One-Man GIS Armies? Advice or experience appreciated....

[CoryPedersen]

Hi all,

Just coming back from the ESRI UC 2014.  Tons of information, tons of exciting new technology.  But the problem is, how to implement these within our organization?

I work for a small government ministry as the sole full time GIS professional.  I do everything from basic mapping, to managing our enterprise GIS for over 150 users, including 15 servers for SDE, ArcGIS Server, Geocortex Essentials, IIS and a few pilot web apps.  We've reached the point that there is NO WAY to move our program forward without more human resources, and we've started to lose some functionality within our GIS because I have not been able to keep up some of our legacy customizations and tools as the technology changes.

As I see it, there really are only two options to move my organization forward:

1.  Somehow (and suggestions are welcome) get more resources.  I need to demonstrate the benefit of more GIS resources meeting a need within our organization, simply, effectively, and IMMEDIATELY.  Any ideas?

2.  Cut our current in-house solution and look only at COTS solutions.  This of course will have cost associated with it, but I seem to be able to spend more money on "things" instead of contracts or staffing. Some of our more specialized abilities will be cut, but I should be able to reach more people with workable solutions.  A bit of the 80-20 rule coming into effect.  I worry about this, as once we abandon our in-house enterprise infrastructure, we might not be able to get it back in the future.

Any advice from current or former one-man GIS armies is appreciated!

Cory

Edmonton, Canada

[PETERONDEAU]

I'm also a one man show, I would suggest you try to identify tasks that can be outsourced or transferred to another dept. and focus on the core GIS things.

It sounds like you might be providing services to other departments, can you ask them to provide some funding? Thins has worked for me, my Facilities dept. purchased the software and hardware, my dept provided the manpower and pays all ongoing costs. I am working on making a pitch to our Safety dept to provide some funding in return for me upgrading their dispatch and reporting procedure.

Everyone you provide services to is a customer, reach out to them and find out are you saving them money, time, are you providing them with capabilities they wouldn't have had?