2006 Conference Presentations

Several 2006 Conference Presentations are now available on the website. The page also has several other presentations from the 2005 and 2004 conferences, in addition to, all the conference agendas since the beginning in 1999.

(If you have agenda for 2000 in better condition, send me a scanned copy. I think the digital version got lost in the Florida recount.)

CAD/GIS Crystal Ball

It appears that ESRI is looking into closer integration with AutoCAD, but this seems to be a ways off. Here's a summary of some recent blogs:

Don Kuehne, a technical product manager for CAD interoperability at ESRI apparently writes a blog entry in GIS CAD Interoperability, describing a new AutoCAD integration product for ArcGIS.

James Fee reports this in his blog, with the following quote from Don Kuehne's post (This is a quote from Fee, who is quoting Kuehne):

ArcGIS for AutoCAD is a no-cost ESRI application that works on top of AutoCAD 2007 and gives me the ability to add one or more ESRI map service view(s) to my AutoCAD drafting environment. With this new ESRI technology I have direct access to every GIS data format without conversion and without translation inside AutoCAD. I as an AutoCAD user see what the GIS professional sees; finished high quality cartographic representations of complex GIS data structures thay may be stored in a wide variety raster, network, image and vector formats.

The original Kuehne blog entry is then removed, for unknown reasons, and Fee notes this.

Then, All Points blogged that at the ESRI Federal User Conference a demo of the "ArcGIS for AutoCAD" product was made. All Points apparently then talked to someone at ESRI about it:

I learned that all that was happening in the demo [at the ESRI Federal User Conference] was that a bitmap (raster) of the data was put into AutoCAD as a "backdrop" to the CAD entities; no AutoCAD entities were created, thus they couldn't be edited. But, he noted, you could do an "identify" and get back attributes from the server. That's based not on clicking on an entity, but passing the location of interest back to the server.

How I read these two quotes is that ESRI has come up with an AutoCAD plug-in that will allow AutoCAD to read ArcIMS & ArcServer image services - all very-very preliminary. Sounds interesting, and I'm sure we'll hear more about it.

GISP Continuing Education

Over that past few weeks there has been a very lively discussion concerning whether to require continuing education for a professional certification. The Wisconsin Chapter of the American Planning Association listserv has been discussing whether continuing education, or "Certification Maintenance", should be required, to maintain the AICP (American Institute of Certified Planners) credential. (I don't believe an online copy of the listserv exists, if there is let me know and I'll post a link to it.)

The primary points in the debate are:

• Recertification should be required to maintain the integrity of the certification
• The amount of education required for recertification is excessive, because:
• There is not enough educational opportunities within the State
• Educational opportunities are too expensive for today's budgets - expensive in conference/workshop fees, travel, and time away from the office
  
• Not worth it because:
  
• The certification is not required by law (like an Engineer, Architect or Surveyor)
• The certification does not bring any significant increase in pay

I find this debate interesting, because the same debate points can easily be made for the GISP (Geographic Information System Professional) certification. The GISP certification has required recertification from the start. However because the GISP certification is new, no one has yet been required to apply for certification. In fact, the exact requirements for recertification are still under consideration. There is a draft process under consideration, and available for comment.

Like the initial certification, the recertification process falls under three areas: Education, Experience, and Professional Contribution. Reading over the requirements, I believe the most difficult area is education. To meet the education criteria, you must achieve a degree or certification, attend workshops (both GIS workshops/class or "soft skill" such as public speaking classes), or attend conferences. In particular:

• If you get a related college degree or college GIS certification after you initial certification, your basically covered. Otherwise,
• 4 education points are required in 5 years for recertification
  
• GIS Workshops 40hours per point. Thus a 5-day ESRI class is 1 point. A 2-day ESRI class is 0.4 points.
  
• Softskill classes/workshops (such as public speaking, professional writing, budgeting, etc.) are worth 40hours per point, with a maximum of 1 point.
• GIS Conferences count as 0.1 points per day.

To meet these requirements, as an example, you must in the past five years:

• Attend WLIA every year: 1 point ( 0.1 point per day x 2 days x 5 years)
• Attend EWUG every year: 1 point ( 0.1 point per day x 2 days x 5 years)
• Attend one WLIA 1/2 day workshop: 0.1 points
• Attend one ESRI 5-day training class: 1 point
• Attend one ESRI 2-day training class: 0.4 points
• Attend Employee-sponsored training sessions every year (such as customer service or project management training) : 0.5 points (0.1 point per day x 1 day x 3 year)
• = Total: 4 points (minimum)
  

This is what is required to meet the minimum for the education area to be recertified for GISP. There are still the Experience, and Professional Contribution areas that must be met.

So, considering this example, what do you think about recertification for GISP?

• Is it necessary?
  
• Is it expensive (time and money)?
• Is it worth it?
  

And BTW - I'm not sure if blogging counts for anything.

Open Records Law In the GIS Age

So much for a vacation...

A VERY interesting open records case, that will effect the Wisconsin GIS community, was issued today. It was reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and posted on the LIO-TECH listserv (thanks Tony!)

I'm a big fan of looking at the raw data yourself, so here is the link to the Decision of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. (If you've never read a court opinion before, go ahead, they're not as technical as you might think they are, its a lot easier read than your mortgage application).

First, I'm not a lawyer, this is my observation/editorial, it is NOT legal advice. Second, if you're an County LIO or a municipal GIS-person you should have a conversation with your County/City/Village/Town Attorney about this case.

For background the case involves three Wis. municipalities that contract out for their property assessment. A firm then submitted an open records request for the three municipalities for their assessment data. The firm didn't like the municipalities response. It went to Court. (For more background read the the JS article or the opinion itself).

Some interesting quotes from the opinion:

"Accordingly, simply because Sussex, Thiensville and Port Washington have contracted out the collection and maintenance of the assessment information does not mean that they have relieved themselves of their responsibilities under the open records laws. The municipalities are the responsible authorities under the open records laws." ... "Simply put, the responsibility for upholding the letter and spirit of the open records law travels to the governmental or quasigovernmental entity enumerated in WIS. STAT." ... "As we have explained, where the open records law is concerned, the buck stops with the municipalities."

Thus Local government cannot transfer their authority to a outside agency.

"[In a previous case it was argued that the] record requesters have no right to copies of computer programs, but rather only may request the information which is inputted into a computer for processing. We rejected this argument, finding it contrary to the remaining language in § 19.36(4), which also permits access to the material produced as a product of the computer program."

This is where the case gets a little complicated but what the Court I think is saying is that a records is a record regardless of how it is stored. For example, a "image" is a record regardless of whether it is stored on photographic paper, or as a TIF, JPEG, MrSID image. The software inside a digital camera or software like Photoshop isn't public record, but the image it stores and retrieves is. Thus the court writes:

"The organization and compilation of the data into the Microsoft Access database, done at public expense, allows greater ease of public access to the public assessment information. In keeping with the letter and spirit of the open records law, we will not allow the municipalities to deny WIREdata, and others who seek the information, the value-added benefit of this computerization." ... "WIREdata’s requests do not require the municipalities and their assessors to compile or collect statistics or to explain, interpret or analyze information. As our discussion demonstrates, the municipalities and their contract assessors already have the material available in the format WIREdata seeks."

Wow, so the Court saying that data collected for the public is the public's data - regardless of who it was collected by and what format it may be in? Does it mean the input is public, and the output is public, and the means between the two can remain private?

This case is about property assessment data. What does it say about GIS data? If you replace 'property assessment' with 'land information' throughout the Opinion, do you think the outcome would be any different? Or would it be exactly the same?

What does this do to all the land information (orthophotography, planimetrics, cadastral, etc.) that is being purchased and then resold by local governments? Is cost-recovery still-practical?

Go talk to your County/City/Village/Town Attorney, because I'm guessing anyone that's interested in land information will be soon. Read the case again. Its likely we'll be reading citations in future case law too.

Hello 2007.

2006 Review

There's a bunch of new ESRI tech news (ArcGIS 9.2 SP 1 included), but I decided to take the week off and look back at the most popular EWUG blogs of 2006. The list is based on the number of unique views in descending order:

10. Bigfoot GIS is Boring (Using GIS to hunt bigfoot and the Atlanta newspaper saying GIS is boring)
9. High Resolution Imagery (Imagery from kites)
8. T-Shirt Update (Do I have to explain this?)
7. ArcGIS 9.2 Roll Out Seminar (The Rollout in Madison)
6. ESRI Address Mangement Tool (A cool new tool for those dealing with addresses)
5. Arcview 1.0 Part 1 and Part 2 (Old School GIS)
4. ESRI Technology Trends (New School GIS)
3. When to Explore (Just another blog about the Explorer launch)
2. ArcGIS 9.1 Server Pack 2 (Tech update)
1. Midwest River Killer (Serial killer or coincidence)

The rankings are based on Google Analytics, rather than our website provider iPowerWeb. (iPowerWeb only lets me view stats on a monthly basis).

Thank you for checking out the EWUG Blog this year!

Happy New Year!