Dacorum Borough Council Selects Cadcorp to Supply Corporate GIS

Dacorum Borough Council has contracted with Computer Aided Development Corporation Ltd (Cadcorp) for the supply of a corporate geographic information system to replace and upgrade Dacorum’s existing GIS software. The system will make geographic information available to all council employees working locally or remotely, and will share geographic information with the public via the council’s website.

Jayne Smith, GIS Officer at Dacorum, said “Dacorum has around 750 staff, serving a population of around 145,000 residents. Our existing GIS was almost entirely desktop-based, available to only a small proportion of council staff. The Intranet and Internet GIS published static layers. We wanted to move from a desktop architecture to a predominately web-based GIS deployment. Our research indicated that web map layers and web map editor from Cadcorp could meet our needs, both internally and externally. We saw that the applications were easy to use, and – just as important - easy for us to manage and administer”.

The new corporate GIS will manage all Dacorum’s mapping data provided under the national Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA), together with business data generated by the council. This currently amounts to 11GB of data in 200 map overlays. The system will also help Dacorum meet EU INSPIRE regulations by holding metadata which will be available for export to reports, and for publishing on the council’s intranet and/or internet. Cadcorp software will integrate with the council’s planning and building control system (IDOX Acolaid) and its environmental health system (Civica APP). “Ultimately we intend to spatially-enable even more back office systems” noted Jayne Smith. “These include systems for housing management, waste management and recycling, and the management of the electoral database.”

Mike O’Neil, CEO of Cadcorp, said “Dacorum Borough Council has shown by its actions that it regards geographic information as a corporate resource which should be shared as widely as possible. Cadcorp is proud to have been selected as the supplier of the GIS technology and applications that will make this possible.”