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 ICIS Newsletter |
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What's New at ICIS | | Spring 2010 |
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About ICIS | |
ICIS (Integrated Cadastral Information Society) is a non profit organization dedicated to the "collaborative sharing and integration of spatial data for the economic and social benefit of British Columbia."
Members of ICIS include Provincial Government Ministries, Crown Corporations, Local and Regional Governments, First Nations, and major Utility companies in BC.
Feedback about this newsletter is welcome. Please drop us a line at info@icisociety.ca or email Erin Beatson, Administrative Coordinator. | |
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Staying Focused, Achieving Results | |
By Barry Logan, Executive Director
As usual, time is flying by with Quarter 1 already complete. If the quarter is any indication, 2010 will be a significantly productive year for ICIS. Of course, we like to think that every year is productive, but 2010 is a little different.
This year, AddressBC and BCSpatial enter the production stage. Inside ICIS, this is very exciting as we get to put theory and design to test and assess the realization of anticipated value to our members. The two products are distinct, with BCSpatial focused on the cadastre and AddressBC providing the solution for point-based addressing. However, we are twinning the implementation to maximize results and leverage the impact of introducing change once. The process is already in play and started with the February workshop as the launch of the combined pilot project. The Capital Regional District and all the associated municipalities are supporting and participating in the inaugural pilot. In addition, provincial and utility members are also partaking in the pilot project. The importance of the resultant realized address and parcel data is fundamental to their geospatial business requirements. ICIS is publishing news releases to celebrate the achievement of individual milestones with CRD members as the rollout progresses.
Membership initiatives are very different this year. In the past, significant ICIS efforts dealt with "marketing" the virtues and vision. Today, it is all about "support." ICIS membership has reached critical mass with only a few Local Governments left to join. First Nations are embracing ICIS and the value that membership brings. In March, we participated in a panel discussion at the First Nations Technology Council ICT Summit. What made this presentation unique was that ICIS did not speak about membership value, ICIS members did. Leeanna Rhodes of the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, Ken Poon of the City of Fort St. John, and Don Hemakumara of the Peace River Regional District talked about the challenge of sharing and acquiring data and how their ICIS memberships have facilitated collaboration leading to the resolution of this challenge. Having members volunteer and share in their satisfaction is the very best testament to ICIS membership value.
Operationally, ICIS is poised and ready for the growth that accompanies new product rollouts and increased member engagement. Our infrastructure, on all fronts, is being improved and expanded to meet and exceed this expectation.
Effective communication is paramount to sharing and measuring ICIS' progress. Our methods and tools are in a state of dynamic change to facilitate effectiveness and freshness. We look forward to receiving your feedback to ensure that this is happening.
As always, thank you for your ongoing support, trust, and participation.
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Marketing and Communications | |
By Erin Beatson, Administration Coordinator
ICIS Website
ICIS continues to communicate with our members and extend our reach by keeping the ICIS website current, fresh, relevant, and valuable. Many changes to the design and content of our website are currently underway. We are now using Google Analytics, a premiere website traffic statistics tool, for the purpose of obtaining and analyzing valuable statistics about the number of people visiting our website, where they are coming from, and what information they are accessing. These statistics are used to guide decision-making that will provide value back to our members, potential members, and the GIS community as a whole.
Hot Off the Press
This year alone, we have created and distributed over five (5) major news releases. The primary purpose of our news releases is to keep our members well informed and abreast of current issues that impact the Society and to extend our reach within the membership and GIS communities. Our news releases continue to be published weekly in the CivicInfo newsletter. Our plan is to release 3-4 new news items at the end of April, so stay tuned...
A Great Exchange
Members have spoken and we have listened. We are currently restructuring our blog to offer a single access point that will allow members to easily connect and participate in online discussions. Some of its unique features will include an engaging landing page, text, images, graphs, charts, multimedia, and other interactive elements, guest blog posts, and intelligent links. The content of our new blog will focus on initiating discussion relevant to key ICIS initiatives as well as overarching strategies and new opportunities for collaboration for your input or feedback. Our new blog is scheduled to launch in early June. | |
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BCSpatial Beta Project Automates Data Sharing in the Capital Region | |
By Paul van Nieuwkuyk, BCSpatial Project Coordinator
BCSpatial's Beta Program is rolling out in the Capital Regional District, where all parcel data producers - including regional, local and provincial governments and BC Assessment - are implementing routines to automatically publish their cadastral data to ICIS on a regular basis. The automated routines are implemented with a variety of technologies, including FME and ESRI Geoprocessing models that are native to each producer's operational environment. A key objective of the beta effort is to establish a number of standard extraction and publication templates based on these technologies that, with modest configuration, can be deployed in most ICIS member environments with minimal effort and impact.
These parcel delivery routines are also being designed to handle the conversion, where necessary, from a producer's operational data model and a minimum specification for survey parcels required by ICIS. Narrowing the focus on the data requirements has facilitated the participation and contribution of a broader range of parcel producers and has greatly leveraged standardized parcel attribution maintained by GeoBC, resulting in a tuned distributed model for collaborative parcel fabric construction.
ICIS is also busy upgrading its integration and distribution infrastructure to sustainably handle the increased data flows and to provide the integrated data products, quality assessment feedback and statistics required by members. ICIS presented its technical infrastructure at a recent FME User Meeting in Vancouver and members are encouraged to view the slide presentation here.
The CRD Beta Program is slated to wrap up at the end of June 2010, having achieved fully automated data sharing, integration and distribution for the region along with technology templates and procedures that can be rolled out province-wide and an implementation plan for the second half of the year. To date, automated data delivery routines have been deployed at View Royal, Sidney, and Oak Bay, with the remainder of the region under active development. GeoBC has partnered directly with the Township of Esquimalt to maintain survey parcel information in that jurisdiction as part of the ICF dataset, demonstrating one approach to a single-source cadastre and the value of collaboration among ICIS members.
The ICIS CivicSpatial Grant Program has become more tightly coupled with BCSpatial by directly acknowledging the automated delivery workflows under its General Funding category. Members can readily apply for this grant online to assist with the implementation of operational extraction and publication routines, making it that much easier to participate in automated data sharing that underpins the quality and and value of the province's cadastre! | |
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AddressBC - Testing 1-2-3... | |
By Ann Archibald, Program Coordinator |
As the AddressBC application development nears completion, ICIS staff are eager to get out and assist our members begin implementing BC's first central, single-source, point address registry. After getting off to a great start with two early adopters, the City of Vancouver and the Town of View Royal, the AddressBC implementation scheme has grown to compliment and leverage ICIS' BCSpatial cadastral delivery initiative and pilot implementation project within the Capital Region.
A workshop held in February for jurisdictions within the Capital Region resulted in some excellent questions on the AddressBC project and some expert advice from our Local Government members who will be the end users of the system. This workshop also yielded some willing participants for the training and testing phases of the application build.
Ten participants, representing a sample of different user groups, attended the initial training session on April 7th. Questions on managing special cases for addressing raised during training highlighted the need for further discussion on many aspects of AddressBC as members work with the data model and interface to suit their operational needs. To assist with these discussions, AddressBC's Technical Specifications, including the latest Data Model, Attribute Descriptions, and associated Look-up Tables, are available on the ICIS website and the AddressBC blog for review and comments.
Additional feedback from the training session noted that the application provides tools to accommodate a broad range of technical capacity within ICIS membership, making it easy for both large and small jurisdictions throughout BC to use and adopt the system.
After this first opportunity to work within the application, and a few more 'tweaks' to be completed by ESRI Canada, it will be time to enter into the User Acceptance Testing phases. There are two testing phases planned: UAT1 is scheduled for the end of April and the second iteration, UAT2, is planned for the end of May.
These two testing iterations and final sign off on the solution, currently projected for early June, will see ICIS' focus continue in the pilot Capital Region jurisdictions to provide early, hands-on assistance. The lessons learned through this pilot will help ICIS provide support to other jurisdictions in their implementation processes as all ICIS members become familiar with this new and exciting application.
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Town of Sidney's CivicSpatial Grant Streamlines Data Sharing | |
By Ann Archibald, Program Coordinator |
ICIS has taken a giant leap forward in its goal to facilitate streamlined data sharing by providing Local Governments with more innovative, automated tools. Sidney has been awarded a CivicSpatial grant for $1,500 that will go towards implementing one of ICIS' new processes for automated data delivery.
Under the BCSpatial initiative, Local Governments now have more options and support to fulfill their commitment to data sharing so that all ICIS members have access to the best available data.
While current, accessible data is one of ICIS' goals, another is to ensure that Local Government members also see value from ICIS. Peter Payerl, Manager of Information Services for the Town of Sidney, notes that through the CivicSpatial Grant Program "ICIS is helping local governments like Sidney automate our data delivery processes so that they can become part of the bigger picture of collaborative data sharing."
All Local Government members of ICIS are eligible for the $1,500 grant to increase the frequency of their data submissions. For more information on these new processes to streamline data delivery please check out the ICIS Data Delivery Automation Guide.
Funding for special projects that increase the accuracy of the cadastral fabric are also available. Other recently funded projects include:
Sunshine Coast Regional District- $10,000
Town of Creston- $5,500
Sandwick Waterworks District- $1,500
To find out more about ICIS' key initiatives, including BCSpatial and the CivicSpatial Grant Program, please visit the ICIS website.
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Visiting Victoria? Come visit us at the ICIS Office |
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Suite 16
1537 Hillside Ave
Victoria, BC V8T 4Y2
250.381.9295
1.866.403.0095
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