| Dear Reader,
Thank you for your continued interest in and support of ICIS. 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,
Barry, Janice, Pete, Ken, Steven and Laura
The ICIS Team |
General Manager's Message
Let me take this opportunity to say hello and introduce myself as the new General Manager of ICIS. Needless to say, I am very excited about my appointment and the opportunities associated with the Society. My official start date in this position was December 3rd, 2007 and I have been very involved in learning about every aspect of the society, our successes and our challenges. I would like to thank the ICIS Board of Directors, Pete Flagg and everyone at ICIS for their immediate support and assistance. Pete is invaluable in providing a smooth transition as he moves into his new role working as Executive Liaison. I will defer to Pete to elaborate on his new role.
The ICIS group has been working diligently along with the Board of Directors on our strategies and how they transpose into the 2008 business plan and associated budget. 2008 will be another exciting year for ICIS as we continue to work on many important projects centered around our mandate of continually improving, adding to, and maintaining the cadastral fabric. Supplemental initiatives like AddressBC, automated Data Loading and the CivicSpatial Program are high priorities. Many new projects will also be started (for example, Urban Energy Mapping being done in conjunction with National Resources Canada and new data delivery programs which support the vision of facilitating collaborative sharing and integration of spatial data for the economic and social benefit of British Columbia). We will also be relocating our facility, improving training, furthering help desk functionality and enhancing our IT technology to better service your needs.
I look forward to meeting all members and interacting with you to determine your needs and how you can maximize your benefits from being an ICIS member.
On behalf of everyone here at ICIS, we wish you and your families the very best of the Season and a happy and prosperous New Year.
Barry Logan, General Manager | |
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Membership |
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Associate Membership Disclosure Notice:
Some local governments have special terms in their Data Sharing and Licensing Agreement (DSLA) that prohibits ICIS from sharing their infrastructure data or portions of it with associate members without their prior approval. Administratively, the way ICIS complies with this requirement is to publish periodically the list of associate members in our newsletter. The list is always available on our website as well.
It is incumbent upon the member to let ICIS know if the member wishes to restrict access to their data by any or all of the listed associate members. Please contact us if you want your data access by specific associate members restricted. Failure to contact us in this regard is taken as approval by the member to let associate members have access to its data.
First Nations Membership!
This fall, the ICIS Board of Directors confirmed the new policy for First Nations. The new policy allows all First Nations in BC to apply for membership in ICIS as local government members. If they are in control of their own spatial data, they will supply that data as does any local government member to be shared by all ICIS members. If the spatial data for a specific First Nation is being maintained by the Federal Government, ICIS will obtain such data as is available for that First Nation from the Federal Government site holding the data.
All First Nations will have access to Cadastral Data as local government members. Access to utility data sets is restricted to those who have completed treaty negotiations. The terms and conditions that apply to all ICIS members - data is to be used for internal purposes only and not shared, traded or sold to third parties - holds for the First Nations as local government members. First Nations wishing to be ICIS members must sign a standard DSLA as a local government member.
Our inaugaral First Nation local government member is the Carrier Sekani Tribal Council. Ken Rigler will be giving an orientation to ICIS First Nation members on January 11th, 2008 8:30-3pm at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District - #300-465 Victoria Street, Kamloops BC. If you wish to attend please contact Ken at krigler@icisociety.ca. |
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Transformation and Maturation
Message from the Outgoing General Manager
The last two and a half years have been a period of growth for ICIS, in every way and every direction:
o Membership has expanded in local governments, Provincial Ministries and Crown Corporations (the Ministry of Health has signed its own DSLA as has the BC Assessment Authority), associate members (now numbering nine) and industry (we have a new member class for Corporations and Associations and the Land Title Survey Authority is a board member of that class).
o Operating Revenue has increased over two-fold from 2005 to 2007, and we have secured a three-year funding commitment from the Real Estate Foundation - our first "non-member" grant.
o Commitment - all funding stakeholders have committed to the 2007 level of funding for three years.
o Data - the amount of cadastral data available through our web-map service has tripled.
o Sustainable employment - we have gone from an organization of part-time contractors to now having three full-time employees and a similar number of part-time contractors and consultants.
o Ownership - the society holds the Copyright for the Integrated Cadastral Fabric (ICF).
o Value Proposition - the CivcSpatial Program now provides funding and technical expertise back to local governments to help improve the quality of spatial data at that level.
All of these are indications of a maturing organization and a growing trust around the board room table at ICIS between its founding members. Growth and maturation requires change and intelligent compromise of all stakeholders, including me. It was time for a full-time manager of ICIS and for a transformation of my role. I am very pleased the Board has acted to secure the services of a high-performing individual in the person of Barry Logan, our new General Manager. I ask that all members give Barry the same measure of courage, passion and intelligence that you have given me in the past years to make ICIS a success.
ICIS has the opportunity to continue to illustrate the power of public-private sector cooperation as we expand membership, services, data and revenue to support spatial data improvement programs and data sharing. I will start 2008 with a new role at ICIS - to act as a liaison for the society in seeking additional funding opportunities, expand membership, facilitate some of those delicate strategic relationships, and bring in special projects through Geoconnections and other agencies. I look forward to working with the Board, the staff, Barry Logan, our members and stakeholders, as we continue to serve the Society's mission and vision.
Have a safe and happy holiday and a great new year!
Pete Flagg
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CivicSpatial Update
The CivicSpatial Grant Program was launched in May 2007 to provide local governments with funding to assist in the creation and development of their cadastral data. The three-year program has three key objectives:
1. Fund projects that directly improve local government cadastral data.
2. Simplify and increase the update cycle from local government.
3. Encourage local governments to join ICIS through additional financial incentives.
The program was initially designed to have two main components:
1. A base $1,500 grant to any ICIS member local government that commits to contributing their data on an as-changes-occur basis rather than the default contribution rate of quarterly.
2. An additional $10,000 available region-wide (as defined by the regional district boundary) for projects that lead to direct improvement in local government data.
CivicSpatial was specifically designed to encourage local governments to pool their funding to undertake larger projects. In areas where the regional district plays a significant role in mapping, this has been the case.
Program Statistics
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Count |
Average Value |
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Number of applicants |
19 |
$4,660 |
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Number of Municipal applicants |
10 |
$1,900 |
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Number of Regional District applicants |
9 |
$10,800 |
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Number of $1,500 base amount only applicants |
10 |
$1,500 |
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Number of joint applications |
5 |
$12,500 |
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Number of parcels expecting increase in accuracy |
8500 |
~$5/parcel |
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Number of applicants that joined because of grant |
4 |
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Total Value Committed |
$88,500 |
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Program Objective Evaluation
Objective 1: Fund projects that directly improve local government cadastral data.
Of the total funding to-date, approximately half has gone directly to initiatives that will lead to improvement in cadastral data. When projects that include boundary resolution are added upwards to 75% of the funding is going to improving accuracy. The average cost to ICIS for improving parcel accuracy is approximately $5 per parcel which is below the $10/parcel that is generally used to estimate the cost for improvement. The ICIS Board considers that CivicSpatial is meeting this objective.
Objective 2: Simplify and increase the update cycle from local government.
All applicants that have received grants from the CivicSpatial program are submitting data to ICIS within one month of a change occurring in the local government data. In addition, three local governments are making use of the automated update script that was developed to submit data to ICIS automatically. All applicants are contacted to see if they would like to use the automated upload method. The ICIS Board considers that this objective has been met.
Objective 3: Encourage local governments to join ICIS through additional financial incentives.
Of the 19 applicants, 4 were encouraged to join ICIS because of the grant program. This number is not yet reflective of the impact that the program is having on local government membership. Several local governments are currently reviewing membership in ICIS and were encouraged to review their position as a result of the CivicSpatial grant program. The Board considers that the program is meeting this objective.
What's Next?
The ICIS Board has approved continuation of the CivicSpatial program. Focus of the program will be:
· to increase promotion of the program to local government
· promote funding of GPS control projects to increase cadastral data accuracy
· expand grant access to First Nation's and local improvement districts.
For more information about CivicSpatial grants visit www.icisociety.ca and follow the links.
Steven Garner |
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| Major Milestone Reached by BC Assessment
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The GIS Team of Business and Customer Services have reached a major milestone; one million folios are now mapped on BC Assessment's own assessment fabric! The assessment fabric displays parcels by folio definition and has been created for 15 area offices to date. All area offices will have this mapping by June 2008. Update of existing assessment fabric began in the spring of 2007 and is an ongoing program.
The assessment fabric is built from existing map data maintained by local governments, Crown Lands and other sources. The concept for an assessment layer was defined by BCA map users (of hard-copy maps, Transportation Centreline Network, AGIS and ArcView) over the last 15 years and was championed by staff in the Nelson office who undertook defining the mapping requirements for BCA staff to effectively manage their database. Thus, the model for an assessment layer was created on the eve of valueBC's conceptual design and enabled full GIS integration into our new system. Today staff use this product to view coding geographically, perform audits, build presentations for PARP and PAAB and communicate with clients more effectively.
BCA staff is not the only users of the assessment fabric. Through ICIS, local government members use the data extensively. They use it to view their roll data with ease within a map environment and as an audit tool. While some local governments maintain their own assessment layer, many find it costly to maintain both a legal cadastre and an assessment layer. Eliminating this redundancy reduces costs to local governments. Sharing data with local government partners enables data quality enhancements for both BCA and local governments.
Kim Boyd, GIS Business Analyst, Business Systems, Business and Customer Services
BC Assessment | |
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ICIS Data for Post Secondary Research |
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ICIS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Ministry of Advanced Education (MAE) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, to provide sections of ICIS and provincial data to post secondary education institutions in the province for research and development purposes.
The MOU contains a commitment to sign a separate DSLA with MAE, and we expect to formally expand our membership to include the post secondary institutions in the future.
Data will be provided through a dedicated portal operated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands Integrated Land Management Bureau (ILMB). It is likely that librarians will be engaged to ensure appropriate security and access mechanisms are created to guide dissemination of the data.
Also, MAE has suggested that the society could be involved in an informal ad hoc committee from the post secondary field, to suggest or guide applied research with the data.
This is a significant step for the Society in serving our mandate and growing our membership, and has been seen as a win-win for all stakeholders involved.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Pete Flagg at ICIS (pflagg@icisociety.ca or
Evert Kenk at the ILMB (Evert.Kenk@gov.bc.ca). |
| AddressBC |
The Common Address Information System, formerly known as CAIS, has been given a new name - AddressBC. It better describes the service it will deliver: a province-wide registry of civic addresses and their mapped point locations that is updated and verified as new addresses are issued by local government.
Current funding partners are the Ministry of Agriculture &
Lands - ILMB, and ICIS. So far, all of the funding for CAIS / AddressBC development in 2007 has come from the ICIS operating budget. Additional Ministry funding will support the project January to March 2008. Local government is at the heart of AddressBC, as they are the source for accurate and up-to-date address data. A primary goal of AddressBC is to provide local governments with better means of distributing address updates, and of managing the information where it is needed.
AddressBC is now in a planning phase for full development. Stakeholder consultations have been going on throughout the past few months, with the purpose of understanding existing business processes behind civic addressing. This is so AddressBC can benefit from existing workflows to capture and distribute updates. The project has received encouraging feedback from the emergency response community. The key challenge will be to allow local governments to contribute to AddressBC directly without having a major impact on existing work programs.
If you have any questions or comments regarding AddressBC, please contact Joe Boyd (joeboyd@telus.net) or the ICIS office. |
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Consolidated Parcel Fabric Project
ICIS has endorsed the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands' pursuit of funding for the Consolidated Parcel Fabric (CPF) project. The CPF project has the support of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands - ILMB, the Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA) and the Association of BC Landsurveyors. The society's endorsement of the funding request to Treasury Board is contingent upon principles that ensure:
ICIS is a full partner in the CPF project, including governance structure of the initiative.
The CPF initiative would use the ICIS ICF and Local Government cadastral fabrics as starting points in the CPF build, with the intent of creating one fabric over time, thus saving an estimated $20 million in initial build costs, and
That ICIS members (local governments and utilities) would have unfettered access to the CPF if and as it is built.
If you have questions about the CPF, contact Pete Flagg at pflagg@icisociety.ca or Kevin Jardine at Kevin.Jardine@gov.bc.ca
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ICIS Data Update |
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In the past three months we have received several new datasets which have now been loaded to the Local Government Cadastre in the ICIS webmap site:
· Abbottsford
· Prince Rupert
· Port Edward
· Skeena-Queen Charlotte Regional District
· Okanagan-Similkameen Regional District, including:
o Oliver
o Osoyoos
o Princeton
o Keremeos
o Okanagan-Similkameen RD Rural
Additional updates to the Local Government Cadastre:
· Metchosin
· Penticton
· Burnaby
· North Cowichan
· Pitt Meadows
· Richmond
· Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, including:
o Pemberton
o Lillooet
o Whistler
o Squamish
Utility and Associate Member Updates:
· Translink/Coast Mountain Bus Routes and Bus Stops
· Polar Geomatics Emergency Pipeline Planning Data
· BC Centre for Disease Control Growing Degree Days
· BC Hydro Transmission
· BC Hydro Distribution
In the past several months, ICIS has been experiencing some difficulties in loading data that is coming from ESRI's new version 9.2 software. If your organization has upgraded to version 9.2, we ask that you provide your exports to ICIS in a previous format for the time being. We do have plans to upgrade to the new platform, but not until the new year. In the meantime, we would still like to be able to load your data!
If you have any questions, please contact Laura Cassian at lcassian@icisociety.ca or
1-866-403-0095.
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| Visiting Victoria?
Come visit 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 