The Jasper County Board of Supervisors is considering a change to the county’s Geographic Information System (GIS) set up.
Ryan Smith, business development manager for Schneider Corporation spoke to the board at its Tuesday meeting about what the company can do for the county if it handled the services.
GIS services are computer mapping services that can show many different kinds of data on one map. It enables users to more easily see, analyze and understand history, patterns and relationships on the map.
“The proposal that I am requesting today is to outsource your GIS to the Schneider Corporation,” Smith said.
Schneider has worked with Jasper County for an extended period of time in different capacities. The company has always supported the county’s GIS, whether there was a GIS personal on staff or not.
“As the county moved forward and hired and GIS coordinator, we were still there for GIS support, mainly assisting the auditor’s office,” Smith said.
In 2012, Schneider worked as the GIS coordinator while the county coordinator was on leave. Smith said the company received very good feedback from those in the county who used the services.
Smith said about to two years ago, the support was dropped by the county. The company was still in contact with county officials, though, during that time because of the Beacon website it supports. The website is the public’s access to the mapping records of the county.
“I did notice there was a little bit of frustration and we started looking at different GIS support options,” Smith said. “As we looked at different options, it got a point where I noticed the auditor’s office was very frustrated, so I proposed an idea called staff augmentation.”
If Schneider were to take over the services, the current coordinator would have the option to apply for a position through Schneider to continue the services. Also, a switch to contracted services would save the county a significant amount of money as well as add several benefits.
“Schneider is a company with a large staff,” Jasper County Auditor Dennis Parrott said. “A lot of it is you have a team of professionals that can get multiple projects completed a lot faster. They are experts in the area.”
Parrott gave an example of why high quality GIS support is essential for the county. During the most recent flooding the Colfax, the Federal Emergency Management Agency required several maps of the county before funds could be dispersed. Up to date GIS mapping was crucial to fill the requirements by FEMA to receive funds for the clean up.
“In order to make the payments to us, they had to see the area before, what was not flooded and then see where the flood happened so they could determine who was in the flood zone, who needed payments,” Parrott said. “It was really critical when we had the flood.”
Smith also described the services as bringing taking all of the paper maps and moving it to the digital age.
“You used to have to get out the big piece of paper and make all of the notes, now you are able to make all of those changes on the computer,” Smith said. “Once it is done, it is synced up to all of the computers so everyone in the county is using the same mapping layers when they are researching a specific parcel.”
Before making any decisions, the board said it would like to review the information presented.
Contact Jamee A. Pierson at 641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or jpierson@newtondailynews.com