Congratulations you ARE the GIS Department

So you find yourself as the GIS department. Perhaps you are in the Public Works department of a small city, or your part of a small technology firm that decided to expand into this GIS thing. Now What?

What are you going to map? Water lines, Rivers, parcels, gas stations what ever it is you are going to need data. Are you going to create the data yourself, did someone give you a cd of data or are you going to get the data from the internet? Are you going to need base data? Water lines look pretty bland without some parcels or imagery underneath them. Maps that get your point across easily and quickly will do wonders for your customers.

How are you going to map it? ArcView, QGIS, Google Earth, you have no idea? GIS Systems run from free to Holy Crap. Whichever one you are using get to know it. Most all GIS software has a community of people using it that will be more than happy to get you going.

Who are your customers? Are you giving maps to the local nonprofit so they can decide which park benches to paint? Are you outfitting a fleet of field workers with maps so they don’t have to carry outdated paper maps with them all the time? Complicated maps that contain too much information are easy to create. Slim it down and just send out the basics.

These are just a few of the big picture questions you need to ask yourself as you develop your GIS Plan. You need to know where your going before your can map your way.