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Strathcona can now identify patterns across the county, and modify schedules and budgets to prepare for the coming year. "Without adopting a mobile solu- tion, we simply wouldn't have been able to comply with this new legisla- tion. Access to real-time data means that work is never duplicated and the entire organization is aware of the latest ongo- ing activity," notes Sean Smyth, GIS analyst for Strathcona County. Measuring Program Effectiveness Maintaining consistent, mapped civic address records is essential to delivering municipal services. The Re- gional Municipality of York addresses this challenge using GIS. With a yearly population growth of 30,000, demands for address information in the region is frequently expanding. In response, they developed a robust address locator that supports various programs throughout the community. The centralized address point da- tabase includes common street name information for roads, address points, and parcels. The region used GIS to im- prove the geocoding process, so that the system can automatically reconcile mis- spelled, nonstandard, or alternate street names. When users search for a par- ticular address record, the locator yields a more than 90 percent address match rate. The system serves as the backbone of environmental programs such as Water for Tomorrow, which offers resi- dents rebates on water-efficient toilets and rain barrels. To analyze results, the region's Geomatics Branch geocodes thousands of records and creates density maps that display demographic charac- teristics of the program's participants. This helps the region determine optimal sites to promote water-efficient tools. "GIS is a valuable system for in- creasing productivity," says John Hou- weling, Geomatics Director at York Re- gion. "Through automated geocoding, we can produce data and maps showing households participating in the region's programs in a matter of hours rather than weeks. This allows us to moni- tor the effectiveness of our programs and guide future projects to ensure that we're delivering the right services where they'll make the most impact." As a next step, the region's environ- mental services department initiated a pilot project to evaluate actual water consumption patterns in communities across the region based on geocoded addresses. Moving Services Online Since GIS technology has developed rapidly to support all platforms – corpo- rate networks, individual desktops, web, mobile devices, and the virtual cloud – it is a viable system for modernizing municipal processes, defining new ef- ficient service delivery and governance models, and making services environ- mentally sound. Consider New Brunswick, where mining exploration is a key industry. To promote sustainable mining, they replaced their traditional ground staking process with an online map staking sys- tem. The system increases government transparency by providing public access to information about land staking activi- ties in their community. To create this system, the province merged their mineral title acquisition and administration system and their re- source allocation mineral management system with GIS. Through the online system, prospectors worldwide can now access maps, search land, and register for their prospecting licence without leaving their home or office. They can also view rivers, streams, and other features to determine where to locate a claim and overlay geology to pinpoint geological hotspots. Once a land acqui- sition is confirmed, they can make a se- cure online payment and the new claim is represented on a web map. The new online map staking system has created greater administrative ef- ficiencies for the government and indus- try. It has streamlined the entire claim acquisition process, and enables faster resolution of title conflicts, as well as rapid permit and payment processing. Another example is the City of Aird- rie, Alberta, which moved to an online, virtually paperless census collection system that has reduced annual costs by nearly 80 percent and increased produc- tivity by 50 percent. The city equipped enumerators with ruggedized tablets that allow them to access live GIS maps from the cor- porate network while in the field. To overcome security concerns, a personal identification number (PIN) system was implemented that processes municipal addresses and creates eight-character id numbers. The PIN numbers are hand- delivered to residents who are then given three weeks to fill out the online census. After this time, enumerators go door to door to the outstanding ad- dresses. By 2011, 55 percent of residents were using the online system, reducing the amount of field enumeration by over 50 percent. The city now conducts its census collection for only $20,000, or $1.42 per address, as compared to other similarly sized cities that spend over $100,000, or up to $7 per address. "Moving to the online census sys- tem has greatly enhanced efficiency for enumerators and keeps our city's de- mographic data current. Our web-based process has also cut field enumeration by half, providing significant savings on travel costs, as well as reducing our Since GIS technology has developed rapidly to support all platforms – corporate networks, individual desktops, web, mobile devices, and the virtual cloud – it is a viable system for modernizing municipal processes. 18 Municipal World March 2012

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