Local Government, Technology

Fourth largest US city signs GIS deal

By Alice Kok | 1 August 2008

The fourth-largest city in the United States, Houston, Texas, has signed a three-year enterprise licence agreement (ELA) with ESRI that will provide unlimited deployments of current ESRI geographic information system (GIS) software. This agreement will streamline GIS software procurement and administration, simplify budget management, and facilitate GIS software distribution to staff throughout the organisation.

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“This is terrific news for the City of Houston,” said Max Samfield, deputy director and Chief Technology Officer for the city. “For the past two years, we have been preparing our organisation for true enterprise GIS and bridging a tremendous number of data assets. We’ve made a significant investment in data preparation, infrastructure expansion, and application development to bring an enterprise-wide GIS to fruition.”

“An important part of that implementation process is ensuring that city employees have simplified access to the tools they need to build and use the system,” he continued. “Putting GIS software in their hands with the ELA assures they can acquire essential tools while nearly eliminating administrative burdens such as conducting complex internal license audits.”

Other advantages of the ELA include

• Improved access to GIS development tools
• Increased ability to create data replication processes
• Enhanced data sharing

“We are delighted to support the City of Houston with this new agreement,” said Christopher Thomas, ESRI’s government industry solutions manager. “This ELA will eliminate time-consuming efforts to secure critical GIS software and instead will allow the city to focus on achieving its vision of an organisation-wide GIS to better serve citizens and staff.”

The core technology for the ELA is ESRI’s ArcGIS software, which is an open and interoperable technology platform that provides spatial analysis, geographic data management, advanced visualisation and cartographic capabilities, and more. ArcGIS software is a complete system to author, serve, and use geographic information. The technology gets geographic information to those who need it, including analysts, decision makers, field staff, and the public, through its support of mobile, web, and desktop clients.