MidMOGIS collects data for local expansion while helping to save tax dollars.
Did you know that the City of Jefferson and Cole County provide services to over 77,000 residents and businesses, such as business and construction permitting, planning, road and bridge assessment, zoning, wastewater collection and treatment, and emergency/disaster response? With these offerings, more than 750 dedicated employees manage more than 400 square miles of service area to maintain and increase the quality of life for citizens.
The GIS (Geographic Information System) services team supports the work of our colleagues by managing the spatial data that represents the city and county on the MidMOGIS website (developed through a partnership of the City of Jefferson and Cole County in 2006). The GIS is composed of an enterprise portal and a separate system with a number of servers and StructuredQuery Language (SQL) databases.
But now, much of the daily inspection and assessment work of our colleagues can be completed through GIS work order apps instead of paper-based processes. The apps instantly capture the information employees input, then display it through operational dashboards to supervisors. These GIS web apps are a pairing of the virtual and physical world, and they provide the most current data available for reporting work completed and issues detected. This makes location patterns visible for more informed decisions, removing redundancies, and allowing MidMOGIS to be more efficient and better stewards of tax dollars.
The increasing demand for location-based intelligence is no longer exclusive to government agencies. That is why the MidMOGIS Hub is open to local users who want to find data relative to their lives. With a simple address search, users can find property information, school attendance areas, city limit status, local legislative ward and commission districts, and even park trail information. Local users can also avoid traffic delays by checking daily road closures and winter road conditions on the Jefferson City Road Conditions app. The web map even helps with safe travel planning, and it includes links to spatial data on the Hub site in PDF format, such as the latest Cole County, Missouri plat book, and street and ward maps.
The challenge is striving to maintain a “virtual twin” of the physical environment. GIS data is managed, shared, and updated daily to keep up with rapidly changing spatial GIS data. Offering it in a user-friendly format for our citizens and employees is our goal. The service team plans to continue innovating GIS solutions for internal and external users so every department can be more efficient and transparent, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries.
Internal users are encouraged to take ownership of and manage their own data. The service team will continue to invite and include data shared with us from local communities and collaborating service providers. From the perspective of a GIS professional, a solution can be found starting with just one location.
