Latest Contributions by KristinThorpe1

As my city's first GIS person and as someone near the bottom of the totem pole,  I also struggle greatly with trying to get upper management to see the benefits of a geospatial asset management system....and actually use it and/or enforce its use on their employees. There is a lot of "we are too busy to do something new", "we have always done it this way", and "we hired you to do mapping so we will just come to you if we need something". We had a subscription to a cloud-based asset management/work order system for a year and ended up never getting it off the ground despite many collaborative meetings, and trainings. Everyone is simply too busy doing the same old inefficient processes and putting out fires to do something new or even think proactively. It is a vicious circle that we will never pull out of until management or city council mandates that we have an asset tracking system. I have finally gotten some departments to start using web maps by making guesses at what they need the most (based on casual office conversations and listening to people's frustrations), and just making the web application and showing them how to use it (no more than 10 min trainings to not cut into their busy day). I usually deploy web apps to the younger or more tech savvy employees first, and when the other employees see them using it, sometimes they want access as well. This is a slow process though, and can take years (I have been working on this for over 4 years and only recently has web app usage started to catch on).  Once I have a few apps that I know people are using, I make a hub site for that department as a one-stop-shop. Only users from that department can access the hub to keep sensitive data safe, and certain web apps are also restricted to just people in the department as another layer of safety. Right now I have a hub site for the Public, one for the Planning and Engineering department, one for Public Works, and one for the Fire Department. I add things to the site in the order they would be most useful. First the web apps they would use the most, then other other web apps that they may need, but not every day, and then PDF maps that they can print or download and aren't available as a web app. Finally, I include a section with dashboards that contain summary information and then links to external web mapping applications and sites that they may find useful.  ... View more