Mindy Dance, information systems manager, Town of Normal, Illinois

Mindy Dance, information systems manager, Town of Normal, Illinois
Number of IT staff: 9
Population: 54,594
IT budget: 2,019,224

What has been a significant technology achievement for you or your organization?
Over the past year we have increased our focus on Geographic Information System (GIS) integration and application development. Desktop and mobile GIS applications allow us to distribute data and information to the people who use it the most. Mobile applications enable field staff to record and update condition and inspection data in real time. Current mobile applications include parks asset inventory, parks inspections, water hydrant inspection and flow testing.

Desktop applications allow users to access up-to-date data that resides in the cloud or in an enterprise database. Through desktop applications, users have access to many of our hundreds of GIS data layers. Our current gallery of applications includes road closures, sanitary and storm sewer networks, zoning, land use cases, CIP planning and many more.

What future initiatives are you hoping to accomplish in the next year?
Our goal this year is to keep expanding our catalog of GIS applications. A primary focus for this year will be expanding our apps to include Sungard HTE data as well as integrating Verizon Networkfleet AVL for real-time fleet monitoring and snow removal applications.

Best advice you could offer your fellow members is...
In terms of GIS applications, focus on configuration and not customization. With the size of our IT department, we do not have the luxury of having a team of developers at our disposal to create custom applications. We rely on the solutions provided by our software vendor and configure them to meet our needs. By taking this approach we can stand up applications at a much faster cadence while at the same time avoiding costly downtime and debugging.

We all know GMIS membership is worth its weight in gold but what do you feel is the best benefit you get out of GMIS?
I appreciate the interaction with fellow GMIS members through the ListServ and while attending conferences. I have searched through the information gathered during the data dive several times and have also used job descriptions that were available on the website.