Sheboygan is a lakeside city that maintains a steady population of about 51 000.
The city of Sheboygan is described as a great place to live and just as great a place to visit. It is a progressive city but maintains its good old-fashioned small town flavor. Sheboygan enjoys many accolades normally reserved for larger communities – Sheboygan has been ranked by Reader’s Digest as the best place in the entire USA to raise a family & as one of the top places to live & retire my Money Magazine. Sheboygan also boasts some of the top golf courses in the USA according to Golf Digest & as such hosts many PGA championships that bring in over 150,000 visitors to each event.

Because of all the great features of the city noted above, it’s critical that the city be able to effectively support the activities of its residents & visitors as efficiently as possible.

BUSINESS PROBLEMS
 

Basic land data are locked in an AS400 which severely limited data access. Each employee had to submit a data request to the AS400 dept. which introduces delays & the potential for misunderstandings, data loss & data corruption. Although the City of Sheboygan experienced these issues with an AS4000 system, the same issues arose when if database of records is SQL Server, Oracle Sybase, FoxPro, etc.

If the data is not in AS400, then it was in other formats, paper maps, Word documents, Excel files, etc. This meant that either only a handful of city employees had access to the data or again, city employees needed to submit requests for copies of the data. Not only does this cause a delay in getting the data to the requestor, but it also interrupts the requester’s activities.

To access the very basic if publicly available land data, city residents are required to go to city hall to request information/paper documents. Most often there is a waiting period which requires the resident to make a second trip back to city hall to pick up the information requested.
 
THE PDR SOLUTION
 

The first phase of the PDR solution was to implement an internal GIS that’s accessible to city employess only. This application is open to all city employees & does not require any special logins/authentication since users are already authenticated on the city network. City employees can now consume the data by either:

1. Find an area of interest on the map, then retrieve the information you’re interested in from the map
2. Use search tools to find the information you’re interested in, then see where it is in the map


 
In additional to basic maps, the application also incorporates the following tools
   > Search Tools - Find the corresponding records from the data base, displays the tabular data but also provides a “zoom to” that                                  land parcel on the map. This gives the viewer both the tubular information about a parcel as well as a focused                                  region in the map to know where the parcel resides in the city. With a single click of the mouse, users can zoom
                                 into or out of the map to get a more/less focused view of the parcel.

   > Theming - Maps are themed to easily visualize information classification. Different colors fill patterns, line weights & line styles
                          can be utilized to distinguish feature categories.

   > Buffering - Use buffering tools to fins all parcels that lie within a certain region

   > Reporting - HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel integration such as printing out a detailed parcel report

   > Viewing Tools - View tabular & graphical information such as parcel reports, school reports, view the locations of city features
                                     and services

 

SOLUTION BENEFITS

 
All of the tools and feature of the GIS will enhance data sharing and analysis, which ultimately leads to:
Operational efficiency
Improvements in decision making process
Enhancements in reporting for government compliance
Reduced costs
Better service to constituents
Maximize the capability of the staff