GIS Steering Committee

“Where People Count” MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS 1000 Civic Center Drive, Niles, Illinois 60714 Telephone (847) 588-8000 Fax (847) 588-8050 GIS Steering Committee Meeting May 20, 2010 Co-Chairs: Andrew Przybylo – Trustee George Van Geem – Village Manager Persons in attendance: Bob Callero Mayor Steve Cusick MIS Dept. Mousa Nazzal Engineering Dept. Chuck Ostman Community Development Dept. Bob Pilat Public Services Andrew Przybylo Trustee Bill Shaw MIS Dept. Andrew Vitale MIS Dept. Rich Wlodarski Community Development Dept. The meeting was called to order at 8:00 a.m. The minutes of the April 22, 2010 meeting were approved. Agenda Item #1 – Old Business – Project Updates Monument Re-calibration A.Vitale reported that the re-calibration of the monuments is complete. We have received the data packet from Adrian. M. Nazzal presented a copy of the final product. A. Vitale changed the monument data that he represents on our maps. He and S. Cusick will update Atlas later today. B. Pilat will post the PDFs on the Internet, making the monument information available to all with Internet access. We have 26 monuments. A. Vitale has more confidence in the monument points than previously. It was noted that the information on the website is secure. Information can be accessed, not changed. Users will be able to download each individual sheet for each monument, or all of them as one packet. S. Cusick will look into creating a link between the monuments on the Atlas map and the webpage. Parcel & Assessment Data Update A.Vitale and S. Cusick have almost finished the process of inputting the new parcel and assessment data from Cook County. They hope to finish today. Agenda Item #2 – Departmental Projects Sewer & Water Mapping Update A.Vitale reported that he and M. Nazzal have gone over the last of the water questions, have received as-builts for them and have put most of them in. He is still working on the Public Services building; he is putting in the last of the water and sewer. He is concerned about the water first because that is the last site before he will be ready to print new atlases. Water is just about complete. Regarding sewer, he has not received any new pages, but he has received a couple of other as- builts that he has incorporated. The as-builts we used for water have a lot of sewer information on them; he has included them as part of the process. But he has not received any additional sewer pages from Tom Polcyn’s group in the last month. As they come, he will continue to update them. A.Vitale asked M. Nazzal to let him know how many copies of the atlas Public Services needs. C. Ostman needs only one copy. Atlas Updates (Map and New Search) A.Vitale updated the most current sewer and water information. He and S. Cusick will update planimetric data at the same time as parcels and addresses today. We should have planimetric data on Atlas in addition to ArcView. The most current water and sewer information will be up as far as the map side is concerned. B. Shaw recapped that adding the rest of the planimetric means that, while we have had the building layer, we will now have the sidewalks, driveways, pavement edges, road edges, curbs and parking lots. When this data is added to Atlas later today, we will have not only met but surpassed our goal of providing our own version of the Consortium’s online tool. Atlas will continue to default to the aerial photo. One day, B. Shaw hopes that his team will be able to allow users to customize their own views of Atlas, so that it will look the way they want it to look upon opening. B. Shaw demonstrated how to access Atlas - either click on the blue Atlas icon on the Village of Niles home webpage or go to https://maps.vniles.com. He then reviewed many features of Atlas, including the secure information, and highlighted the newest feature – People. An employee may access the secure information by logging on in the same way he accesses his email. 2 Trustee Przybylo asked about the counter, located on the bottom of the Atlas home page. S. Cusick responded that that figure indicates how many people have visited Atlas. We can only know who is using it if they log in, i.e. employees, trustees. We track not only how many times Atlas is visited, but what sections of Atlas are being viewed. But there is no way of knowing how many visitors to the site are Niles residents and there is no way to asses the popularity of this site with the average resident. It was also noted that there is no way for us to know how many residents have Internet access. Knowing the time and resources it took to create Atlas, Trustee Przybylo would like to know how popular it is and how much it is appreciated by the citizens who paid for it. C. Ostman said it has reduced the number of phone calls to Community Development, but Trustee Przybylo countered that many of those calls are from real estate people, etc. and not from the tax-paying residents. B. Shaw submitted that the Senior Center has encouraged its members to use Atlas, most recently to access their PINs; the property information page has become very popular with the seniors. S. Cusick reported that the Senior Center has used the information found on Atlas for medical emergencies. RED Center and the NSECC have secured access to Atlas and can use it for the same purpose. Mayor Callero commented that Atlas enables our employees to give answers to our residents much faster; they can find the answer to most questions right on their computer rather than having to tell them, “I’ll look it up and call you back.” B. Shaw added that it eliminates a caller being bounced from person to person, department to department. Our front desk staff has been empowered by this readily available, up-to-date information. Atlas enables us to provide much better customer service. Mayor Callero continued that the GIS Steering Committee has had representatives and input from all departments. Atlas was set up with their needs in mind. A point of clarification: GIS houses all the fixed assets that we maintain. GIS data is accessed through many interfaces. Atlas is one of them, and is the only one that is public. B. Shaw reminded that Mayor Callero has asked the MIS Department to retrain all employees on Atlas and include the trustees. B. Shaw reported that six years ago, we pulled name and address information from all of our databases (Utility Billing, Payroll, Fire, Police, Fitness, Senior, Business Licensing, etc.) into a central database to create an emergency contact list, thereby creating the NNS (Niles Notification System) which gives us the ability to call out all residents and businesses for the purpose of emergency notification. Because there have recently been several requests from departments who want to be able to easily search for the name of a person or a business, we decided to make this same NNS information accessible within Atlas. What NNS and other sources have provided for this project is name, address, age/birth date, gender and phone number and phone number type (home, cell, etc.) Businesses and organizations, as well as people, are included. We know the source of the information. We only poll up-to-date, recent, active, live data. The information is secure. This information is provided only if it is tied to an address. B. Shaw presented a list of current sources of this data: 3 Current Sources • Business Licensing • Business Licensing emergency contacts • CityView Multi-Unit owners • CityView Multi-Unit tenants • CityView Property Maintenance • Employee Maintenance • Finance Vendor Master • Fitness members • Meals on Wheels • Niles Contractors • NNS adds • Nurses • Senior members • Teen Center members • Teen Center member contacts • Utility Billing • Vehicle Licensing We have the ability to do NNS “adds and deletes,” where we can add or remove specific names from the list as requested. We are considering including names from the following sources: Candidate Sources • IDC CENA (central name and address database) • IDC Payroll (for phone number information not on Employee Maintenance) • Adjudication (misdemeanors) • GEAC (misdemeanors and felonies) • Burglar Alarms • Alpha 4 (Police detective information) • Firehouse • Zoll (ambulance emergencies) • Past Perfect (Historical Society members and donors) • Building information (contacts and contractors) • Backflow • Animal Licensing With regard to police information, A.Vitale pointed out that this does not mean that we would have access to every person who was arrested in the Village, but only to those who are tied to an address in the Village. This is still address-based. Only those who are tied to a Niles address are included, not everyone on the source list. Mayor Callero asked who can get access to this new information. B. Shaw responded that, in this format, all employees. Mayor Callero stated that we have a lot of information that shouldn’t be on there. He asked that B. Shaw meet with him and Joe Annunzio to discuss what information should and should not be included on this new search feature of Atlas. 4 B. Shaw stated that he felt that what is in there now is not controversial. Upon reviewing the source list, Mayor Callero still wants the entire list brought up in the meeting with Joe. Trustee Przybylo expressed concern that an employee - a CSO, for example - has access to information they should not have access to. B. Shaw explained that departmental security measures are in place to prevent that. In the case of arrest records, the NSECC houses and owns the data; there is an audit trail of everyone that touches everything. S. Cusick demonstrated the Atlas login record, which provides a record of which employee logs in, when he logs in, and what he is looking up. The login record also shows when a person visits the site without a login, but it does not tell us who or from where. This access information is updated every second. B. Shaw reported how this new search feature helped a woman at the Senior Center who was in distress. Since installing this feature, he has received emails from Police, Fire and Senior Center describing how they have used it. S. Cusick added that this feature has helped departments find and correct errors in their own data. This new feature has been in a little over a week and is already proving to be particularly valuable to the Senior Center, the Police Department and the Teen Center. C. Ostman commented that he can see where this will be a valuable tool to the Police Department, and it may become a help to Community Development as it develops. B. Shaw stated that right now the feature is available to all employees with a login. If we discover that security is an issue, we can easily change the access to it. Trustee Przybylo asked if the Fire Department is aware of residents’ pets and special needs. S. Cusick responded that, as far as he knows, the Fire Department is not aware of pets and is only aware of a resident’s special needs if that resident has specifically informed them. B. Shaw said that the Senior Center used to have a list of seniors that are on life support, etc. Up until last year, that list was sent to the Fire Department on a yearly basis. Trustee Przybylo confirmed that Atlas has the ability to keep this information. He suggested that we consider, at either the May or June Board meeting, including a postcard or coupon in the quarterly Focus on Niles newsletter. The resident would fill out the card with pet or special need information and return it to the Fire Department or the Village. This information could be put on Atlas. People could then feel good about their Village. He would rather not use Animal Licensing as a source for this information; he is talking about public relations. He is talking about the message of inclusion of people into their village. We could make an announcement at the Board meeting and/or send a letter out to everyone. S. Cusick commented that the information is only good for a few months. He asked how we would maintain the data. Trustee Przybylo suggested that we be creative. B. Shaw suggested that we contact the Senior Center to see if anything is already in place. Trustee Przybylo suggested that we investigate other communities to see if anyone else provides such a service, and that we look beyond our neighboring communities. B. Shaw said that he will report the findings at the next meeting. Atlas Training B. Shaw reported that we have to put the previously-mentioned changes in place, update our documentation, and write our training class before we begin training in June. We are on target. 5 Maintenance Management System (MMS) B. Shaw reported that we will be back on track with Utility Billing and MMS by the middle of next week. We will have more to report at the next meeting. Agenda Item #3 – New Business Address / Building Update Process A.Vitale reported that he met with C. Ostman, R. Wlodarski and Rick Molina from Community Development and B. Shaw and S. Cusick. We keep two, separate data models going for CityView and GIS. We will continue the address updating as we always have. Building updates might change a bit, depending on what Community Development wants to see and how significant the change is. But we will start to incorporate changing building footprints on GIS so they will be available for everyone. Digital Data Submission Policy A.Vitale met with Community Development and Engineering. They will run through a couple of quick tests of our submission policy AutoCAD template before recommending any other changes or official policies. Stormwater Commission Data Collection A.Vitale has been invited to the pre-Board meeting on Tuesday, May 25, when Hey & Associates will be introduced to the Board. He will be available for questions, and will let the Stormwater Commission take the lead on what data they want to collect first before we supplement that with our efforts and dollars for sewer inverts. We do have money in the budget for a GPS collection unit ($25,000) as well as money for data collection efforts ($75,000.) B. Shaw recommended that we wait until the Stormwater consultant is done with their work and the data collection is done by the Stormwater Commission before we consider what else we want to pick up. Miscellaneous Questions from Last Meeting o At the last meeting, G. VanGeem asked A. Vitale to provide a list of ways Atlas is being used. He has been collecting feedback from frequent users and will compile the list into one document and will give the list to G. VanGeem in the next week or two. Mayor Callero asked that A.Vitale send the list to everyone on the committee. o In answer to a question posed by G. VanGeem, A.Vitale verified that the GPS is separate in the budget. o A.Vitale noted that there are many employees who are frequent, “power” users of GIS data - Atlas being the most prevalent tool they use. He suggests including some of these people at the table of this Steering Committee, as they have provided valuable insights over the last months. Mayor Callero asked A.Vitale to make a list of these people and discuss it with G. VanGeem. Trustee Przybylo asked if any Atlas users make money by using Atlas. Can they pull vast arrays of names and addresses? No, you must be an employee to access that information. Trustee Przybylo wondered if “you hinge the opening of the gate for a fee.” Is this something anyone has ever thought about? B. Shaw responded that the people who have given us their information did not give us permission to do that with it. We have been very careful to not break their trust. 6 We would have to have permission to do it. Trustee Przybylo asked if someone could, theoretically, pull up all the businesses in Niles. B. Shaw responded that you would have to pull up every address in Niles because there is no way to ask Atlas to “show me only businesses.” The only way an address on Atlas could by identified as a business would be by its zoning. Trustee Przybylo said that the Chamber of Commerce, of which he is a member, will provide him with the database of all the Chamber members. Because of an agreement with neighboring communities, he can also get chamber lists from Skokie and Park Ridge. But he must pay for that. Even though we should not necessarily be in the business of this, couldn’t we sell access to 50 people at $500 each? That would be $25,000. Mayor Callero suggested that we let the Chamber do it. C. Ostman reminded the group that if someone asked for a list of all the businesses in Niles, FOIA requires that we provide the information. S. Cusick noted that certain information, such as personal phone numbers, can be redacted. C. Ostman added that a FOIA request can be made for any reason – commercial or personal. Community Development gets so many FOIA requests from contractors looking for business. The law says that the first 50 pages are free; if submitted electronically, we cannot charge them. It was noted that Atlas, per se, does not help with FOIA requests. There are other tools available for handling these requests quickly and efficiently. We have five days to fulfill a private FOIA request; 21 days for requests for commercial purposes. The FOIA officer (Kathy Thake) determines whether a request is private or commercial. It is the obligation of the requestor to say if the request is for commercial purposes; he is not supposed to hide that. Agenda Item #5 – Schedule the Next Meeting (date to be discussed) Due to summer schedules, there will be no meeting in August. The next meeting will be Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. in the 2nd floor main conference room 218. The meeting was adjourned at 9:22 a.m. Steering Committee Members Andrew Przybylo Trustee atp@vniles.com George Van Geem Administration gvg@vniles.com 847-588-8002 Bill Shaw MIS wfs@vniles.com 847-588-8015 Andrew Vitale MIS ajv@vniles.com 847-588-8022 Steve Cusick MIS src@vniles.com 847-588-8018 Moses Nazzal Engineering mhn@vniles.com 847-588-7924 Scott Jochim Public Services snj@vniles.com 847-588-7901 Bob Pilat Public Services rmp@vniles.com 847-588-7926 Chuck Ostman Community Development cfo@vniles.com 847-588-8041 Rich Wlordarski Community Development rjw@vniles.com 847-588-8085 7