Current Status

December 14, 2001

The ND enterprise GIS data hub project was kicked off during the week of November 12 when Bob spent time at the SchlumbergerSema (SLB) office to begin some initial project planning. SLB has previously worked for the State; Bob intends to leverage that past experience and their past experience constructing enterprise GIS systems for other organizations, in the design and construction of the State's enterprise GIS data warehouse. A team approach is being taken in the construction of the Hub, with SLB and the State working together as a team to develop the Hub. The Information Technology Department (ITD) will be supplying much of the resource and its infrastructure; the State GIS Technical Committee (GISTC) will be supplying additional resources in the form of pilot agencies who will be among the first to get their data onto the Hub and iron out early problems.

The development of the Hub will be done in phases. We are currently in the Planning Phase, defining the functional requirements of the Hub. In January we will be conducting data workshops, which will assist us in more clearly defining the capacity needs of the hardware. These requirements and data needs will be documented and reviewed. The Prototype Phase has already started, and reaches its peak in January. This phase will involve the installation of the software components (commercial tools, such as ESRI products, FME data translator tool, etc.) and validating the connectivity between those systems and the fit of the system within the requirements of the State. The Pilot Phase will begin in early February. This phase includes the building of the remaining functionality and loading of pilot agency data. Testing and validation of the pilot system is planned for April. The Rollout Phase is scheduled to begin in late May, 2002. At that point in time, it is expected that the pilot agencies will be working with the Hub, using the data on the Hub. During that time, the ND GISTC will begin to assess and prioritize the needs of other agencies, working on a plan to get other agencies and organizations to begin using the Hub.

The pilot agencies for this project have been identified by the GISTC as the Department of Transportation, State Water Commission, and the Department of Health. These agencies bring to the table a set of complex issues such as legacy data and software systems, and the need to share the data that they create with other agencies. The thought is that by working through the challenges presented in these groups, the Hub will be that much more robust as it leaves the Pilot Phase. Key issues in the Hub is the ability to utilize data in different formats (i.e., other systems besides ESRI) and the ability of the Hub to provide one-stop-shopping for data and sharing of that data. These three agencies present an opportunity to verify that we have been successful on these issues.

Initial conversations have recently occurred with two other organizations: FEMA (Devils Lake) and the ND Department of Commerce. Both of these groups represent an early need for use of the Hub. Both of these groups are in the process of developing GIS applications that will utilize the Hub. Bob is working with SLB to identify early on any issues that might arise and to find solutions to ensure the best possible fit with the development and their use of the Hub.

The GISTC has been meeting on a regular basis. To-date, we've determined the ND metadata standards that we wish to use with the Hub. We are currently inventorying the GIS data held in each GISTC agency, which will help us to identify data sets to be loaded onto the Hub and to assist in the data inventorying work to be done in January. We've begun to list the base layers that will be the first ones to be loaded onto the Hub, and who will be the steward of a given data set, i.e., responsible for the maintenance and publishing of that data. Bob is thinking of having a GISTC meeting with all GISTC Associate Members sometime early next year, perhaps February. This would give anyone not involved with the regular GISTC meetings a chance to meet the GISTC members and to view the prototype and to provide feedback.

SLB visited Bismarck during the week of December 3, meeting with ITD leadership, ITD technical people, and with the pilot agencies. In a nutshell, as a result of these meetings, it is envisioned that the Hub will provide a seamless storage of data, and provide tools to allow applications to be built that utilize Hub data. A "generic" web tool for the public will be built, that will allow viewing, simple querying, and identifying tools, allowing exploration of Hub data (within security and access level constraints). Later on, more involved web-based tools can be developed. Data extraction tools will also be developed, giving people the ability to pull data from the Hub, for use in their own application. These things and more will be detailed in the Project Management Plan and Vision Document that are beginning to be built as a result of the information from the meetings held during the week of December 3. Bob plans to publish these on the web site when they are complete. After final review, these documents will be the road maps to the successful creation of the Hub.

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