Bringing GIS Awesomeness to TAGITM – TAGITM GIS Committee

By Shane McDaniel, CIO for the City of Seguin

TAGITM has big news to share on the GIS front! If you’ve visited the “Get Involved” page on the website recently you may have noticed there’s a little sumpin’ going on. The TAGITM board has been working diligently behind the scenes for more than a year now to incorporate GIS professionals, technology, and vendors into the organization. You may remember at last April’s conference the City of Frisco presented their awesome GIS powered public safety “SAFER” program. What many do not know is that we were oh so close to having Esri as part of the annual conference as well. Tony “Gonzo” Gonzalez and yours truly also hosted a GIS roundtable to discuss the incredible value and benefits we have both been privy to experience by having GIS under the umbrella of IT in our respective organizations. It was a great start to say the least.

Upon meeting the goals for GIS at the annual conference, the board doubled down and decided to move forward with providing more GIS content to make the TAGITM conference attractive to local government GIS professionals. We currently have Esri on the hook to participate in our next conference. We spun up the new GIS committee to have true GIS professionals lead the narrative on the content they want to see. The new committee will collaborate with the education committee to develop a full GIS track, and we are partnering with SCAUG to ensure we can do just that! To take it one step further because we are awesome like that, TAGITM has also committed to hosting a one-day GIS event at some point in 2024. I am a big believer if you’re going to do something then do it right, and I am proud of this organization for being all in on GIS.

You may be wondering how or why we are so gung-ho to incorporate GIS into TAGITM. I can speak to this from my perspective, and it’s simple really. Two years ago, I never had anything to do with GIS outside of spending years routinely harassing my friend Neil Rose, the GIS Manager for the City of New Braunfels. What changed for me was when we stood up a GIS division under IT in the City of Seguin. We hired our first dedicated GIS employee in 2021, and it took off like you would not believe. We saved the city over 100k almost immediately by moving our legacy licensing into an enterprise agreement with Esri, which opened the door to rebuild our GIS architecture from the ground up. We did what we termed the “GIS road show” with every department to introduce GIS, establish the relationship with our newly hired manager, talk about the capabilities, show pretty maps, and educate staff on the business process for support. It worked like a champ! Next thing you know we were presenting to the chamber, the rotary, and our fire department and grants manager basically declared GIS was the best thing since sliced bread.

As we got further along in our GIS program, we started earning recognition. CompTIA took notice and gave the city a solutions award. This past year, TAGITM awarded Seguin GIS an excellence award, and in August we flew to Los Angeles to receive the CIO100 designation on behalf of the city for how GIS elevated transparency in the community. Our GIS Manager Travis Acklin was recognized as a “Texas GIS Hero” for his contributions to the profession. Pretty amazing, and as an extra neato burrito it was on his birthday no less…wow!

All that aside, my favorite thing about Seguin’s nearly two-year GIS journey is this… At the 2023 Esri UC, the annual mecca for GIS attended by some 18k GIS professionals from around the globe, Seguin had a map shared during the opening keynote given by Esri founder Jack Dangermond. On that screen was incredible work from GIS professionals across the world, to include Hong Kong, Qatar, the Czech Republic, and the City of Seguin. It was unbelievably cool, and it is absolutely true that I tagged the billionaire Esri founder on social media blasts when it happened. He didn’t engage, but we’re not the kind of folks to give up around here!

Because of the success of our program, we have gone from 1 to 3.5 GIS FTE’s in two short years. I consider that a tip of the cap from city management for the incredible value GIS is now providing our city. I have witnessed firsthand the power of GIS, and I want everyone to know what it could do for our respective organizations. At the beginning, Tony Gonzalez was the TAGITM president and got the GIS ball rolling, and current president Chris Lee has taken the next step by establishing the GIS committee and leading the vision to provide a full GIS track at the conference.

Yours truly was asked to lead the committee initially. Once it gets going, I will hand it over to a true GIS professional, so GIS has a voice on the board. Future goals include establishing a GIS listserv, building the GIS presence within TAGITM, and developing relationships with GIS tech vendors to ensure they are represented at our events. It’s a long game, but I see this being a winner for the entirety of the organization. When IT and GIS are in lockstep, we can achieve unmitigated success together. TAGITM recognized this and jumped in with both feet, and I believe in that vision! So here we are off and running with the next step in TAGITM’s GIS journey. Many thanks to the awesome GIS folks that either volunteered or were volun-told they were supporting this. We have a great opportunity on our hands to do something cool. I can’t wait to see how it turns out!