December 1, 2015
Review of the Cadcorp Public Sector User Conference Scotland 2015
Following some recent additions to its customer base in Scotland, Cadcorp moved on to Balloch on the edge of Loch Lomond for this the last of its user conferences in 2015. The event was an opportunity for public sector GIS professionals with an interest in Cadcorp technology to meet and share ideas.
Jeremy Thomas of Cadcorp opened the conference by detailing the focus for the day: how the public sector can use information technology, and geospatial technology, to achieve efficiency gains at a time of financial restraint. While the arrangements for public sector funding in Scotland differ from the rest of the UK, it was soon apparent from user presentations that the public sector north of the border is facing the same financial pressures as the rest of the UK.
Mark Brooks described how the creation of West Lothian Council out of three public bodies meant that the new council had automatically inherited six incompatible legacy GIS systems. This only changed when IT embarked on a corporate web mapping project, and Cadcorp was selected as to supply a single corporate GIS technology.
Mark described how West Lothian is now on track to share spatial data via a common spatial RDBMS. This is signalling the end to what Mark referred to as data sharing through ‘snapshotting’. Today West Lothian is deploying Cadcorp technology to provide a mix of interoperable GIS: Cadcorp Desktop for spatial analysis, data entry, application development, and web GIS administration; Web Map Editor for repeatable data entry tasks; and Web Map Layers for quick access to data interrogation.
Sally Newton described the equivalent journey taken by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA). A number of years ago the authority took the decision to extend basic GIS capability to all staff. The driver was to maximise the return from their investment in spatial data. The solution took the form of an easy to use interactive mapping application made available on everyone’s desktop. Sally described how LLTNPA evaluated the relative merits of different GIS technologies: open source, off-the-shelf, and hybrid. She described why the park authority ultimately selected Cadcorp’s technology: because it combined the security of off-the-shelf, supplier supported software with the flexibility of supporting in-house and third-party development.
Like West Lothian, the park authority now combines the use of Web Map Editor for repeatable data entry, with Web Map Layers. However, the authority differs from West Lothian by developing Web Map Layers as an internet application for providing information to national park visitors. We heard from Sally that one of the consequences of rolling out simple web mapping – is that LLTNPA GIS staff now have more time to work on systems support and development, and more time to focus on more complex mapping and analytical tasks.
In a presentation entitled ‘Internet mapping goes mobile’ Jeremy Thomas argued the case for ensuring that public sector web mapping applications are designed specifically for mobile devices, and not repurposed as an afterthought. He pointed to the growing evidence that where channel shift has failed it is often down to (a) an organisation not tailoring services to a visitor’s location and/or (b) not optimising services to run on mobile devices. In a live demonstration it was shown how Web Map Layers can be used to address both of these common failings.
Cadcorp’s Gary Randle described the circumstances in which an organisation might deploy a hosted solution as a way to deliver GIS services better, faster, and/or cheaper. Drawing on examples from Cadcorp customers, he described how the components of a hosted GIS solution can comprise a mix of hardware, data, software, and services in different combinations. He observed that as customers are becoming more familiar with hosting, they are beginning to mix hosted and on-premises solutions, and said he expects the demand for Cadcorp’s hosted service to increase over the next twelve months.
Jeremy Thomas introduced the latest Cadcorp product – Notice BoardTM. Its significance is that it can greatly improve a user’s experience in visiting a public sector website. It does so by providing answers to common questions all in one place; hiding the complexity of a website; personalising content to reflect a visitor’s location, and by optimising the experience for mobile devices.
Keith MacBean underlined the strengths of Notice Board by describing how Inverclyde will use the software to simplify what today is a complex operation for website visitors: establishing which recycling containers to put out on which days. Until recently, visitors to the Inverclyde website could only answer this question by downloading calendars and cross-reference these calendars with complex mapping and addressing information. Keith made the point that citizens want a simple answer to a simple question and ought not to have to carry out complicated spatial searching themselves. Notice Board provides the interface they require.
Ronan McGarry provided an update on the One Scotland Mapping Agreement. Not surprisingly, centre stage were recent enhancements to the OS flagship product: MasterMap Topography Layer. Some of the enhancements he described include the addition of new descriptive terms, the addition of height attributes to buildings in urban areas, and the creation of an OS MasterMap Sites Layer. He also provided attendees with an update on the progress of the Content Improvement Programme in Scotland. The presentation wasn’t limited entirely to MasterMap Topography. It also embraced the new Water Layer in MasterMap Networks, and additions to the Open Data product stack.
The conference concluded with an ever-popular ‘tips and tricks’ session in which Cadcorp presales consultants shared with the audience some of the less well-documented but powerful web mapping capabilities of the Cadcorp software suite.
This was the first time that Cadcorp has run a conference specifically for the public sector in Scotland. Based on the positive feedback, an open public sector Scottish event looks set to be a permanent feature of the Cadcorp conference programme.
