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BoCC Alachua County, Florida – March 2009

OPEN SOURCE AND OPEN TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTBUILDING ON EACH OTHER’S INVESTMENTSA MORE SUSTAINABLE PARADIGM

Alachua County’s story of an in-house GIS

Alliance for InnovationMarch 24th, 2009Juna Papajorgji


introduction – Alachua County

• General• Population ~ 250,000

• Area ~ 916 sq miles

• Nr of local governments – 10

• University of Florida ~ 50,000 students

• Socio Demographic

• Human classifications 3.5% A, 19.3% AA, 5.7% L, 73.5% W, 7.3% FB

• Housing – owned 54%, rented 45%

• Education – 88% HS, 39% Bach, 19% Grad

• Poverty – 22%-24%

• BoCC Landuse – progressive planning programs

• 10 % residential, industrial, institutional, commercial, etc

• 14 % in preservation

• 76 % in agriculture / 26% strategic ecosystems


• Unconventional ways of planning, budgeting, and implementing

• Exclusive in-house work from conception, development to maintenance

• Use of FOSS products: exclusive or combined with commercial products

• Partnerships with academic institutions and educational institutions

• Unconventional initiatives in inter-governmental cooperation

• 15 – 16 custom applications, developed in-house with a TCO close to 0

background – our Culture


Software

JShape IMS, MapServer IMS, and ArcIMS 9.2, IIS 6.0 web server, Apache Tomcat

4.1 JSP servlet engine, PHP 5.2.5 Development Environment, MySQL 5 Dbase,

Java Development Environment, Aracnophilia, etc.

ArcGIS 9.2, ArcEditor, several extensions, ArcSDE, Oracle 10g, CD-PLUS v3.0c (a

legacy proprietary desktop – from which we are phasing out)

Programming Languages

Java, Structured Query Language, PHP Language, JavaScript, Hypertext Markup

Language, JShape scripting language, Visual Basic for Applications, Avenue.

Staff Resources

5 FTE and 1 to 2 PhD or Master students from the University of Florida.

resources


Map Atlas searchable by Section-Township-Range, ready made PDF Maps for 1 mile

grid. Thousands of Maps. In house. Entirely Open Source.


Interactive Mapper for view and exploration of the results of the LEMAC model.

Alachua County’s Decision Support System for Landscape Evaluation and Characterization.

University of California Davis Partner. Entirely Open Source.


A GIS Decision Support Model for Detecting Substandard Housing in Alachua County.

University of Florida and Housing Authority Partners. Open model.


Multimedia & GIS for Historic Structures. Integrates online in a geographic framework

Florida site files, photographs, video clips with a voice narrative, etc. Grant from the

Florida Department of State. In house. Entirely Open Source.


• Online Geographic Library of 90+ layers, ortho & oblique imagery, data connection web service

• ArcIMS and MySQL, linked live to Oracle, full metadata, built-in User Guide

• Dynamically linked to Zoning, Zoning Variances, Building Permits, Commission Agendas, Staff

Reports, etc. 20+ years back. In house. Combination of Commercial with Open Source.


Interactive Map Based Digital Archive of Large Scanned Historic Zoning Maps

served via the Intranet. Collection goes back to 1962, more than 1,500 large size images. All

Open Source. In house.


Data warehouse, in house, Open Source


Gallery of poster maps and Comprehensive Plan maps


Departmental Document Management System, for Zoning

and Zoning Variances. In house. Open.


A variety of GIS back end office desktop customizations, in house, open.


Most recently:

Four major Web 2.0 Geospatial Applications

Building Permits Tracker

Code Enforcement Tracker

Impact Fees Calculator

Interactive GreenMap

All fully integrated with each other and the rest of the GIS system

All developed with an Open Technology

All developed with a Participatory Approach


Code Enforcement Tracker


Impact Fees Calculator


GeoGreen Mapper


GeoGreen Brochure


http://gis.alachua.fl.us


Results

Performance Measures

Cost Savings


results – by culture change

• our internal users at start

• paper culture, no individual PCs available

• zero to none digital culture

• field people with an average age of 45-60

• our internal users now

• laptops and printers on trucks, iPhones

• entirely remote work

• remote dispatch and real time field monitor

• adoration for the system

• sense of ownership and genuine sense of pride in it


by users

1,000 transactions per day, lower numbers on weekends

by quantity and quality of services

53+ eServices/projects, many of which densely recognized at state,

national, international venues

by cost direct savings to Alachua County

far above 2 million USD, all non proprietary, can be shared, recycled,

reutilized

by volume of freed organizational resources

4 FTE

results – by numbers


• conservative cost estimate saved from not buying a commercial product

• 500,000 USD – upfront cost

• 50,000 USD – yearly maintenance

• and…in 50% of cases they are not accepted by the users

• by volume of freed organizational resources

1.5 FTE inspector ~ 85,000 USD per year

• by stopping maintenance payment previously paid to proprietary vendor

15,000 USD per year

• by making obsolete an automatic inspections phone system

12,000 USD per year

results – by direct cost savings – Building Tracker Example


afterthoughts

• Did we have any upper level direction? request?

• Has it proven as the best solution?

• Have we been fully understood? rewarded?

• What are the downsides, risks to this method?

• What does this all mean?

• Societal Perspective

• Organizational Perspective

• Individual Perspective

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