2025 WA GIS Conference

This half-day session is a starting point for any organization looking to implement a drone program. As Part 1 of a two-part workshop (offered separately), it equips you with the fundamental understanding of drone technology and the necessary regulatory landscape. Mastering these basics is crucial for building a compliant and effective drone operation.

This is second part of half-day knowledge workshop aims to integrate drone technology into your GIS projects. Gain practical knowledge about various drone hardware, data processing software, and efficient project workflows, from pre-flight planning to mission execution. We will also focus on best practices for mission planning to flight plans for data processing and explore various ways to integrate these data products into GIS workflows. Learn best practices for processing drone data to create accurate maps and 3D models and discover how to effectively integrate these tools into your GIS environment to support your work and enhance your agency's business.

Over the past year, the King County GIS Center embarked on a sizeable effort to overhaul publishing, distribution, and data access for the county’s internal enterprise GIS data library. Instead of directly connecting to an on-prem enterprise geodatabase, users will now access hosted feature services through ArcGIS Online, allowing for faster access and better scalability. To facilitate the migration, the King County GIS Center developed a suite of tools including a robust ETL process, renewed Spatial Data Catalog, metadata cleanup effort, new ArcGIS Pro Add-In, and educational content on a Hub site. Join us as we dive into data discoverability, distribution, and tools to make it easier for our users to find the data they need.

Topics include:

• Overview – Transitioning users from a custom data access plug-in in ArcMap to using web services in ArcGIS Pro.

• ETL and more – Get a peek into our ETL process, and the added functionality around categorizing, tagging, and sharing of data.

• Metadata cleanup – How the Enterprise Data Modernization project daylighted metadata problems and how we addressed them.

• Spatial Data Catalog – A new application to search for King County data, allows for more robust searchability than built-in ArcGIS Online tools. Designed to be as accessible as possible.

• Add-In and educational content – Instead of creating custom tools for data access within -ArcGIS Pro, we provide education to our users on how to access the data they are familiar with.

Why is data so important for modern government and why is there a need for better data sharing? This presentation will focus on the state’s goals and newly released Enterprise Data Strategy to create a unified data ecosystem to help state agencies make better decisions. Joanne will walk through examples of how we can combine spatial and non-spatial data to improve efficiency and services. Partnerships, pathways and people help make that magic happen and Joanne will focus on what we as a GIS community can do to help accomplish these goals.

Prior to GIS technology Washington Department of Health (WADOH) operated with limited ability to access, search, or share authoritative geospatial data. This made collective and collaborative workflows difficult, as processes are siloed, primarily paper-based, and manual. Moving to a web-based, Enterprise GIS platform supported WADOH’s Data Modernization Initiative and empowered agency staff to create and share content more effectively.

Using configurable solutions available in our Enterprise GIS platform (such as Esri’s Experience Builder, Dashboards, and Survey123) and other existing technical solutions (such as Power Automate Flow) we can streamline common workflows and create systems that are connected, adaptable, and sustainable. During this session, Tonya will share WADOH’s modernization story and examples of how GIS is helping transform public health workflows.

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.

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.

Washington State Hydrography Dataset (WASHD) program in the Department of Ecology is leading a project to remap the hydrography of Washington State to support the new 3D Hydrography Program led by USGS. This dataset will replace the old National Hydrography Dataset with a more accurate and modern alternative for hydrography analysis and cartography. This presentation will provide an update on the status of this remapping and regions that WASHD hopes to map in the next year. We will also review how we plan to manage changes in the hydrography data structure to meet the needs of Washington state hydrography Stakeholders. While mapping hydrography appeared to be a simple straightforward process, the project quickly became complicated. We will demonstrate our Project Management framework, tools and practices that have helped WASHD define objectives and goals, documenting important decisions and issues, and managed schedules. By leveraging project management, we enhanced communication both within our team and with our numerous stakeholders, leadership, and GIS subject matter experts. We will leave time to answer questions both about the hydrography mapping and project management.

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.

The City of Tacoma has been using distributed collaborations to share data between Enterprise portal and ArcGIS Online since 2022. Progress has not been linear: there have been many challenges. We will share how our distributed collaborations are set up, lessons learned along the way, and tips and tricks to help you on your own distributed collaboration journey.

This presentation outlines the results of the Seattle 2024 GIS Return on Investment (ROI) Study. This study was a partnership between GIS Management Consulting Services of Edmonds and four key leaders of Seattle GIS.

The study was based on the GIS ROI methodology developed by Prof. Richard Zerbe of the UW Evans School of Public Administration. The study approach was a snapshot in time – to analyze the financial benefits from using GIS across all the departments and offices in Seattle during 2024.

The data to analyze GIS ROI was compiled from both online surveys and from multiple face to face interviews with those knowledgeable about GIS in individual departments. The report also compiled an extensive catalog of other types of benefits from the use of GIS. The report calculated a range for GIS for the entire city and also for many individual departments. GIS ROI was calculated in a variety of ways: net financial ROI in dollar terms, net financial ROI as a percent of GIS costs, GIS ROI as a percent of the entire annual city budget, and the equivalent staff savings in FTEs represented by the net financial ROI. The report also includes 1o appendixes which are GIS ROI reports for 10 key Seattle Departments. In addition to sharing the results this report will provide an overview oof the modified Zerbe methodology used.

Emails, phone calls, drop-ins, notes…GIS professionals get mapping and data requests in all kinds of ways. It can be extremely challenging to manage all these requests, and hard to identify ROI. Enter the new GIS Request Management solution from Esri.

In the short time that we have deployed this solution at the City of Tumwater we have noticed a huge difference. It has simplified our day-to-day work by organizing all requests in one place. We went from an Excel file, flagged emails in Outlook, lists on OneNote, literal notes, and coworkers stopping by our desks to request projects to a streamlined process with this solution. GIS Request Management helps us identify and communicate how our projects align with our organization’s goals, and demonstrates our ROI by keeping track of time spent on each project.

This presentation will discuss implementation, usage, custom configurations, and our successes and challenges as we transitioned from a disorganized system to this solution.