Local Government Information Model v. ArcGIS Solutions Deployment Tool

[JoshWhite]

I'd like to know others opinion on Esri's apparent abandonment of the former Local Government Information Model (LGIM).  I used this model to update my own feature classes periodically.  Now suddenly this Solutions Deployement Tool has taken over.  I tried to use this new tool, and of course, it only works using Pro which I can't stand and don't like what I see.  I don't want to develop an out of the box solution that Esri thinks will work for every local government everywhere.  I want to make sure I have all the new updates to the former LGIM.  I'm still not convinced that Pro is an improvement over ArcMap in anyway and I don't appreciate Esri abandoning products simply because it suits them.  

[ScottOppmann]

Josh -

Thought it might be valuable to provide some context so you know the ArcGIS Solutions for Local Government are evolving. Would be glad to get on a call to discuss more fully.  

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.   The Solution Deployment Tool is one step in a longer journey to deliver ArcGIS Solutions with ArcGIS organizations.

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. 

[JoshWhite]

Thanks Scott, part of my frustration was the fact that I couldn't find the information you just posted on the website and it appeared to me that the LGIM was going away.  I am in an organization where we still host our own data/services and I don't foresee that changing any time soon.  I use ArcGIS Online to publish web apps/maps but have chosen not to have a Portal per se.  I have tried some of the solutions but have often found that I either don't have enough of the required data to make this work or it just doesn't work with the data I do have.  Schema differences can cause a lot of issues and having the Local Government portion of the website used to be very helpful to me.  I have found the Esri website to be more and more difficult to use over the past several years.  This may simply be due to the overwhelming wealth of information on it but it can be frustrating to not be able to find what you are looking for quickly because it has been moved or the name has been changed.  An example of my issue was when I tried to find the Solutions Deployment Tool, a simple search did not yield the results that I was looking for and I had a dig further to find exactly what I needed.  Something that Esri could do that would help me, is provide some sort of email blast newsletter that tells of these sorts of changes.  I know this probably sounds like whining about change and perhaps it is to an extent but I often feel lost in the sea of Esri customers.  

[bsanders69]

My main concern is that the LGIM data model for the users that do not want to use a solution in a box available online only.  The data model shrinks as a Solution is created and many of those solutions only work online.  These solutions are nice, but as someone else has said on this thread, they might fit most, but not all of the users of that solution.  Some of us in local government pay a lot of money for a RDBMS in order to support other applications for the Departments within the organization that are not GIS friendly at all and definitely not packaged Solutions from AGO on inaccessible clouds.  Police, Fire chiefs, utility Department heads, Planning and zoning, Engineering, etc. have their own ideas of what they want/require to be done and how they use it and with what software.  I agree completely with Josh's comments, so I will leave it at that.