By Christian Carlson
On March 29-30, 2017 Esri will hold the fourth annual Public Sector CIO Summit in Redlands, California. The purpose of the summit is to bring together CIO’s from across world to discuss GIS, its capabilities and how location impacts government. The three previous summits have been very successful and resulted in information sharing, new insight, problem solving and new relationships. It has become an event that I look forward to each year and one that I know I will leave with a better understanding our government challenges and new friendships.
I’ll be upfront and tell you that organizing this event comes with a bit of anxiety. There is an abundance professional events that can be attended each year and I am sensitive to making sure that the events we do are high quality and deliver results that are beneficial. That said, we use our personal experience with CIO’s to drive the content and agenda.
I meet with literally 100’s of government IT leaders each year. I use these engagements to understand trends and information gaps that are common across the government IT landscape. The result is an understanding of the issues facing government CIO’s and how we can better support the community. Below are many of the common themes I hear from CIO’s across the country:
- What are our real GIS capabilities and how should I take advantage of them?
- Should I consider Managed Services as an implementation approach?
- How can I understand the business value GIS brings to my organization?
- How can you support our Cyber Security issues?
- What are the best approaches for growing adoption and showing value of GIS to our internal constituents?
- Is our GIS implementation aligned with what other government organizations are doing?
- How should I staff and train my organization for location enablement?
- How can I manage our GIS implementation in a more sustainable manner?
- How can I leverage our existing GIS platform to support our strategic IT initiatives:
- IoT
- Open Data
- Big Data Analysis
- Field Mobility
- What approach should we use to integrate GIS with our other business systems?
We use the common themes to drive the content we deliver at the CIO Summit each year. The feedback we have received has been positive and I’m excited to launch another successful event to the calendar. I hope you will consider attending this years Summit. I know you will find it beneficial to you and your organization.
Please visit to register.