The Request For Proposals. There may be more involved than you think. Are you ready? Is your agency ready enough to succeed? Will you be getting the most bang for your buck? The bulk of the expense in GIS in local Government is associated with data acquisition and maintenance; some studies put it in excess of 80%. Free data will get you started but in the long run generally has proven to be expensive and insufficient to support the typical demands of the day to day applications required by enterprise wide coordinated local government. Sooner or later the RFP process is used to acquire new, as well as maintain existing, GIS data. In both instances the RFP process is typically seen as the “hard part.” Unfortunately that is typically not the case. As a result local government is typically not ready for what follows which can lead to data degradation. In the time allowed this presentation will focus on the RFP processes, timelines, mechanical highlights and a summary of the must do’s and must not do’s, with questions and answers at the end.
Mr. Sweet began serving Local Government in 1976. He became an advocate for GIS in local government in 1982. He has received many awards from agencies, cabinet members, governors and the white house for his application of information technologies that promote cost effectiveness in local government. In 1994 he pioneered the “locally independent yet regionally coordinated implementation” of GIS in a 6,500 square mile target area in Pennsylvania. Utilizing his unique approach to coordination, leveraged partnerships and cost sharing, 50, 100, and 200 scale state of the art GIS deployments were made possible at local government levels. This effort resulted in savings of 68% while increasing the scale from 400, and achieving a leveraging ratio of over 10:1. In 1999 he was invited to testify on spatial technologies in local government before the U.S. House Committee for Government reform. In 2000/2001 he again demonstrated the value of coordinated approaches utilizing Aerial Photography and photogrammetric methodologies to support data acquisition activities in another 3500 square miles in contiguous counties in Pennsylvania. Mr. Sweet provides leveraged partnership based solutions that continue to refine the locally independent regionally coordinated deployment of GIS including coordination, training and educational activities within the public, private and academic sectors. Mr. Sweet created Sweet Solutions in 1999. Sweet Solutions is a partnership based consulting business to pursue and perfect the locally independent deployment of Geographic Information Systems in regionally coordination fashion. These efforts have included providing activities with Environmental Systems Research Institute Incorporated, Aerial Data Reduction Associates Inc, BAE Systems, U.S. Filter/Chester Environmental Engineers, T3 Global Strategies, Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski, DigitalGlobe and various offices of the Army Corps of Engineers. In the springs of 2000 and 2001 these efforts led to utilizing Aerial Photography and photogrammetric methodologies to support data acquisition activities in 21 contiguous counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In particular Mr. Sweet provides services to the Pennsylvania Geographic Information Systems Consortium (PaGIS) serving as their Chief Operations Officer.
Jim Frank is a GIS professional with ten years of experience. He is currently the GIS Manager for Allegheny County in the Department of Computer Services. As technical lead, he and his group provide support services including general technical support, web development, desktop customization, and data modeling and storage. Jim has previously worked as a GIS technician/developer, systems administrator, project manager, and services consultant most recently at Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in their Philadelphia regional office. He holds a degree from West Chester University of Pennsylvania in Geography