Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council have used our systems for 30 years.
During this time we have developed a partnership with the GIS team which services the whole of the Council and the Council's clients.
From the start, an integrated approach to the Council's data
access was identified to:
- reduce overheads of data duplication,
- increase productivity by commonality of
approach
Reducing data duplication has been a medium-term project initiated by the
adoption of an authority-wide Local Land & Property Gazetteer and Local Street
Gazetteer. Gradually, other departments' GIS applications have been integrated
into the use of the LLPG.
Commonality of aproach has been achieved very successfully by adopting an
"own-brand" user interface (GIS-MO) which is in day-to-day use on 4500
computers.
Accolades the model has accrued.
The practical process of reducing data duplication in Dudley
coincided with the emergence of the purely theoretical principles initially
published as part of the Digital National Framework (DNF). Both ourselves as
technical and Dudley as Client representatives have been members of the
executive and working groups attached to the DNF organisation since the start.
Our components are designed so that "own-branding" can be created
easily, and the services provided can be merged seamlessly with the corporate
intranet or internet facilities.
Own-branding in a council environment is extremely important to
facilitate integration across departmental borders.
With an own-brand - like "GIS-MO" in Dudley - the organisation's
workforce very soon "own" the concept as home-made and their loyalty to the
brand crosses departmental boundaries. Details.
At work in the Dudley environment are:
- AXIS2000 - a single package professional
GIS interface to all Council's GIS
- evoGIS - the GIS "engine" Details.
- evoNET - a web application with very wide
capabilities for intranet use.
Details.
- evoWEB and evoGateway - components
handling internet access. Details.
- evoAPP - a client-configurable application
template for developing individual desk-
top systems.Details.
- evoSEARCH - a Land Charges system
utlilising geography search patterns to
fully answer most responses, and
- DOPS - On-line Personal Searches. Details.
- The Walkzone - a "walking to health"
initiative application. More details.
- GIS-MO
- Disaster planning - a purpose built web
based
application to use geographical
searches across many council databases.