West Milford, NJ reduced its yearly GIS spending by more than $50,000 in 2009. How? It suspended its GIS specialist (based on some alleged professional improprieties; charges were later dropped) and has been using a consultant on an as needed basis. That’s trimmed the budge down considerably. The one challenge: the suspended 10 year veteran of the position handled the grant writing and getting that up to speed has been challenging. Also possible: a lawsuit from the suspended employee.
In Albany, NY, the state capitol, there was no question about spending $93,000 on flying the city this year. Now, the city, like many in the US is tight on funds. What’s interesting? There was an editorial in the local paper about how there were no questions at all raised about the expenditure. Is this editorial worthy? I guess the paper thought so. Or maybe, just maybe, local officials don’t need to question the value of up-to-date data as much, even in hard times.
Update 2/20/10 The Data Systems Manager for the City of Albany responded to the editorial, explaining among other things, that Google gets its data from the city.
The Quad Cities Region (Iowa/Illinois boarder) Chambers of Commerce are partnering with Iowa Workforce Development to complete a Laborshed employment study. How do you do that?
Both the Iowa and Illinois Chamber are requesting local employers to provide aggregate counts of their employees by zip code by place of residence to determine commuting patterns. For example, if a business has16 employees residing in zip code 52801, simply marked down employees 16 zip code 52801. All zip code information will be combined into one master list that will be combined and mapped by zip code in a geographical information system (GIS).
