{"id":129442,"date":"2018-10-28T23:55:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T06:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&#038;p=129442"},"modified":"2023-08-08T14:30:21","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T21:30:21","slug":"a-vision-for-geographically-enabling-government","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/a-vision-for-geographically-enabling-government","title":{"rendered":"A Vision for Geographically Enabling Government"},"author":1312,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10932,10372,401],"tags":[35362,241,1221,9402,47002],"arcnews_issues":[138472],"class_list":["post-129442","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esri-user-conference","category-gis-hero","category-government","tag-data-driven-decisions","tag-gis","tag-policy","tag-state-government","tag-the-science-of-where","arcnews_issues-arcnews-fall-2018","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"Colorado governor John Hickenlooper\u2014part of a new wave of US leadership\u2014has a passion for integrating geographic knowledge into government.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"For his entire career in public service, Colorado governor John Hickenlooper has been following a passion for integrating geographic knowledge into government.\r\n\r\n\u201cI get a chance to meet with a lot of leaders around the world, and it\u2019s my experience that Governor Hickenlooper is one of those very special people who understands the power of geography and how to apply it,\u201d Esri president Jack Dangermond said at the Plenary Session of the 2018 Esri User Conference (Esri UC).\r\n\r\nDangermond presented Hickenlooper with Esri\u2019s Leadership in Government Award, which is reserved for geospatial pioneers at the local, state, and federal government levels who encourage the use of GIS not only for everyday operations but also for developing enduring innovations."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":129472,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cHe has a unique talent for leading, and he connects people using rational thinking and science-based approaches,\u201d Dangermond observed.\r\n\r\nThis is exactly how writer and journalist James Fallows characterized Hickenlooper when introducing him at the Esri UC\u2019s concurrent Senior Executive Summit, where Hickenlooper gave an engaging speech about how GIS has been instrumental in leading the State of Colorado out of some difficult circumstances and spearheading a number of remarkable accomplishments.\r\n\r\n\u201cI think you can think of him as part of <em>[a]<\/em> movement that can save America,\u201d Fallows recounted to attendees. \u201cFor the foreseeable future, the national level of politics in the United States and a number of other democracies, too, seems to be a zero-sum contestation: in order for me to win, you have to lose.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut at the local, regional, and state levels, there\u2019s a very different spirit, argued Fallows, with people emphasizing practical compromise, positive achievement, and win-win solutions that can help these areas develop successfully in the long run.\r\n\r\n\u201cI contend that the next wave of leadership in the United States will be somebody from that tradition\u2026somebody that has made his or her reputation bringing people together, being able to do things that build popularity and prosperity and comity and inclusion, and all the other things we would like to think Western democracy and the United States are for,\u201d said Fallows. \u201cWe don\u2019t know where this next wave of leadership will come from, but\u2026there are many, many examples across the country, of whom Governor Hickenlooper\u2014now ending his successful second term as governor of Colorado\u2014is an illustration.\u201d\r\n<h2>A Spatial Thinker, Always<strong>\r\n<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nHickenlooper has a profound understanding of the power of data and mapping to inform decision-making, business, and policy.\r\n\r\nHe is reportedly the only practicing geologist to ever become a practicing governor in the history of the United States. And according to Fallows, he is only the second ever beer brewer to hold the position; Samuel Adams was first as governor of Massachusetts in the late nineteenth century.\r\n\r\nIn all phases of his career\u2014from working as a petroleum geologist to opening a string of brewpubs and restaurants to being mayor of Denver and eventually governor of Colorado\u2014maps have been crucial to Hickenlooper\u2019s success.\r\n\r\nWhen he was a master\u2019s student in geology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut in the late 1970s, he lived and died by maps, he said.\r\n\r\n\u201cThat was actually when GIS was paper maps,\u201d Hickenlooper recalled during a recent phone interview. \u201cWe would use transparencies to overlay different rock formations on our maps, which is in essence what we learned to do when GIS actually came into being as a technology. It took us forever\u2014days\u2014to make those transparencies line up properly and transfer information. Now, you can cross-coordinate information and line up data with the flip of a finger.\u201d\r\n\r\nHickenlooper eventually got a job as a geologist for Buckhorn Petroleum in Colorado. But during the oil bust of the 1980s, he got laid off\u2014along with pretty much every other petroleum geologist.\r\n\r\nSo he and some friends decided to open a brewpub in Denver\u2019s then-derelict lower downtown. Hickenlooper wanted the bar top of their new Wynkoop Brewing Company to be a map, or at least a representation of one. A friend concocted a fictitious place, and they built a map of it into the bar top with concrete, copper, and shale\u2014a callback to Hickenlooper\u2019s geology days.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe got more comments on that because people thought it was a real place,\u201d he told the summit audience.\r\n\r\nBuilding on the success of their first venture, Hickenlooper and his business partners opened more than a dozen brewpubs and restaurants across the Midwest."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":129482,"image_position":"right","orientation":"vertical","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"At the same time, Hickenlooper became somewhat of a staple in the Denver community\u2014no doubt in part because Wynkoop was eventually credited with influencing the revitalization of Denver\u2019s lower downtown, which is now home to popular restaurants, shops, and nightlife. (The addition of Coors Field, where the Colorado Rockies baseball team plays, didn\u2019t hurt, either.) So he decided to run for mayor. And in his first ever political contest, he won.\r\n\r\nGiven his background in geology and business, it was natural for him to use GIS to help run the city better, according to Esri government strategist Pat Cummens.\r\n\r\n\u201cHe\u2019s always been a spatial thinker,\u201d she said. \u201cHe knows the value of data and that you need data to drive good decision-making.\u201d\r\n\r\nDuring his eight years as mayor of Denver, Hickenlooper\u2019s administration used GIS to map all the trees in the city to ensure diversity in the canopy, find sources of pollution in the Platte River, work out where kids were suffering from lead poisoning, and more.\r\n\r\nIn 2011, he was elected governor of Colorado, and his penchant for GIS didn\u2019t fade. It shows no signs of waning now, either, even with his time in the governor\u2019s office coming to a close.\r\n\r\n\u201cFor so many of the challenges of modern life, GIS is the last great hope,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not the solution to everything, but I think, in a funny way, it\u2019s a partial solution to almost everything. One of the challenges we face is how rapidly the world is changing, whether you\u2019re talking about natural disasters and hundreds of thousands of people being displaced or you\u2019re talking about how pollution works and how we can clean the air and the water. Those solutions are all going to come down to our ability to use GIS effectively. The patterns of drought and therefore wildfires and therefore floods, medical epidemics, public health issues around nutrition and the spread of virus\u2014all these things are very, very complex challenges that demand GIS responses.\u201d\r\n\r\nOver the last eight years, Hickenlooper and his administration have employed GIS to come up with solutions for all these problems and more. In 2012, when Colorado experienced drought that led to some of the worst wildfires in the state\u2019s history, the government used GIS to map the fires and predict where they were going to go so it could better allocate its resources. When that wildfire season ushered in ruinous flash floods the following year, the government used GIS again to map and redesign highway contours and prompt all the repair crews to collaborate. Not only did this allow evacuated residents to return to their homes much quicker than initially thought, but it also helped the state rebuild those highways so they were stronger, safer, and more resilient.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen people have lost everything\u2026you can\u2019t come and say, \u2018Well, we\u2019re going to build it back,\u2019\u201d said Hickenlooper. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to come back and say, \u2018We\u2019re going to build it better.\u2019\u201d\r\n\r\nHaving accurate data and being able to map it dynamically is a big part of that.\r\n<h2>A New Golden Age<strong>\r\n<\/strong><\/h2>\r\nHickenlooper believes that we now live in the golden age of data, which is also the golden age of maps. This is because, while maps of the past were made of what already existed (the landscape, animal tracks) and eventually became records of what we created ourselves (roads, bridges), they can now show what we hope to build (cities with clean air, rural communities with strong economies). Essentially, modern-day maps can illustrate the future.\r\n\r\n\u201cThis is a moment that is going to have unbelievable transformational capacity, not just for elected leaders but <em>[also]<\/em> for businesses <em>[and]<\/em> nonprofits,\u201d he told the audience at the summit. \u201cMaps\u2026are a powerful tool by which people work together and collaborate\u2014another natural resource that we seem to have in short supply.\u201d\r\n\r\nBut with leaders like Hickenlooper, maybe this kind of data-driven collaboration is about to arrive at its golden age, too."},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"Read other articles in the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/news-publications\/newsroom\/publications\/gis-heroes\">GIS Heroes<\/a>\u00a0series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized 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