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Suggested Citation:"Chapter IV - Assessing Your Capabilities." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter IV - Assessing Your Capabilities." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
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Page 24
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter IV - Assessing Your Capabilities." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2011. Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14504.
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Page 25

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As you define the activities associated with the new system, you need to understand the capabilities of your office and the capabilities available to you from broader agency resources and, possibly, from other state agencies. This assessment includes consideration of: • Hardware and software: including desktop computing, servers, operating systems, and Internet/ intranet connectivity • Applications: including existing right-of-way support applications, database systems and management tools, document management systems, GISs, CADD, financial tracking appli- cations, project management applications, and other information and/or decision support systems such as environmental and planning tools • Data: including their availability, who maintains them, where they are maintained, policies associated with accessing and updating them, and available and required metadata • Agency IT policies and procedures related to application development and management, data and metadata, hardware and software management, and updates Because of the dynamic nature of technology and its implementation, this assessment should be revisited periodically through the implementation process; typically, this reassessment is one of the functions of the Working Group members. One thing to be aware of is the potential for project creep associated with new technologies. Where you start in the implementation process depends on where your office and your agency currently are. Assessing existing capabilities encompasses several aspects of doing the business of acquiring real property, including the current level of use of information technology, avail- able data, available information systems, and institutional culture. Current Right-of-Way Applications Within your office, you will want to identify what systems are already being used. These sys- tems include any central office-wide applications, any external systems such as an electronic mul- tiple listing service (MLS), and any task-specific tools such as spreadsheets with hyperlinks to useful websites, or reporting tools or templates. You will want to include linkages in your new system to any applicable external systems, if practical. Any functionality that has proved useful in other tools and localized applications may be transferred to or implemented in the new system design, so knowing what exists is important. You may want to expand an information management system that you already use that serves some or all of your activities. You will want to identify exactly what functions are already covered in the existing system so that you know what additional work you want to design based on your 23 C H A P T E R I V Assessing Your Capabilities

requirements assessment. You will also need to understand the underlying data and system structure so you can effectively modify or build on it. If you have a system that was developed before the technological changes that have occurred in distributed computing and enterprise database systems, you may want to evaluate the feasi- bility of migrating your system to the new environment. Service-oriented architectures, cloud computing, and distributed computing have changed the nature of how information-intense businesses operate and they provide much more flexibility and scalability in the design and implementation of complex information management systems. Existing Database Structure Probably the most important aspect of assessing your capabilities is knowing the database structure that is available within your transportation agency. This structure will typically provide the basis for your system, particularly for the electronic ledger-type system. It also provides the fundamental linkage to interoperability to other systems. You will want to identify existing databases that currently exist in the database system(s) that you want to include in the right-of- way system. This identification is generally done in conjunction with identifying other agency systems and datasets, including GIS. In most cases, these datasets will include metadata, or information about the data, which is necessary for your design. If a dataset does not include metadata, you will have to identify the owner of the data and obtain the necessary information. Typically, the agency through the database system manager will have established policies for adding datasets to the system. You will need this information for the design and final implementation. Existing Geospatial Capabilities If you are building GIS visualization and analysis directly into your system, knowing what GIS software is available is less important than understanding the geospatial datasets, their content, and format. If you are going to integrate your system with an existing GIS, then you will need to know what that system is and what language and structure it uses to communicate. Most of the large enterprise database systems now support geospatial data structures and many transportation agencies have migrated their geospatial data into these systems. Regardless of whether your agency has done so, you can include geospatial enablement in your system. However, if your agency does not maintain geospatial datasets on an accessible server, you will probably not be able to include this capability in your system until that structure is available because it may be impractical to generate all of the necessary datasets to support just your mission. Other Information and/or Decision Support Systems You interact with other offices in your agency when doing your business. Most commonly, you need data from them or need to provide them with data. You also want access to documents and, in some cases, you may want to review information in another system. Knowing what these systems are is important to your design so that the appropriate links are established to allow the necessary interaction. Areas that could have systems that need to be linked with your system include the following: • Document management • Financial 24 Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System

• Project management • CADD • Tax information • Environment • Planning • Legal • Asset management Current Information Technology Policies Transportation agencies have commonly established policies associated with the purchase, development, and implementation of new technology. These policies cover everything from whom you need to buy from to how you request proposals or bids to the procedures you must follow for implementing a new system. You should identify which policies you will need to follow as early in the process as possible since this can drive the timeline and allocation of resources. Assessing Your Capabilities 25

Next: Chapter V - Defining the System »
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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 695: Guide for Implementing a Geospatially Enabled Enterprise-wide Information Management System for Transportation Agency Real Estate Offices provides guidance for right-of-way offices in implementing a geospatially enabled enterprise-wide information management system and includes a logical model to assist with this implementation.

NCHRP Reort 695 presents the guide for implementing the logical model; a CD-ROM, included with the print version of the report, presents the logical model and a guide for its use. The annotated bibliography and executive summaries are available online.

The contractor's final report, which documents the research related to development of NCHRP Report 695, may be downloaded from the NCHRP Project 8-55A web page.

The CD-ROM is also available for download from TRB’s website as an ISO image. Links to the ISO image and instructions for burning a CD-ROM from an ISO image are provided below.

Help on Burning an .ISO CD-ROM Image

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CD-ROM Disclaimer - This software is offered as is, without warranty or promise of support of any kind either expressed or implied. Under no circumstance will the National Academy of Sciences or the Transportation Research Board (collectively “TRB’) be liable for any loss or damage caused by the installation or operation of this product. TRB makes no representation or warranty of any kind, expressed or implied, in fact or in law, including without limitation, the warranty of merchantability or the warranty of fitness for a particular purpose, and shall not in any case be liable for any consequential or special damages.

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