| Dear Reader,
Thank you for your continued interest in and support of ICIS. You may notice that the newsletter is being delivered in a new format. We hope you find that this is an improvement upon our previous newsletters. As with our past issues, you are receiving this email because you are a new member or have expressed interest in receiving updates from ICIS. If this is not the case, you can unsubscribe using the links above.
As always, we welcome your feedback about this and any other developments in the Society's services to its members.
Kindest Regards,
Janice, Pete, Ken, Steven and Laura
The ICIS Team |
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Local Government Membership Update |
Our campaign for local governments to sign up to the new Data Sharing and Licensing Agreement (DSLA) with ICIS continues, with 118 municipalities and regional districts now on board. Recent meetings have been held in the Fraser Valley and Okanagan to educate local governments about ICIS and the benefits of participating. BC Assessment sponsored two sessions in March, one in Vernon and another in Penticton, for administrators and collectors to learn about how local government participation in ICIS helps improve the accuracy and effort involved in developing the tax role. Our staff will also be presenting at the regional GIS user group meeting to be held in Salmon Arm on April 27th while an ICIS technical workshop is planned for June in Kelowna.
A warm welcome to the most recent local government ICIS members:
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Anmore |
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Castlegar |
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Greater Vancouver RD |
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Hazelton |
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Logan Lake |
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New Hazelton |
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North Okanagan RD |
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Northern Rockies RD |
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Port Clements |
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Port Coquitlam |
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Port Edward |
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Prince Rupert |
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Princeton |
For information about up-coming ICIS Technical Workshops in your area please contact Ken Rigler.
For more information about ICIS or questions about the DSLA, contact Steven Garner or visit our website. |
| Associate Membership
Update |
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ICIS will be welcoming two new associate members before the end of April: the Prince Rupert Port Authority, and the BC Centre for Disease Control.
As per policy, both organizations will be providing ICIS members with spatial data and will get access to cadastral data in return.
A Data Sharing and Licensing Agreement with the Department of National Defense is imminent, and the RCMP E-division and Translink are working their DSLA's through their internal approvals.
ICIS will also be considering associate member applications from private sector firms such as surveying, engineering or environmental companies. Companies that are interested should remember that associate membership is not for a one-time data purchase - the associate member must commit to providing ICIS and its members with spatial data initially and over time, that is of interest and benefit to membership. Typically, provincial government data is only available to associate members on a case-by-case basis. |
| What's New in Technical Services |
Over the past few months we have made several enhancements to the technical services that ICIS offers to our members. These include the rollout of a new Data Tracker, changes and additions to the webmap site and creation of a new e-newsletter. We have also begun work on an IT Strategy that will drive ICIS technical services through the next several years.
There have been several changes to the ICIS webmap site that you may have noticed. In conjunction with implementation of new security restrictions on the site, the status map has been updated to only show member status for simplification. For information on the types of data available see our new Data Tracker tool. In addition, the Integrated Cadastral Fabric (ICF) is now displayed as one layer. Previously, the ICF was divided into ICF Maintained and ICF Legacy layers.
Earlier in this year, we launched our new Data Tracker. This application dynamically queries all data and returns information about the type, currency and other details of the data that are available in an area. For example, if you are interested in knowing how up-to-date the Local Government cadastral data is in North Saanich, the Data Tracker can provide you the latest information on when the data was last updated and more. The data tracker also has direct links to the webmap and data portal sites, and is extremely useful for searching out data in a specific geographic location. You will find a link to the data tracker from the ICIS home page, or here.
Behind the scenes, we are working towards automating the loading of all spatial data to ICIS. This is a complex, initially labour-intensive process but will eventually allow us to spend much more time improving and enhancing services for our members and less time loading data.
In March, representatives from ICIS and its membership met to discuss the requirements for developing an IT Strategic Plan. The Board of Directors has since approved the development of a strategy that will guide our technical development in the future. We are planning several sessions between now and June to meet and determine the best way for ICIS to move forward with its services. We expect to be able to publish the results by July 2007. For more information, please contact Pete Flagg or Laura Cassian.
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| LGCMP Preview:
Grants for Local Governments |
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The ICIS Board of Directors has approved the Local Government Cadastral Maintenance Program (LGCMP) at its March meeting. The program, to be administered as a grant, will see money or technical assistance made available to ICIS local government members to improve the accuracy and currency of their cadastral data. The three-year program will fund projects such as:
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Commitment of regular submission of cadastral data
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Adopt ICF by moving infrastructure data to new base
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Establish new survey control
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Resolve local government boundaries
Each member local government may apply for a one-time $1,500 grant for committing to frequent updates of their data while a further $10,000 is available regionally for updates of data accuracy. Members will be encouraged to pool the funding to undertake larger projects. For example, a regional district and its member municipalities can pool the money to undertake a boundary resolution project. In this case, a regional district with 8 member municipalities would be entitled to a grant totalling $22,000.
Grants will be issued over the three-year period based upon a priority ranking. Among the criteria will be whether the project is in a high-priority area, is a joint project and whether matching funds are provided by the applicant.
ICIS will begin accepting applications this May through an online registration form. Watch for further announcements in the ICIS Newsletter and CivicInfo.
For more information contact:
Steven Garner
ICIS
Local Government Cadastral Maintenance Program Manager
sgarner@icisociety.ca
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| Local Government
Member Status
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| We Need Your Data! |
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ICIS members recognize the value of current, accurate spatial data, and have committed to submitting this data on a quarterly basis. We realize that sometimes this task gets lost in the shuffle, or in fact that the data hasn't changed much! Despite this, we would very much like to be able to provide ICIS members with the most up-to-date data that is available.
We ask that you please ensure that your data is delivered every 3 months to the ICIS portal so that we can make it available to other qualified members.
If you are unfamiliar with this process, please give us a call at the ICIS office - 1.866.403.0095 - and we'll talk you through it.
With appreciation,
ICIS Technical Services Coordinator |
| Workshop Update |
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ICIS workshops are held in order to educate and instruct members and non-members about our organization, its goals, and the use of ICIS services. Workshops are also a forum to discuss future development and the requirements of ICIS members.
Ken Rigler gave a workshop in Cranbrook on the 4-5 April hosted by the Regional District of East Kootenay. The workshop was attended by representatives from RDEK, Cranbrook, Kimberley, Radium Hot Springs, Sparwood, Elkford, Fernie, BCA, BC MOTH, Ministry of Economic Development, CFDC of SE Region of BC, and Kootenay Rockies Innovation Council. The workshop was a success and all supported the work ICIS is doing and wanted to know how they could help us reach our goals. The Provincial Members showed great support for ICIS and made suggestions of other government departments we should contact to get the message out.
Upcoming workshops:
If you are interested in attending an upcoming workshop, or hosting a workshop in your area, please contact Ken Rigler or Janice Appleby. |
| Visiting Victoria?
Come see us
at the ICIS Office: |
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Suite 16
1537 Hillside Ave
Victoria, B.C.
V8T 4Y2
250.381.9295
1.866.403.0095
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ICIS Newsletter 
