This is being accomplished by tying cities directly into the County fiber WAN, by making available simple GIS workstations in Public Libraries and by providing easy access to GIS data sets and software via County libraries and the web. By making the municipalities and taxpayers partners in the process, Seminole County has facilitated a low cost technology transfer to the cities, standardized many data layers and core attributes among agencies, improved data transfer between local governments, and improved the quality of data maintained throughout a number of member agencies. Agreeing to Agree Seminole County Property Appraiser started a GIS program utilizing ArcInfo in 1993 with the basic goal of automating parcel base maps for internal use. At the urging of the Property Appraiser, the County started its own program in late 1994 by initiating a needs assessment, conducting pilot studies, and by providing a staff member to assist the Property Appraiser in completing the parcel base. The parcel basemap conversion was completed in early 1996.
Government agencies are like any collection of people.
They are used to doing their own thing, in their own way, and in their own time, and getting these diverse groups to pull together for the common good is often as difficult as herding cats. Once this arrangement was in place internally, interlocals were put in place between the BCC GIS and our seven member municipalities and regional planning agencies. These agreements with the municipalities and others stipulate that the County will provide, for free, any GIS data from our library in a usable format to them, and provide expertise as needed for its use. In return the cities agree they will build their own GIS operations on this provided base, use compatible software, and return information created by them back to the County in a similar format. The County will in turn place this information in its GIS Library for general access.