2025 WA GIS Conference

ArcGIS Enterprise (and to a lesser extent ArcGIS Online) requires a healthy amount of user and content (data) management to keep the ecosystem healthy. And in a medium to large size organization, managing your Web GIS Users and their content can quickly become a full-time job. At the City of Tacoma, we’re using a combination of Dashboards, Experience Builder and FME to create a user and item management tool that allows us to track who owns what, how much of it they own, and even if they’ve done the requisite training for their user level. In this presentation I will demonstrate how we’ve incorporated the existing system status reports and a few other data sources to make a much more useful user and content management tool. I will also demonstrate how I’m hoping to automate more of the process in the future.

Through a grant from the CDC Foundation, Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department has had the opportunity to begin work on developing an Informatics Strategic Plan. This presentation will cover the topic of informatics, data governance and the work involved in developing an informatics strategy and how GIS plays a role in the process.

Come learn about the King County Watershed Mapping Toolbox and new countywide wetlands data. In 2023-2024, King County procured a new wetlands dataset derived from high resolution aerial imagery, LiDAR, land cover data, and local hydrology data. This new dataset is far higher resolution than the previous GIS data on wetlands in King County and will support enterprise-wide functions from Water and Land Resources to Permitting. As part of getting this data to those who can benefit from its use, King County Water and Land Resources, in partnership with the King County GIS Center, has built the Watershed Mapping Toolbox. The Toolbox, which is public facing, is built using Experience Builder. It leverages the full potential of ESRI’s low/no-code development platform, with significant use of Arcade scripting in the basemap to produce content rich and well-formatted pop-ups.

The Toolbox allows users to view wetlands, streams, likely wetland functions, beaver locations, ecological stressors, and high priority areas for conservation and restoration. It brings into the platform data from outside King County, such as WDNR Ecological Integrity Assessments, iNaturalist beaver sightings, USGS soil information, USFS riparian corridors, and more. Users can view wetland data from 1990, 1996, 2024, search for their project sites or property, and compare wetlands boundaries to aerial imagery dating back to the 1990s. A new and unique feature overlays historic General Land Office maps onto contemporary basemaps and imagery to compare historical conditions to contemporary land use. The Toolbox allows for importing GIS data, exporting PDFs, and using filtering and other tools to produce analytics. Overall, the Watershed Mapping Toolbox aims to be a platform for showcasing the variety of riparian GIS data available in King County, with the goal of breaking down access barriers to riparian data across the enterprise.

Lean Six Sigma (LSS) is a process improvement tool used to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and enhance quality in processes. This presentation dives into a specific Lean Six Sigma project we facilitated as a part of a Green Belt certification course. We sought to improve an existing GIS process that was identified by our internal staff as inconsistent and ambiguous. Using the LSS methodology, we identified process gaps, analyzed root causes, and collaborated with staff to identify and prioritize improvements. This presentation will serve as a use case for LSS methodology in the realm of GIS and challenge you to seek out GIS processes which you could help improve.

When King County’s GIS team took on its first major modernization project (‘Rae Rae”), we were “eager but green”—rushed tech choices and Agile growing pains left us scrambling. It was messy but “transformative”. By the time we tackled the ‘Districts and Development Conditions Report’, we’d turned those hard lessons into “strengths”: “no more ‘sink or swim’ solo work”, collaborative problem-solving sessions, and a culture where “knowledge lived with the team, not just individuals”—culminating in a repeatable playbook for “resilience”.

That resilience was tested when a post-launch bug required reimplementing a nuanced spatial calculation. With “back-to-back vacations looming”, the fix passed through “three developers”—each handing off “seamlessly”—and deployed “flawlessly”. No delays, no drama.

In this talk, I’ll share how we turned failure into momentum by:
• “Prioritizing team habits over ‘perfect’ tools** (and why it saved us)
• “Running lean, open workshops” to break down knowledge silos
• “Embracing ‘paired work’ as insurance” (not waste)
• “Designing for handoffs” so vacations ‘help’—not hurt—progress

For teams juggling legacy systems and Agile skepticism, this proves that “how you work together outlasts any tool”—and why ""‘inefficient’ collaboration is the smartest investment you’ll make”.

Managing asset data in GIS requires more than just mapping—it demands structure, strategy, and smart tools. This presentation explores how clear governance, standard operating procedures, and data dictionaries form the foundation for consistent, reliable asset mapping. We'll walk through how service level agreements and defined responsibilities ensure timely updates from as-built drawings to GIS. Then, we’ll shift gears to showcase a suite of highly customized GIS tools that streamline record retention, improve end-user access to retained documents, and empower field staff to submit real-time data changes. From process to platform, this session highlights the architecture behind a system designed to keep asset data accurate, accessible, and aligned with business needs.