GITA

Washington State Department of Transportation (WA-TRANS) Multi-Agency ROI Analysis

Time frame: November 2005 – January 2007

Goals: Washington State Department of Transportation (DOT) is planning to develop a multi-modal statewide transportation network, including information on roads, railroads, light rail, non-motorized transportation routes, aviation, ferries and ports, for use by the entire department as well as all public utilities and government agencies in the state. This project will improve public safety, intergovernmental coordination, and economic development.

Washington DOT's mission is to keep people and business moving by operating and improving the state’s transportation systems vital to taxpayers and communities. WA-Trans will support this mission by providing a seamless, statewide transportation location-based data set that includes the best information available about roads, railroads, airports, ferry terminals and routes, port facilities, and non-motorized transportation routes such as bike paths and horse trails. The data will be used to improve transportation planning, analysis and design capabilities not only for WSDOT but also for local and regional organizations across the state. Better transportation planning will ultimately lead to better transportation infrastructure and more effective utilization of existing resources.

Benefiting organizations include: Puget Sound Regional Council, multiple county governments, Sound Transit, County Road Administration Board (CRAB), a U.S. Bureau of Census Regional Office, Washington Department of Natural Resources, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Nineteen different organizations contributed to the case study. Excluded from this analysis due to resource limitations, but of equal or greater value are the benefits to emergency management related applications.

Progress: GITA’s multi-agency ROI methodology, including spreadsheet templates, was funded by FGDC in 2006 with the Washington DOT project as its pilot. The multi-agency methodology permits analysis of complex projects such as WA-TRANS, permitting overall costs and benefits to be recalculated automatically as individual spreadsheets are updated. The methodology is provided freely to the public on the 50 States web sites maintained by FGDC and NSGIC.

Successes: From the sole perspective of Department of Transportation, the financial return on this investment appears small (NPV of $255,000 and ROI below 1%). But when the financial impact on all participating agencies is considered, the project shows a very healthy return (NPV of over $17 million and ROI of nearly 11%). The WA-Trans project furthers the mission of WSDOT and is projected to be a financially sound investment for taxpayers. This case study includes six separate financial analysis based on the Financial Details-Future20.xls template. These agency and group-specific analyses are consolidated using the Multi-participant Summary – Future20.xls template.

Time frame: August 2007.

Goals: To meet the needs of DOI/EGIM participants by enabling them to use the provided financial analysis tools to determine ROI for their projects. The ultimate goal of this project is to determine ROI for all geospatial projects within the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Progress: A webinar was conducted in August 2007 to provide an overview of the project to communicate objectives and to prepare participants for the two-day workshop. A two-day workshop was held in Denver in August 2007 to train DOI/EGIM participants in using ROI project tools and processes to conduct ROI analyses . Participants have continued to work with the GITA financial analysis tools.

Iowa Geographic Information Council (IGIC) FGDC 50 States Grant, “Business Planning Services for a State Spatial Data Infrastructure”

Time frame: July 2007 -- June 2008

Goals: The goal of this project is to develop a business plan for the creation of the Iowa Geospatial Infrastructure (IGI), Iowa’s contribution to the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Iowa will complete its strategic plan in-house, while GITA is providing expertise and education for completing the business plan, business case, and financial analysis. This combined effort will facilitate the implementation of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure by assessing the needs of local entities such as rural counties that are not currently using geospatial technology, as well as those trying to maintain existing investments, and further support and promote the creation of high quality local datasets compatible with the IGI.

Successful implementation of a statewide LIDAR project has shown that creative solutions can be achieved to fund major GIS projects. IGIC desires to leverage its experience of using a revolving loan fund to meet the needs of entities starting up in GIS. The project can also be used to address a variety of relevant issues, including economic development, emergency management, and environmental quality. The desired general direction for creation of the IGI is to evolve a nontraditional distributed governance and funding model.

Progress: A kickoff meeting with IGIC was held in July 2007, with a preparatory webinar and two-day financial analysis workshop following in August and September 2007. On-site interviews with agencies and counties were conducted in July and September 2007, with extensive phone and email interviews following.

Successes: Ongoing multi-agency analysis already shows a successful project, with input from six State agencies and various individual counties, as well as modeled results from large and small population counties with GIS and small rural counties without GIS. Considerable effort has been directed toward determining the status of GIS in Iowa’s 99 counties and quantifying benefits for small rural counties without GIS. Major research efforts include: applying general categories of benefits to specific collectable benefits and forecasting benefits to small rural counties without GIS, extension beyond the seven FGDC data layers to include address points and building footprints with accompanying costs and benefits.

Time frame: November 2007 – August 2008

Goals: The Maryland/Delaware project is funded by FGDC’s 50 States Initiative.
This business case will focus on a statewide orthoimagery project for Maryland and on a statewide orthoimagery, LIDAR & Land Use Data project for Delaware.
Analysis will be provided for additional State and local government agencies.
The result will be a multi-agency business case.

The vision for the Maryland/Delaware imagery projects includes:

Delaware’s funding partners for imagery include: State agencies (OMB, DNREC, DelDOT), all three counties, and the Federal government (USGS/NGA).

Progress: A preparatory webinar was held in November 2007 with one-day financial analysis workshops held in Maryland and in Delaware in December 2007. Extensive on-site interviews with agencies followed the workshops.

Successes: The first spreadsheet submitted for the Delaware project, from Kent County, was outstanding in its detailed and comprehensive approach. Meetings with Baltimore County staff who had been involved in financial analysis for that county yielded very interesting ideas for extension of the research component of the project, to include development of metrics for modeling benefits to counties based on existing data such as number of parcels, number of parcel spits/year, and the like.