The next step in moving forward with enterprise GIS is to establish a three-year budget for the department, for approval by the stakeholders. I have been corresponding with other parishes' GIS and IT professionals to see what their budgets look like. This is not as straightforward as it might seem, because each parish implements GIS differently. For instance, several parishes are in the utility business, which does not apply to Iberia Parish.
In addition, it has not been easy to nail down initial start-up server design and costs. There are so many ways to do this, that it's been hard to determine which is best for Iberia Parish. Our GIS Technical Committee for Implementation has met once, with e-mail followups, for the purpose of determining optimal implementation. The network administrators and GIS users on the committee have been very helpful and generous with their time, sharing technical information dealing with these topics. Costs have been determined for almost all the server hardware and software components. It looks like we are on target with the grant funding available for the startup.
The next challenge is to budget for long-term projects, including personnel and software development costs. The same resources that have worked with me on the server questions are providing valuable insights in these areas.
