New York State Office of Cyber Security

SECTION 8

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

This section provides Missoula County and the City of Missoula with an implementation plan for the development and maintenance of their geographic information resources. The plan recommends a budget, staff allocation, and schedule for organizational change, data development, computer hardware/software, and application development/integration. It also provides a cost benefit analysis of the planned investment in geographic information management.

8.2 COSTS

It is estimated that the combined costs to both organizations for implementing this geographic information management strategic plan are $1,438,000. This breaks down to $587,000 in County costs and $851,000 in City costs.

Table 8-1 shows the projected cost breakdown by capital costs (one-time expenditures) and operating/maintenance costs (recurring annual expenditures) for each organization. All costs are in 1998 dollars.

8.1.1 Capital Costs

The capital costs of geographic information management are summarized in Table 8-2. These include consulting, data services, and hardware/software costs.

The estimated costs for the consulting and data services portions of the capital costs are presented in more detail for Missoula County in Table 8-3 and for the City of Missoula in Table 8-4. Consulting costs include database design, conversion specifications, and custom map maintenance application development. Estimated staff times associated with in-house data development efforts are presented in Section 8.1.3.

Hardware and software costs include:

• Servers
• Network communications upgrades
• GIS software licenses and training for data custodians
• GIS workstations and viewing software for departments
• Commercial, off-the-shelf application packages for:
• permit and development tracking
• maintenance management systems
• park facilities management and reservations

Appendix D contains cost estimates of professional services and hardware/software by task.

8.1.2 Operating and Maintenance Costs

Table 8-5 shows the external costs of operating and maintenance. Annual hardware and software maintenance costs are estimated to be fifteen percent of capital cost. Communication service costs are for frame relay service at T-1 speeds.

8.1.3 Allocation of Staff

Staff effort allocated to geographic information management is summarized by year in Table 8-6. All of Missoula County's data development activities should be performed by existing staff. The City of Missoula should contract for specialized data conversion services but should conduct a portion of the storm drain facility conversion in-house. Both organizations should perform custom application development using a combination of GIS staff and organization-wide information systems analysts. The City should add an information systems analyst to its Information Services staff as part of its overall staffing as recommended in Section 6 (Organizational Framework). The City should contract for development of customized infrastructure map maintenance applications.

A detailed allocation of staff to data development, hardware/software setup, and applications development activities is presented in Appendix E.

8.2 SCHEDULE

This section recommends a schedule of major implementation activities to be undertaken by the County and City. A detailed implementation schedule is provided in Appendix F. The sequence of activities should be followed, although the overall schedule may be lengthened as necessary.

The following goals guided the development of the implementation schedule:

• Implement the data development sequence outlined in Section 5.
• Develop geographic data on a moderately aggressive schedule in order to support the applications outlined in Section 3.
• Provide realistic time frames and lag times for accomplishment of each task.
• Maintain a relatively even cash flow.
• Maintain relatively even staff loading at current levels.
  

The types of activities scheduled are:

• Organizational initiatives
• Data development
• Hardware and software
• Application development

Each of these is briefly discussed.

8.2.1 Organizational Initiatives

There are two organizational initiatives that must be undertaken to successfully implement the Data Development and Maintenance procedures as outlined in Section 5. These are:

• Planning for a shared road network map/database
• Planning for the County's assignment of all parcel addresses

The County should lead both of these initiatives.

There is a third organizational initiative that does not appear in the implementation schedule. This is the chairmanship of the Geographic Information Management Committee, as discussed in Section 6. The chair also coordinates the meetings of the Geographic Information Management Executive Committee. The allocation of staff hours to the chairman role is estimated at 20 to 40 hours per month, or 240 to 480 hours annually. These hours are not included in Table 8-6 because the duties may rotate. The allocation of staff hours to the various committee member roles was also estimated in Section 6. These hours are not included in Table 8-6 because they are relatively incidental and spread among a large number of positions.

8.2.2Data Development

The schedule for data development activities assumes that the County absorbs its data development efforts with existing staff and that the City contracts for specialized data conversion services. If City staff were to attempt to absorb the data development efforts included in this implementation plan, significant impacts on staffing, equipment, and schedule would result.

8.2.3 Hardware and Software

Hardware and software acquisitions and installations are scheduled to provide "just in time" increases in capacity. Decreasing hardware and software costs have not been factored into the cost analysis. Hardware and software replacement costs have not been factored into the cost analysis.

8.2.4Application Development

Application development activities are scheduled based primarily on the application priorities identified in Section 3. The secondary driver of the application development schedule is the need to maintain new geographic data sets as they are constructed. Finally, load leveling of application development effort is also accounted for in the schedule.

The development of applications for infrastructure map maintenance is scheduled to coincide with the availability of pilot data for application testing. The applications are also scheduled to be ready for production use immediately following data acceptance testing. This will minimize the backlog of maintenance to be applied to each converted data set.

8.3 COST BENEFIT

This section compares the direct tangible costs and benefits of the implementation plan.

It is important to note that sound geographic information management practices are becoming universally accepted among local governments throughout the United States. Section 9 (System Benefits) outlines the types of benefits that typically accrue to jurisdictions that implement sound practices. Many of these benefits are intangible in nature, meaning they cannot be readily measured in financial terms, and include the value of better decision-making and increases in the quality of public services.

The value of a cost benefit analysis is to provide decision makers with an estimate of how long it will take for a capital investment to provide financial returns. These returns may be measured in terms of the year in which annual costs are exceeded by annual benefits, also known as the break-even year. They may also be measured in terms of the year in which the cumulative costs of the investment are exceeded by the cumulative benefits, also known as the payback year.

8.3.1 Overview

If the County and City effectively execute this implementation plan, decision makers can expect their overall investment in improved geographic information management to break even in year 5 and to achieve payback in year 10. The significant efficiencies in staff effort that can be expected as a result of better geographic information management practices are responsible for almost all of the benefits that provide this return on investment. These efficiencies should enable the County and the City to avoid some of the costs associated with growing service demands.

Figure 8-1 illustrates the break-even analysis with annual costs and benefits projected over a twenty-year view. Figure 8-2 illustrates the payback analysis with cumulative costs and benefits projected over the same period.

8.3.2 Methodology

Benefits were evaluated for each of the data and application development tasks in the implementation plan. Benefit assumptions were made for staff time savings and avoidance of legal settlements. Task-level benefits estimates are provided in Appendix G.

Annual costs and benefits were assigned by year based on the implementation schedule presented in Section 9 (System Benefits). All costs and benefits were inflated at a rate of three percent per year. The net present values of each year's costs and benefits were calculated using a six percent discount rate. The cost benefit calculations are provided in Appendix H.