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1. CALL TO ORDER
The meeting was called to order by Chairperson LaBau at 8:30 a.m. It was held at the Roseville City Hall.
Members Present: David Arbeit, David Claypool, Will Craig, Virginia Erdahl, Brad Henry, Richard Johnson, Margo
LaBau, and Dennis Welsch.
Members Absent: Patrick O'Connor
Visitor: Beth Hobbs, Trudy Richter and Yvonne Chaillet of the Fair-Share Financial Model consultant team.
Support Staff: Randall Johnson and Theresa Foster
2. ACCEPT AGENDA
Henry moved and Richard Johnson seconded to accept the agenda as presented. Motion carried unanimously.
3. ACCEPT MEETING SUMMARY
Henry moved and Richard Johnson seconded to approve the January 21, 1999 meeting summary, as submitted. Motion
carried unanimously.
4. SUMMARY OF JANUARY 27TH BOARD MEETING
Chairperson LaBau highlighted the actions of the Policy Board at its January 27th meeting. Staff reported that
a draft letter had been forwarded to Chairperson Reinhardt for her approval, as requested by the Board. The letter
summarized the Board’s concerns about the Information Policy Task Force recommendations to the Legislature. Arbeit
reported that a Senate subcommittee, chaired by Senator Betzold, is scheduled to discuss the recommendations of the
Task Force and several related bills (S.F’s 212, 552, 653, and 654) today (February 17th) at noon. Arbeit,
Claypool, and staff noted they would be attending. Staff was asked to inform the team by email of the outcome of the
subcommittee hearing. (Following the meeting, staff learned Chairperson Reinhardt had forwarded the letter to Senator
Betzold earlier that morning.)
5. DISCUSSION/ACTION ITEMS
5a. MetroGIS Fair-Share Financial and Organizational Project
(1) Beth Hobbs introduced Trudy Richter and Yvonne Chaillet who will be working on Task C-2 (Organizational
Structure). She also provided an update on activities for Task A (Define Roles and Responsibilities) and Task B
(Estimate Cost of the Collaboration). Ms. Hobbs requested clarification on January 21st direction concerning use of
focus groups to accomplish Task B. She noted John Lunde and Gina Buss, who will be conducting Task B, are concerned
that use of focus groups, as opposed to one-on-one interviews, will divert their efforts to efficiently gather
information specific to the identified roles and responsibilities.
Craig commented that at the January Team meeting he believes the Team was responding to the need to
efficiently draw upon diverse and representative perspectives and that the team’s intent was to provide advise to
the consultant team on the methods to accomplish the deliverable, not prescribe the methods. He reiterated focus groups
are a means to qualitatively explore an issue. A richness not generally possible with one-on-one interviews comes from
the members drawing upon insight they obtain from comments made by other participants. He also mentioned focus groups
can also be useful to bring more people and perspectives to the process in a short period of time than may be possible
with one-on-one interviews.
Chairperson LaBau stated to Ms Hobbs that the consultant team has a responsibility to deliver a specified
product and that the team should have the freedom to use methods it believes are best suited to gathering the
information needed to deliver the product. The membership concurred. Ms. Hobbs noted the team will consider using a
facilitated session of some type if information gaps remain following the one-on-one interviews.
(2) Trudy Richter and Yvonne Chaillet asked for clarification on several philosophy matters fundamental to
their portion of the study and shared the results of their work to collect information about existing organization
structures applicable to MetroGIS’s needs.
The Advisory Team provided context for the MetroGIS functions endorsed by the Policy Board on September 30,
1998. Although these functions are intended to evolve as the Policy Board learns more about the needs of its
stakeholders, Team members asked the consultant team to assume these functions are stable for purposes of this study.
MetroGIS is an outcome-based initiative. The consultant team was asked to keep this in mind when deliberating the
importance of any particular aspect (e.g., if promotion of a standard of some sort would have little or no impact on
achieving the stated goals, it should be assumed to have little relevance to the project).
Ms. Richter requested clarification about the status of the options to supplement Council funding listed in a
January 1998 report to the Policy Board. Staff noted that with the exception of the option of grant funds, which were
sought and received for this study, the options cited in the report were found premature. Policy Team members noted
that each of the options listed in that report should be investigated as part of the Fair-Share Financial study along
with the options listed in the Request for Proposal. Policy Team members emphasized that no funding options have been
ruled out by MetroGIS, rather, it is their expectation that the consultant team will provide the information and
analysis necessary for MetroGIS to decide the most appropriate funding options.
Membership in the MetroGIS decision making process was discussed on some detail, including rationale for
deciding representation on the Coordinating Committee and Policy Board. The consultant team was encouraged to review
the definition provided for the term "stakeholders" in the MetroGIS Operating Guidelines. This definition provides
insight into understanding the composition of the Policy Board, given the assumption that the Policy Board should have
the authority to commit to contracts; receive, manage and spend funds; etc. The Coordinating Committee, on the other
hand, was populated with the objective to bring managers from a variety of GIS-related public, non-profit, and private
sector perspectives together to recommend courses of action with broad application and appeal.
Policy Advisory Team members agreed the organizational structure proposed for MetroGIS must be flexible,
capable of adjusting to changing organizational capabilities, and reflect the need for active collaboration among its
partners to share the most current data and effectively support a distributed system of data maintenance and storage
(no centralized data warehouse). Other specific required characteristics of the organizational structure, in addition
to those presented in the outline presented at the meeting, were identified as follows:
- It must be capable of incorporating as voting members additional organizations, including non government
organizations (e.g., utilities, university, state agencies, private sector).
- It must be extensible – be able to include organizations beyond the seven-county area.
- It must be capable of entering into public-private partnerships.
- Board membership must continue the current to include among its voting members representatives from
cities, watershed districts, and school districts. The group called attention to the need to resolve issues that arise
due to use of Metro Area associations to provide representation for the three latter interests.
- The structure and its attendant policies need to strike a balance between the need for the individual
partners to raise funds for their GIS operations and the need for MetroGIS to, likewise, raise revenues to support the
costs of the regional data sharing mechanism.
- Other comments on the "Criteria for Evaluation" included in the hand out were as follows: Accountability
should include the members and beyond, the stakeholder governed component in the mission statement can be associated
with the "equity" criterion; add "legal considerations"; and add "costs to support".
Policy Advisory Team members concluded that three organizational structure models should be developed by the
consultant team for further discussion. They are: joint powers, non-profit corporation, and contractual. Advisory Team
members asked for this analysis to be presented in a pro/con format in terms of the required and desired elements.
Advisory Team members agreed the option of a voluntary association is not practical for MetroGIS because: a) the large
investment involved and b) lack of appropriate standing if legislative changes are needed. (Editorial note: This
finding should be included in the background information that accompanies the final recommendation to the Policy
Board.)
The consultant team shared a list of organizations to whom they have spoken to date. Advisory Team members
suggested that the IMAGES project in the Indianapolis area should be added to list. The group also asked the consultant
team to speak with Don Evans in Calgary for a couple of Canadian examples that may be relevant to MetroGIS’s
objectives (e.g., the Linnet Crown Corporation in Manitoba, City of Edmonton, etc.) At Henry’s suggestion, the
group also concurred that an description of the "volume of service" should be added to the list of attributes presented
and evaluated for each organization.
5b. Request to Collaborate with Urban Logic’s NSDI Project for New York City
Staff summarized a request from Bruce Cahan of Urban Logic, Inc. Mr. Cahan has asked MetroGIS to consider
testing several GIS data development underwriting assumptions that Urban Logic will be recommending as a result of an
FGDC-assisted project.
The Team concurred Urban Logic’s focus on financing data development (capitalizing data development costs
as an IT expense) appears to be substantially different than the objectives of the MetroGIS Fair-Share Financial model
project. All members were concerned about the potential to divert limited MetroGIS resources away from priority
MetroGIS’s objectives. It was agreed that no further consideration would be given to Urban Logic’s request
until staff has had an opportunity to review their final project report due to the FGDC in March.
5c. MetroGIS Benefits Study Update
Craig summarized his progress on the MetroGIS Benefits Study and findings to date. He likened the evolution of
MetroGIS to four-phases along a continuum: 1) developing a common vision of what the partners can achieve if data
sharing is a reality, 2) actually sharing data, 3) using shared data to improve efficiencies of current functions, and
4) accomplishing tasks not now possible or not yet thought about -- what Craig refers to as the big payoffs.
His team is using data sharing logs maintained by the counties and the Metropolitan Council in conjunction
with their Data and Cost Sharing Agreements to identify organizations which have obtained shared data. Recipients of
shared data are interviewed to identify any problems they may have encountered to translate and use the data. The
recipients are also asked how they are using the data received. From the interviews conducted to date, Craig has
concluded there is a fair amount of sharing occurring but it is a little early to evaluate the benefit or impact
because few organizations have actually used the data.
Early results are, however, showing that the regional street centerline and orthoimagery datasets are
perceived as quite valuable. The Mosquito Control District is biggest beneficiary found to date. They have been able to
automate time consuming manual processes and expand their in-house analytic capabilities extensively through use of
shared datasets, in particular, the regional street centerline and orthoimagery datasets. County officials acknowledge
they are benefiting from the funding provided by the Metropolitan Council through the Data and Cost Sharing Agreements,
particularly as an the incentive to document their data holdings. There is wide spread agreement that data
documentation (metadata) maximizes investment in data development. Rural counties acknowledge they have benefited by
being able to "ramp up" faster than otherwise possible. Watershed and school districts that include portions of
multiple counties are benefiting from the ability to obtain uniform datasets over their entire jurisdiction.
The Team talked about the need to identify which organizations have obtained data from the anonymous FTP site
maintained by LMIC on behalf of MetroGIS to provide another source of candidates to interview for the benefits study.
Arbeit stated he would look into this matter.
Erdahl concurred with Craig that it is still a little early for a definitive evaluation of benefits received
from data sharing. She noted, for example, Washington County’s work on its school district boundaries dataset
pilot project. They have found several coding errors but it is too early to understand the implications for the school
district dataset and how this knowledge can be applied to other projects.
5d. Policy Information Task Force Recommendation Update
It was agreed to hold off discussion of a strategy to respond to the Information Policy Task Force’s
recommendations until after the Senate Subcommittee meeting scheduled to be held immediately following this meeting
(February 17th). Staff agreed to inform the members of the proceedings. (See Item 4 for additional discussion.)
5e. Coordinating Committee Meeting Schedule
Staff reported the Policy Board has decided to meet quarterly rather than every other month through the
remainder of 1999. The Team agreed that the Coordinating Committee should, likewise, revise its meeting schedule to a
quarterly basis to continue its practice of meeting the month prior to the Policy Board.
Motion: Arbeit moved and Erdahl seconded to recommend that the Coordinating Committee set the following
meeting schedule for the remainder of the 1999: March 18th, June 24th, September 23rd and December 16th. The time and
place to be 8:30 a.m. at LMIC, facilities permitting. Motion carried, ayes all.
5f. Team Meeting Schedule
The next meetings of the Policy Advisory Team were scheduled for March 10th, April 7th, and June 2nd all at
8:30 a.m. and at the Roseville City Hall if the facilities are available.
6. OTHER BUSINESS
None
7. INFORMATION SHARING
- Governor’s Council on Geographic Information – Data Sharing Agreements Subcommittee - No
discussion
8. NEXT MEETINGS
- March 10th, Roseville City Hall 8:30 a.m.
9 ADJOURN
Henry moved and Erdahl seconded to adjourn at 10:50 a.m. Motion carried, ayes all.
Prepared by Randall Johnson, AICP, MetroGIS Staff Coordinator
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