About MetroGIS

What is MetroGIS?
What is MetroGIS's Purpose?
Who is MetroGIS?
How is MetroGIS Organized?
What Principles Guide MetroGIS?
What is MetroGIS's Decision-Making Process?
How is MetroGIS Funded?

MetroGIS is a voluntary collaboration of organizations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area that use geographic information systems technology to carry out their business functions. The discussions that resulted in the establishment of MetroGIS began in the fall of 1995. See the History section for more information about the projects used to define the desired form and function of MetroGIS.

Short Facts About the Region (Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area)

• Population: 2.8 million
• Area: 3000 square miles
• Land Parcels: 937,000 as of May 2005
• Local Units of Government: 187 cities and townships, 59 school districts, 39 watershed districts, 7 counties

MetroGIS's primary purpose is to promote and facilitate widespread sharing of commonly needed geospatial data and information among organizations that serve the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area. More specifically, the goal is to institutionalize sharing of accurate and reliable geospatial data and information so that MetroGIS's data user and producer communities can both share in the efficiencies of users being able to effortlessly obtain data needed from others, in the form needed, and when it is needed. Click here for a listing of MetroGIS governance characteristics which create public value in three distinct areas:

• Outcome/Value Proposition
• Authorizing Environment
• Operating Capacity

Mission Statement (adopted February 1996)
"To provide an ongoing, stakeholder-governed, metro-wide mechanism through which participants easily and equitably share geographically referenced data that are accurate, current, secure, of common benefit and readily usable. The desired outcomes of MetroGIS include:

• Improve participant operations.
• Minimize stakeholder expense and duplication of effort.
• Support cross-jurisdictional decision making."

Core Services and Desired Outcomes

1) Foster GIS Coordination Among Stakeholders

• Provide an inclusive, trusted forum to collaboratively resolve geospatial data and GIS technology-related issues and opportunities of common interest.
• Improve trust and mutual understanding within the GIS community through frequent opportunities to communicate with colleagues and peers.
• Build sustainable solutions to common geodata-related needs through the use of collaborative and consensus-based processes that seek to institutionalize custodian roles and responsibilities pertaining to data capture, maintenance, documentation and distribution of commonly needed data.
• Enhance individual stakeholder GIS programs and capabilities through sharing technology and proven practices with colleagues and peers.

2) Oversee Solutions To Common Information Needs

• Increase access to, and use of, trusted, reliable and current data needed to support business needs through sharing data and creating community-endorsed regional data solutions. Build once and share many times.
• Improve decision support for its entire stakeholder community through the use of minimal data standards pertaining to assembly of data produced by multiple organizations into regional datasets. These datasets work together horizontally within a given geospatial data theme and vertically among themes.
• Facilitate use of data standards and best practices.

3) Support MetroGIS DataFinder (www.datafinder.org)

• Support data discovery and distribution through a centralized Internet-based tool that is a node of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).

The primary stakeholders of MetroGIS are the Metropolitan Council, other regional agencies, and nearly 300 counties, cities, school districts and water management organizations. State and federal agencies also participate in the activities of MetroGIS. The Metropolitan Council - the regional planning and operating agency for the Twin Cities area - agreed in 1996 to serve as the primary financial sponsor of MetroGIS, and also houses the staff responsible for fostering collaboration and supporting MetroGIS's administrative operations.

MetroGIS comprises a diverse group of stakeholders in the seven-county Twin Cities region who use GIS as a tool to effectively perform their business functions. MetroGIS recognize three classes of stakeholders in its Operating Guidelines:

• Essential participant: Organizations whose participation is vital to the existence of MetroGIS. They produce essential framework data and/or provide essential functions or resources (equipment, staff and/or funds). Examples include the seven metropolitan area counties and the Metropolitan Council. Other organizations could become essential participants if they choose to support a vital function.
• System enhancer: Organizations that produce data or possess resources that, although not essential to the existence of MetroGIS, enhance its functionality and/or the benefits received from it. These organizations influence MetroGIS to varying degrees based on the importance of their data or resources and the degree of their participation. Examples include cities, school districts/TIES, utilities, watershed districts, and state and federal agencies.
• Secondary beneficiary: Organizations that are solely users of MetroGIS data or services. They neither produce data nor contribute resources. They are not among the targeted beneficiaries. Examples include the general public, businesses, and nonprofits.

All are welcome to participate in MetroGIS, which implements its policies on behalf of all 300+ local and regional government interests represented by the Policy Board members, regardless of whether a particular organization is active. Click here for a schematic that illustrates varied institutional relationships that comprise the MetroGIS community.

Generally, any organization involved in geospatial activities within the Twin Cities area is encouraged to participate in MetroGIS through ad hoc work groups and the Technical Advisory Team. Membership on the Coordinating Committee and Policy Board are governed by the MetroGIS Operating Guidelines, which are designed to insure a balance among data users and data producers, as well as among the stakeholder classes.

The MetroGIS Policy Board, since it was created in January 1997, provides policy direction for the MetroGIS Organization. The Board, comprised of twelve elected officials each representing a core stakeholder or core stakeholder community, provides policy guidance and, as importantly, a political reality check for all actions fundamental to the MetroGIS's success-- each of the seven metropolitan counties, Association of Metropolitan Municipalities (AMM), Metropolitan Chapter of the Minnesota Association of Watershed Districts (MAWD), Technology Information Educational Services (TIES - school districts), and the Metropolitan Council. The governing body for each organization represented on the MetroGIS Policy Board formally endorsed the MetroGIS mission statement and appointed one of its members to serve on the Board.

The Board is supported by a Coordinating Committee and a Technical Advisory Team that reports to the Coordinating Committee. The Coordinating Committee, comprised of 25+ managers and administrators from a cross section of interests and organizations, recommends courses of action to the Policy Board concerning design, implementation, and operation of MetroGIS. The Coordinating Committee is supported by the Technical Advisory Team. The Coordinating Committee and the Technical Advisory Team are composed of persons with broad expertise and perspective, including GIS and other relevant organizational policy, data access, data content, and data standards. MetroGIS Operating Guidelines govern the responsibilities and composition of the Board and its supporting structure. Click here for a tabular summary of the key roles of the Policy Board, Coordinating Committee and Technical Advisory Team. Click here for a diagram of MetroGIS's organizational structure. (Additional advisory teams have been operative at various times during MetroGIS's evolution. Please see the Dissolved Teams page for more information about them.).

The Metropolitan Council provides the primary staff support, in accordance with its role as primary sponsor of the MetroGIS initiative. Click here for a diagram of MetroGIS's organizational structure.

MetroGIS makes a practical assumption that organizations cooperate out of self-interest. Very early, participants agreed to support the "data sharing" ideal only if it met their own business needs. In other words, MetroGIS must serve a diverse collection of functional ends, not data sharing for its own sake. For MetroGIS, the principal stakeholders are the Metropolitan Council, other regional agencies, and local units of government - counties, cities, school districts, and watershed districts - few of which need geodata for the same purpose or use it in the same form. The principal challenge for MetroGIS is to meet the common geodata needs of these organizations without costing them more in resources or time than would otherwise be the case if they developed or assembled the data they need from others on their own.

Based on this "self-interest" assumption, MetroGIS is guided by several fundamental principles, including the following.

• Secure Champions. Broadly supported "proven practices" will not just happen. Sustained collaboration requires leadership from organizations with related business needs and a willingness to participate; leadership from knowledgeable and respected individuals with a passion for the possible; as well as, a lot of hard work and significant resources. Providing lead support for the functions MetroGIS supports cannot be a job responsibility in addition to "regular duties". Overseeing the affairs of the collaborative must be job one for a person(s) with the appropriate skill sets and undaunted enthusiasm necessary to maintain sufficient momentum to keep key parties actively engaged. The organizational structure must nurture leadership from within as well as draw others within the community who have been involved in the rich tradition of GIS experimentation. It takes time to build the required support and it takes advocates at all levels in all key organizations to institutionalize the agreed upon practices - the ultimate goal if the efforts of the collaborative are to be sustained. No single organization or minority faction can be perceived as "driving the bus", if the collaboration is to be sustained.
• Broad Support of Vision and Expectations. Reach collective agreement on the desired purpose of the collaborative and continually monitor the correctness of the stated purpose. Three activities were extremely beneficial to developing and maintaining a common understanding of purpose and desired outcomes for MetroGIS: the initial strategic planning retreat, identification of common business needs, and identification of priority functions. These activities involved intensive consensus-building processes. They were successful because knowledgeable and dedicated individuals committed to participate in the projects and highly trained professionals conducted the processes. Finally, intellectual property rights are the source of the single most complex and difficult obstacle to standardizing data access policies, yet MetroGIS has found that widespread commitment to a common vision can play a significant role in reaching collective agreement.
• Actively Involve Policy Makers. Empower elected officials early on and throughout the initiative to maintain policy focus on the broader public good, broaden understanding of the issues and benefits, provide direction on strategic initiatives, provide a reality check for proposed courses of action, identify appropriate areas for collaboration, advocate with higher authorities when needed and, of course, set policy. The MetroGIS Policy Board was created before any initiatives were undertaken, other than to craft a high level vision that the policy makers were asked to mold into a reality that could be supported by all key stakeholders.
• Promote Understanding. To help Policy Board members better understand the value of geospatial and use of GIS technology, a demonstration is made at each Board meeting to demonstrate benefits of using the technology and benefits gained through data sharing and collaboration. Activities of the collaborative are regularly communicated through a variety of means with the policy maker, manager, and technical communities to foster informal professional networks and champions for the initiative at all levels and within all critical organizations. County-based GIS user groups are fostered and encouraged to "bubble-up" issues to the regional level which are beyond their ability to effectively address. Fostering clear understanding of the issues, opportunities, and collective objectives by the entire community; that is, being prepared when opportunity presents itself, may well broaden the reach of "good luck", which also clearly has its place for some of our successes.
• Seek Consensus on Policy Decisions. Consensus among Policy Board members is sought for action on issues and opportunities fundamental to MetroGIS's success. Solutions must be institutionalized to sustain the collaborative's objectives. Organizations that have related business needs must actively participate to institutionalize roles and responsibilities desired by the MetroGIS community.
• Represent Diverse Perspectives. MetroGIS's decision making derives from work performed by broadly representative committees and workgroups, comprised of committed managers and technical staff with appropriate expertise, which identify common needs, develop work programs, and formulate solutions to these needs. Data producers and users are involved in all aspects of the collaborative's decision-making. No single organization or faction dominates.
• Document Stakeholder Benefits. Identifying and documenting stakeholder benefits in a manner readily understandable by the various stakeholder communities is fundamental to strengthening commitments to MetroGIS, whether or not benefits can be precisely measured. MetroGIS encourages testimonials from its stakeholders and seeks out opportunities to collaborate with the academic community to identify and document benefits of collaboration.
• Maintain Focus on Common Business Information Needs. MetroGIS took pains to identify common business information needs of key stakeholder organizations via a broadly collaborative process and embarked on a regional geodata strategy focused on meeting these common needs. The collaborative has elected to focus entirely on common geodata needs and an effective means to search and retrieve the associated data. Application development is not currently a function supported by MetroGIS.
• Focus on Stakeholder Benefits. Identifying stakeholder benefits is fundamental to strengthening commitments to MetroGIS, whether or not benefits can be precisely measured. Identify and communicate the benefits.
• Acknowledge Fair-Share Contribution Options. Contributions to the sustained operation of the regional collaborative, from any one stakeholder, may be in the form of funding, data, and/or people and equipment.
• Align with Internal Business Needs. No stakeholder organization will be asked to perform a function for the collaborative that exceeds their internal business needs. Stated another way, all solutions must have their roots in actions consistent with day-to-day business functions of the stakeholder community.
• Maintain an Institutional Memory. Champions at all levels of the collaborative have and will continue to leave MetroGIS and stakeholders may not be able to keep abreast of all of the breadth of activities MetroGIS is engaged in. Creditable documentation of meetings, policy decisions, studies, etc. is critical to maintaining a course consistent with previously agreed upon policy and direction.
• Connect with Geodata Initiatives on the State and National Levels. MetroGIS's endorsed procedures for addressing its stakeholders' common information needs and its one-stop data distribution mechanism have been highly influenced by the vision of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) to ensure that MetroGIS is part of the larger vision. For instance, the NSDI Framework Data Theme-related concepts of "area integrator" and "skylines" are examples of concepts fostered by the NSDI that have been refined and operationalized by MetroGIS. MetroGIS is also a designated I-Team, one of only a few at the substate level, and MetroGIS DataFinder (www.metrogis.org) is a registered node of the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse. MetroGIS leadership and staff are also highly involved in the evolution of geodata policy and procedures for the State of Minnesota, again to ensure that we grow as an integrated community, promoting common use of best practices and taking advantage of partnerships for commonly needed data and tools.

At its core, MetroGIS's efforts involve bundling of operational capacity across numerous organizations to achieve together what no single organization is capable of itself. The decision-making process used to implement sustainable policies needed to achieve this bundling of capacity is broadly inclusive and consensus-based, in particular for decisions important to MetroGIS's long-term effectiveness. Several guiding principles underpin MetroGIS's decision-making process, principles that have been honored since MetroGIS began in 1996. Click here for an explanation of the process and the underlying principles.

Introduction
The costs to support MetroGIS's efforts can be divided into two main categories, those involving the "fostering collaboration" function and those involving custodial-related responsibilities related to support of endorsed regional data solutions (http://www.metrogis.org/data/about/index.shtml#whatis ) and MetroGIS DataFinder (www.datafinder.org). MetroGIS DataFinder is an Internet-based mechanism for discovery and access to geospatial data for the seven-county, Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area.

The Metropolitan Council accepted responsibility for supporting the "foster collaboration" function and has continued to support this function since the initial exploratory efforts in 1995 that launched MetroGIS. The Council has also accepted custodial responsibility for support of several endorsed regional data solutions and MetroGIS DataFinder. Nine other organizations, as of April 2006, have also accepted custodian responsibilities related to endorsed regional data solutions. More information is provided below about these roles responsibilities.

It is important to note that organizations are not pursued to support regional solutions unless they have an internal business need for the particular function involved. Since the responsibilities associated with support of the endorsed regional solutions generally comprise a minor extension of an internal need, a separate accounting of the costs these functions is not maintained. This is not the case for MetroGIS's "fostering collaboration" function, for which no single organization possesses an internal business need, although the fostering collaboration function is critical to leveraging existing investments and minimizing duplication of effort - build once and share many times. The Metropolitan Council recognized the substantial efficiencies that could be gained by obtaining the data it needs from others through MetroGIS's collaborative process verses attempting to secure these data on their own. As such, the Council has accepted the expense of supporting MetroGIS's "fostering collaboration function".

1995 to 2005
The Metropolitan Council invested $2.74 million in support of MetroGIS's foster collaboration function (an average of approximately $250,000 annually). The average annual cost to support MetroGIS's "fostering collaboration" function has dropped over 22 percent since the earlier years. The average annual cost from 1996 to 1998 was $382,100, whereas, the average annual cost for 2003-2005 was $295,900. This reduction is due to the need for fewer studies and leveraging of lessons learned. As importantly as the Council's investment in the support of "fostering collaboration", the sought after collaboration could not have been achieved without the substantial investment of time and resources of hundreds of individuals representing all facets of the MetroGIS stakeholder community. Implementation of the endorsed regional solutions also involves substantial resources from a number of stakeholder organizations working in concert with one another to minimum duplication of effort and leverage existing investments. Click here for detailed information about the data content specifications and custodian roles and responsibilities for each of the MetroGIS community's endorsed regional solutions to common information needs.

Metropolitan Council
Major non-staff project expenses included: $700,000 for data sharing agreements with the seven metro area counties, $200,000 for DataFinder, $200,000 for business planning activities, and $100,000 for common information needs identification and follow-up forums.

Other Sources
In addition to the funding provided by the Council, the Minnesota Department of Transportation invested over $300,000 to assist the Council acquire a license and quarterly updates for the regional street centerline dataset. Three grants were also received via the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) program totaling $166,000, and approximately $22,000 was donated to MetroGIS by the Metropolitan Council and The Lawrence Group. The donated funds were generated by sales of their orthoimagery and street centerline datasets, respectively. As importantly, the time volunteered by representatives of the stakeholder organizations made the vision possible.

Related Links:

History of MetroGIS
Policy Board
Coordinating Committee
Technical Advisory Team
Accomplishments
Awards