Bob / Skyler -
Let me take a minute to highlight the changes that have been occurring with the Local Government Information Model (LGIM) because I think this context will help local government GIS professionals understand the changes we made in 2016 and where we are heading with this information model in 2017.
With the emergence of ArcGIS organizations (online and on premise), we have been pivoting away from a single data model for local governments. We never intended the LGIM to be a “standard” for local governments. GIS professionals can configure the LGIM to fit their unique organizational needs. The information model is a living data model that evolves as new maps and apps are added to the ArcGIS for Local Government solution; and ArcGIS evolves in ways that simplify the deployment of these solution offerings.
The LGIM has historically been supplied as a geodatabase schema. At the time of the LGIM’s inception, this was the most popular way for local governments to store data in ArcGIS. Delivering the LGIM as a geodabase also provided a foundation for the ArcGIS for Local Government solutions and helped you organize your data so you could quickly deploy the solution offerings. But with today’s popularity of hybrid WebGIS implementations, local governments are frequently using both geodatabases and hosted feature services. Now, many of the ArcGIS for Local Government solutions use hosted feature services solely and we are sharing these feature layer designs in the ArcGIS for Local Government Service Catalogs so they can be used to create new hosted feature services in your ArcGIS organization. And with the release of the ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool, many ArcGIS for Local Government maps and apps can be now be quickly deployed in your organization without having to construct the solution offering manually.
Finally, the Local Government Information Model isn't going anywhere. We still plan on maintaining it and evolving the content included as we add new maps and apps to the ArcGIS for Local Government solution. But you will see (the March 2017 release was the first step) us start to refine the content included in the model so it generally includes content that would naturally be managed / used / analyzed in ArcGIS Desktop.
More detailed notes on the changes we made can be found in the release notes. Hope this context helps and feel free to let me know if you have any further questions.
Scott
