Recently at a conference I was thumbing through the program pamphlet, searching for thought provoking presentations. I just about tossed it in the trash and walked out. There was only 1 topic different than other presentations I have seen in the last 13 years. What has happened to GIS being the new and exciting solution? Why do we still have presentations with the topic…”Data Aggregation: Combining sewer information across county and city lines”. Who cares? GIS is stuck in the year 1995, back when the craze was moving data from paper maps to the digital world.
When are we going to start USING our data? We are stuck in a technological time warp in which GIS software is no longer seen as a tool for analytics, but for transactions. Remember the days when people went to school to study geography, which explained the “reasons” places and cultures are located where they are? Who has ever studied geography to maintain data?
I found it very interesting at this conference, I was engaged in an argument with a federal government worker about the use of metadata. Really? Tell me what GIS people use metadata for. Business Intelligence (BI) systems have taught us a lot about the need for metadata. It is used to automate business transactions, functionality, and analytics. In other words, the system uses metadata. GIS needs to enact metadata in the same manner – it should not be a bunch of facts that .005% of the users just read about.
We need a shake-up in GIS. Come on people, let’s solve business problems. Give questions and answers to executives that were once considered too complicated to resolve.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
GIS has not changed since 1995
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Just because you're a GIS specialist, doesn't mean you shouldn't be looking for ways to answer these questions. There is room for straight up GIS specialists, but not a lot. The vast majority of GIS proffesionals are likely to have sub-specialties, where they apply GIS to real world situations. Yes, people get oddly excited about joining their data across political boundaries, but that's likely because they're excited about the data, and the management implications, rather than the pure GIS of it. Sure the technology is flashier, and quicker, but the real change is the width of the application. Where a few people got excited about digitizing maps 15 years ago, now huge numbers of people are excited about a navigation tool put out by Google, because they can use it easily, and it affects their lives.
Cameron
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