Why New Websites? What’s Different?
When asked this question last week I really struggled to come up with a concise answer on the fly. There are so many dozens of new features and tools available in our new GIS Online web solutions.
Our new GIS Online web solutions (GISWebs) provide focused interactive websites that include the searches, layers and reports that you need to complete your geographic inquiry quickly. Contrasted with our older (2004) solution, which took a ‘one website for all’ approach with 50+ layers, only 4 searches and just a few canned report types, we are now able to provide a modern (focused) approach that has flexibility to be expanded on demand.
With that said, our goal today is to begin working with end-users to figure out how they would like to use GIS Online. The current plan is to build focused websites catered to specific vertical markets of end-users (e.g. Zoning and Land Use, Transportation, Property Sales, Historic Features).
The GIS Team is interested in designing the best possible solutions to meet a variety of needs. We anxiously await your feedback to learn how you use our websites and to see if the services we offer meet your needs.
Our plan is to continue to rapidly refine and develop our solutions for a couple more months to account for your specific suggestions. After that, we wish to hold a number of workshops for City and County staff and the community to learn about our solutions in a classroom setting.
Additionally, we want to provide a simpler means for anyone to ask geographic questions. For example, the “Land Property Basic Search” was derived from our “Address Verification” site and customized to allow citizens and staff to look up their council representative by address. After speaking with numerous staff and citizens we see that the majority of inquiries can be answered easiest through a ‘Basic Search’ application like these. We will be designing something new around this that should be able answer most inquiries, but if it does not there will be an option to launch one of our more focused websites (mentioned above) to ‘Go Advanced’ and perform more in-depth spatial query.