forestry commission - arcgis as a platform part 1
DESCRIPTION
At Esri UK Annual Conference 2014 Moving 1000+ ArcGIS for Desktop Editor users to the web The Forestry Commission have a duty of care for over 700,000 hectares of woodlands in England and Scotland with a market value in excess of £3 billion. Forester Desktop is the Commission’s principal corporate asset management system that underpins all the key business processes and activities taking place on the Forestry Commission estate - from conservation and recreation to land ownership, civil engineering and forest management. The Forester Desktop application enables 1000+ front line staff do their jobs, helping to ensure legal and policy compliance, reducing and mitigating risks and acting as a corporate memory and knowledge base. However, in 2012 a number of challenges were identified by the business, namely the need for greater data transparency and collaboration; increase the user base; reduce complexity for users; meet the needs of a distributed and mobile workforce; to enable country divergence; not to be constrained by infrastructure. Coupled with advances in technology and increased bandwidth to rural areas, the Forestry Commission have met this challenge by delivering a centralised web editing solution.TRANSCRIPT
Moving 1000+ ArcGIS for Desktop Editor users to the Web
Morag Hawkins Forester Programme Manager
Tony FarndonTechnical Development Manager
IFOS
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Economic
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Economic
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Social
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Environmental
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Forester Desktop
Forester Desktop is a bespoke GIS software application
• Over 1200 desktop users
• Distributed architecture located in 16 Forest District offices across England and Scotland and 4 offices in Natural Resources Wales (NRW)
• Users edit and manage their own data using Forester
• Embeds business rules to ensure standard, consistent, accurate and timely data is collected and recorded
IFOS
Forester Desktop
Key Points
• Forester encompasses all of the FC business
• An intuitive solution allowing non-GI users to use GI
• 60%+ of all FC staff use this solution
• 85% of users see it as a critically important to their job
• We have delivered a truly enterprise GI system for the whole organisation
IFOS
Why move 1200 users to the web?
Business drivers for change
• We want a wider user base
• Our workforce is a mobile workforce
• We want a consistent view of GB data to the make best decision for the future of FC
• Future proof Infrastructure
IFOS
Key Principles
In developing a web editing application it was of paramount that the key principles of desktop editing were adhered to:
• Embedding rules to ensure standard, consistent, accurate data is collected and recorded across countries.
• Intuitive easy to use UI thereby enabling business users who own the data to manage the data.
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Forester Web Demo
Demo
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Efficiencies
• A truly flexible web application that is configurable by the FC without software development, thereby reducing future development costs.
• Available to all staff on the FC network with no requirement for specialist GIS desktop software, only a web browser, thereby significantly reducing support and infrastructure costs
• This enables staff to work at any location across the FC, thereby reducing travelling costs.
• Intuitive and easy to use, achieved by reducing complexity. No requirement for training.
• Potentially release cycles can be more frequent and deployed instantaneously across the FC. Change can be implemented at pace.
• Ultimately reduce hardware, software, support and maintenance.
Benefits
IFOS
Resilience
• Robust technology platform that will serve the FC well for the long term future business needs.
• Forester Web accommodates organisational change and through the provision of an application that can be easily configured, ported hosted, or provided as a service
Benefits