5 Ways to Build Your GIS Business Case

The following post highlights our latest guide on GIS, The Mapping Revolution: Incorporating Geographic Information Systems in Government. The report features case studies and best practices from the Census Bureau, Geoplatform.gov and United States Department of Agriculture and insights from Esri President, Jack Dangermond. (Download PDF or view online below). This blog post is an excerpt from the section, 5 Ways to Build Your GIS Business Case.

GIS is transforming the way government agencies engage with citizens and meet their mission. There are dozens of applications of GIS in the public sector, in our latest guide we highlight five benefits you can use to start building your business case for GIS.

Improved decision-making by government officials

GIS allows government officials to detect patterns, trends, and new relationships otherwise not known. Through spatial analysis, government leaders can take a holistic view of a policy, program, or process to understand how to improve their decisions based on a multitude of factors. To make a proper decision, agencies must look at a variety of regulations, existing programs, and policies in order to make a decision. In many cases, this information is difficult to understand in isolation, and the data needs to be looked at through a variety of factors. GIS can simplify complex data, integrate a variety of sources of information, and summarize complex information when viewed spatially.

Instantaneous collaboration through the cloud

Through the cloud, organizations can share maps, data and pertinent information to improve collaboration efforts. In today’s world, collaboration and capitalizing on resources is essential to improving how the public sector delivers services.

Improved transparency for citizen engagement

GIS provides increased transparency and accountability for citizens. With the combination of the cloud, sharing of data, maps, and pertinent information, GIS is allowing increased engagement with citizens and more succinctly showing trends in the community visually, which enables a more constructive conversation for government employees.

Improved allocation of resources and planning

By viewing data spatially, government agencies can easily track and view underserved communities and use this information to allocate resources more efficiently, reform policies, or spot distressing trends about communities and offer remediation strategies.

Improved communications during a crisis

GIS can help communities plan and respond to a crisis. With GIS, communities can define emergency routes, know location and status of critical buildings during a crisis, and allocate the proper resources for response. With GIS, organizations can prepare, respond and recover from crisis more efficiently than ever before.

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	When Esri was founded in 1969, it realized even then that geographic information system (GIS) technology could make a difference in society. GIS helps people to solve problems at local, regional, national, and global scales. Access maps and apps at ArcGIS.com. Be sure to check out all the GIS resources produced by Esri and GovLoop.