Thought leadership

Maximizing value through GIS service and delivery organizational design

In general, GIS departments are staffed with a mix of  developers, system administrators, business analysts, data ‘specialists’ and so forth. Many organizations are now finding that more and more of  these specialist spatial competencies (which involve core database skills, web services, a mix of  industry software architectures and languages etc) are difficult to come by and even harder to retain within their organization.

Organizations are now looking for new GIS organizational design options for supporting their business needs. Terms often associated with these new organizations are: Agility, Innovative, Manage risk, Collaborative, Commercially-driven, Service-based, and Business-focused. This paper describes organizational design options and a process for an organization to determine the most appropriate option. It also compares and contrasts outsourcing, in-sourcing and variations in-between with particular emphasis on the unique needs of GIS implementations.