now they’redisappointed if the system is down and they have to phone!)

For staff, the impact of VCH is significant. On thefirst day of program registration we used to have 50people lined up at the door; now we have 10.

Automatic credit card approval has saved time inaccounts receivable, where previously a staff personspent one day a month on collections. Calls for generaltax inquiries, property searches and tax certificateshave plummeted to 40 a month from 40 a week, whileWeb site hits soared from 75,000 to 200,000 a month.

As a result, despite the City’s growth, Airdrie hasmaintained its complement of only two tax clerks andtwo utility clerks. Meanwhile, the IT department grewto six from four.

We didn’t realize the extent of the support thatwould be required. We have found that when changesare made to the financial system, for example, it affectssome aspect of the VCH service.

The City has also installed the infrastructure toestablish a “service bureau,” enabling other municipal-ities to use Airdrie’s application and servers. We havehad plenty of interest in this service, but no takers yet.

Meanwhile, little Airdrie’s success is drawing someattention from the big guys. Winnipeg, Chicago andHonolulu are among those calling for advice.

In 2003, Airdrie has several enhancements plannedto the VCH services. A kiosk will be installed at therecreation centre. The kiosk will provide another methodfor customers to register and pay for recreation programs,

and it will have the additional feature of acceptingpayment by debit card.

An upgrade to the SQL version of our financial sys-tem will enable Airdrie to provide real-time access toinformation – eliminating the data export process, fullyintegrating the financial and VCH systems, and therebyeliminating several manual processes.

A Citrix server and VPN (virtual private network)will be implemented to provide secure remote accessto the Airdrie network, enabling Airdrie staff to provideinter-municipal services more effectively.

We are very proud of our accomplishment and thebenefits of the VCH services. Airdrie’s leadership andentrepreneurial approach in the use of technology haswon several awards for our Virtual City Hall.

In 2001, the City received a gold medal from theTechnology in Government IT Distinction awards forInnovative Service Delivery in Municipalities.

In 2002, we proudly accepted an Award ofExcellence from the Canadian Information ProductivityAwards (www.cipa.com) in the Government category,and we were surprised and honoured to be awardedthe CIPA Best of Category award.

This same year, Airdrie also received the Alberta E-Business Leadership Award in the category ofCommunity Readiness for the SuperNet.

Georganne Dupont is information systems team leader for the City of Airdrie and vice-president of thenew Prairie chapter of MISA. She can be reached [email protected]. ■

By Mark WalkerPolar Bear Corporate Education SolutionsVictoria, BC

This article is based on a presentation to the MISA BCFall Conference in Kelowna on September 25, 2002.

So . . . you have now assessed the risks to yournetwork and developed a comprehensive riskmanagement plan, as Part One of this article

discussed (Municipal Interface, November 2002). Nomatter how detailed your plan is, however, it is notmuch use without deployed security measures and asecured network perimeter.

When planning to deploy security measures, thefirst step is to write a security policy that defines theorganization’s security requirements and acceptableuse. It should include procedures to detect, prevent, andrespond to any security incidents, as well as provide aframework for enforcing the security of information.

To be effective, the policy must reflect the cultureof the organization, the value of its information andthe types of its resources.

There are many challenges to a security policy. Forone, business needs may conflict with it. For example,your security policies may dictate using network-basedintrusion detection software, but your business needsdictate that all network transmissions must be encrypted.Other examples abound. In most cases, security poli-cies simply do not exist or are not always followed.

First Step to DeploymentBefore you deploy security measures, you first need todetermine what needs to be secured and identify whowill make up the security project team. You’ll alsoneed a plan based on the security policies and carefullytested security measures.

The first step is to determine the necessary scope ofthe security measures by asking these questions: • Which computers will be affected?• What is the level of security required?• What will be the mode of enforcement?• How much training is needed for administrators

and users?Next, create a security project team from the fol-

lowing areas: network planning team, deployment and

operations team, training team, upper-level management– and don’t forget your legal and HR advisers.

In testing and deploying security measures, it’simportant to test and pilot all the security measures,obtain participants feedback from the pilot, update the security plan accordingly, and deploy the revisedsecurity measures.

Before starting to implement your security plan,you should double-check that you’ve completed thefollowing six steps: obtain upper-level managementapproval; create a project timeline; define roles andresponsibilities clearly; design security measures;ensure that measures are consistent with security policies; and document the design.

Security MaintenanceFinally, you will need to maintain security measures.Consider subscribing to some established security bul-letins. Arrange training for administrators and users onrelevant security issues. Adjust security when threatschange and regularly update anti-virus software.Finally, regularly test and deploy security updates.

To secure the network perimeter, you need to identifyit and all external connections. Connections can includethe Internet, branch offices, business partners, remoteusers, wireless networks and Internet applications.

At each external connection, there should be aproperly configured firewall. Firewalls protect networksand computers by employing a range of uniquedefences. Network address translation (NAT), packetfilters, server publishing, stateful packet inspection,packet content inspection and intrusion detection soft-ware are the most popular.

Using network address translation, an administratorcan hide internal server names and IP addresses, mak-ing direct attacks on internal hosts very difficult.

Packet filtering typically blocks all TCP and UDPports and protocols by default. It then is necessary topermit only required protocols supporting businessoperations to pass through. Remember that securitypolicies should always be followed when filtering ports.

Implementing server publishing is a defence thatprevents direct communications between the Internetand the server. This method also enables the firewall toinspect the packet and can also decrease complicationin router configuration.

SECOND OF A FOUR-PART SERIES

The Hacker: Can You Beat Him?


31


33

Inspecting packet content is an application layer filter to examine the payload of packets. It preventsattacks simply by rejecting packets that potentiallycontain malicious content. This defence is effectiveagainst the infamous “ping of death” attack. In manyrespects, it’s not unlike looking for a wolf in sheep’sclothing.

Stateful packet inspection software can examinepackets based on their headers and stores connectioninformation in a state table. This prevents connectionsfrom traversing ports and enables the firewall to inspectthe packet’s content . . . sort of like watching for sheepthat change into wolves once they have passed by thefirewall the first time.

Intrusion detection software detects the pattern ofcommon or well-known attacks and records suspicioustraffic in the event logs. This software will also operatewith other firewall features to prevent common attacksand alert administrators to potential attacks.

For all their security advantages, however, firewallscannot protect against malicious traffic that does notpass through the firewall. Firewalls do not preventattacks after a network has been penetrated. Firewallsdo not stop malicious code that is delivered through

encrypted communication channels. Firewalls cannotprevent users and administrators who intentionally oraccidentally install viruses and who use weak passwords.When it comes to preventing attacks that do not passthrough the firewall, the ultimate test is the design ofthe security policy.

In selecting appropriate firewall hardware and soft-ware, consider the following: budgetary and networkadministrator constraints, the volume of network trafficbeing screened and the scope of the security policy.Many firewall solutions are in the form of shareware or free add-ons. For example, Microsoft’s Windows XP now contains Internet Connection Firewall softwarethat is free, user configurable and extremely easy to apply.

Coming up in the March issue of MunicipalInterface is Part Three of this article: Securing Serversand Workstations, and Managing Service Packs andSecurity Updates.

Mark Walker is an instructor with Polar Bear CorporateEducation Solutions, an associate member of MISA BC.He can be reached at [email protected]. Youcan also refer to www.polarbear.com. ■

The Canadian InternetRegistration Authority (CIRA)has announced that it will

no longer reserve dot-ca Internetdomain names of Canadian municipalities.

The decision will affect munici-palities that have been removedfrom Natural Resources Canada’sCanadian Geographical Names DataBase (http://geonames.nrcan.gc.ca)as of October 1, 2002.

“Across Canada, many munici-palities no longer exist as a result of amalgamation or other reasons,”CIRA President Bernard Turcottesaid in a news release. “As a general

rule, CIRA makes dot-ca domainnames available to Canadians. CIRAdoes not bank domain names.”

Former municipal names listedin the Canadian GeographicalNames Data Base before October 1,2002, will be released for registrationon a first-come-first-served basis asof March 20, 2003, through anyCIRA certified registrar. The list ofcertified registrars is available atwww.cira.ca/cira/rr_choose_en.

As Natural Resources Canadaupdates its database several times a year, CIRA will release formermunicipal domain names threetimes a year. Those interested in

future release dates are encouragedto regularly check CIRA's Web site,www.cira.ca.

The list of formerly reserveddomain names can be reviewedonline at www.cira.ca/en/internet-names.html and also on MISAOntario’s Web site, www.misa.on.ca

Roy Wiseman, chair of theMember Services Committee ofMISA Ontario, commented, “If themunicipalities don’t grab thesedomain names, then someone elsemay – and may use them for a purpose not to the liking of themunicipality.”

MUNICIPAL NEWS ROUNDUP

Municipal Domain Names Released


Municipal management ofspatial technology will beexplored in two days of

presentations and an all-day work-shop during the GeoTec Event,March 16-19 at the VancouverConvention and Exhibition Centrein Vancouver.

GeoTec, formerly the GISConference, is in its 17th year asan international conference andexhibition on geospatial technologies.The 2003 event features 15 trainingworkshops, 70 technical sessionsand more than 150 individual pre-sentations, along with a trade showthat will include offerings formunicipalities and utilities.

There will be eight programstreams on March 18 and 19,including one each for municipalitiesand utilities, show manager MattBall reports. The municipal presen-tations will cover: asset management,land records, online vendor solu-tions, Internet portals, mobility,spatial data mining and enterprise

integration.On Sunday, March 16, Jury

Konga, manager of GIS services for the Town of Richmond Hill,Ontario, will present a full-dayworkshop entitled “eGovernment –The New Reality.”

Keynote presentations onMonday, March 17, will featureCanadian speakers. They willinclude: David Suzuki, chair of theDavid Suzuki Foundation; WayneBoss of Boss Consulting in Calgary;Ron Lake of Galdos Inc. inVancouver; Scott Campbell, CIO of British Columbia; and HerbDhaliwal, Canada’s Minister ofNatural Resources, who will discuss the GeoConnectionsDiscovery Portal.

The GeoTec Event is producedby GeoTec Media, publisher ofGeoWorld Magazine. Corporatesponsors include Autodesk, ESRICanada and Hewlett-Packard.Conference details can be found at www.GEOPlace.com.

Geospatial ConferencePlans Municipal Focus

Halton Region To Devote A DayTo Technology

Conferences Abound In Ontario

Halton Region has becomethe second Ontario munici-pality to organize a one-day

educational and networking eventfor municipal IT professionals.

Technology Day will take placeThursday, February 13, from 8:30am to 3:00 pm at the RegionalAdministration Building, 1151Bronte Rd. in the Town of Oakville.

After a series of presentationsfrom the Province of Ontario,municipalities, private-sector orga-nizations and software vendors,participants will have the opportunityto continue discussions that beganat Hamilton’s E-Government DayCIO forum in October 2002.

For information, please contact Tony Oliveri, TechnologyServices, Halton Region, at [email protected].

The City of St. Hyacinthe,Québec, is deploying NortelNetworks’ Optical Ethernet

solution with the local school boardto build a connected communitythat brings all its municipal organi-zations together and delivers onlineservices to citizens.

The greater St. Hyacinthe areais in the process of linking together120 sites for an 80,000-personcommunity, including schools, citygovernment, fire stations, medicalclinics and libraries, NortelNetworks announced. Source: CANARIE

St. HyacintheBuilding Network

Several conferences are comingto Ontario this spring of interestto municipal information-tech-

nology professionals.Contact North/Contact Nord,

Northern Ontario’s distance educa-tion and training network, will holda conference on emerging tech-nologies in Thunder Bay, February25-27. Information: www.emerg-ingtechnologiesseries.com.

Real World Linux Conferenceand Expo 2003, focusing on the

Linux operating system, will be heldat the Metro Toronto ConventionCentre on April 28-30. Information:www.realworldlinux.com.

URISA’s Ontario Chapter willhold its annual program event andexhibit, Be Spatial 2003, May 6 at the Toronto Congress Centre.Information: www.urisaoc.on.ca.

34

MUNICIPAL NEWS ROUNDUP

Roy Wiseman’s column on security issues will return


National & Chapter Executives

35

OntarioPRESIDENT Jim de Hoop, City of Kingston613-546-4291 (fax 546-4051) [email protected] PRESIDENT Kathryn Bulko, City of Toronto416-397-9921 (fax 696-3634) [email protected] PRESIDENT Walter Gasparini, Waterloo Region519-575-4570 (fax 575-4562) [email protected] David Laneville, City of Timmins705-360-1375 (fax 360-1391) [email protected] Karl Drysdale, City of London519-661-4945 (fax 661-5985) [email protected] MEMBERS REPRESENTATIVESMark Lehmann, Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Co.905-206-3419 (fax 206-3328) [email protected] Gastle, Microsoft Canada905-363-8645 (fax 568-1527) [email protected]

2003 MISA CONFERENCE Louis Shallal, City of Hamilton905-546-2251 (fax 546-2573) [email protected]

Regional Directors

NORTHERN Bruno Mangiardi, Director of Information TechnologyCity of Greater Sudbury, Phone: 705-671-2489 ext 2526Fax: 705-673-4535; [email protected] Harry Turnbull, City of Windsor519-255-6100 (fax 255-6868) [email protected] David Johnston, City of Ottawa613-580-2424 (fax 560-1201) [email protected] Ted Greene, Regional Municipality of York905-830-4444 (fax 895-1155) [email protected] LARGE Roy Wiseman, Region of Peel905-791-7800 (fax 791-4195) [email protected] Shallal, City of Hamilton905-546-2251 (fax 546-2573) [email protected]

AtlanticPRESIDENT Donna Waddell, City of Charlottetown902-566-5548 (fax 629-4156) [email protected] MEMBER Maurice Gallant, City of Fredericton506-460-2830 [email protected] MEMBER Chuck Keith, Halifax Regional Municipality902-490-4000 [email protected] MEMBER Bill Todd, City of Saint John506-649-6000 [email protected]

British ColumbiaPRESIDENT Frank Mayhood, City of Kamloops250-828-3441 (fax 828-3578) [email protected] PRESIDENT Kathy Yung, City of New Westminster604-527-4553 [email protected] Gerry Matte, District of Saanich250-475-5403 [email protected] David Hennigan, Capital Regional District250-360-3141 [email protected] MEMBERSHIP Steven Garner, District of Central Saanich250-544-4239 [email protected] REP Tia Young, GoldTech604-435-1250 Ext. 412 [email protected] SITE Doug Rasmussen, City of Kelowna250-862-3339 ext 315 [email protected] PRESIDENT Per Kristensen, City of Nanaimo250-755-4418 [email protected]

PrairiePRESIDENT Peter Bennett, City of Winnipeg204-986-2495 [email protected] PRESIDENT Georganne Dupont, City of Airdrie403-948-8800 Ex. 733 [email protected] Murray Chapman, Strathcona County780-464-8108 [email protected]

Toshiba recommends Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional for Business.Intel, Pentium, Intel Inside and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. Shipping and applicable taxes not included. Products may not be exactly as shown.Only available to customers in Canada.

Yo u k n o w h o w

t h e y s a y i n b u s i n e s s,

“ i t p a y s t o b e

c o n n e c t e d ?”

I t ’ s t r u e.

Satellite Pro™ 6100Starting at $2,499 S.L.P.

If you and your company aren’t using notebooks from Toshiba, the

world’s number 1 seller of notebooks, you’re missing a significant

business advantage. Not only are Toshiba notebooks extremely

competitively priced, our Satellite Pro™ 6100 series notebooks will

keep you connected so you can work where and when you want. And

that means increased productivity. Toshiba’s Satellite Pro™ 6100 is

powered by the Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor - M. Toshiba’s

notebooks are wireless networking ready. Our Satellite Pro™ features a

Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional Operating System. And our

proprietary power management system allows you to optimize your

battery life. Plus, advanced security and the peace of mind of Toshiba’s

famous quality and international warranty back you wherever you

work in the world. Take a look at our full range of products including

hand-helds and projectors.Make a connection that’s vital to your business

success. Call your IT Solutions Provider, call us, or visit our website.

M O B I L I T Y W I T H O U T L I M I T S

1.800.TOSHIBA | www.toshiba.ca