{"id":302902,"date":"2020-01-16T19:59:16","date_gmt":"2020-01-17T03:59:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=302902"},"modified":"2020-01-16T14:26:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-16T22:26:46","slug":"gis-manager-puts-people-at-the-center-of-gis","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/gis-manager-puts-people-at-the-center-of-gis","title":{"rendered":"GIS Manager Puts People at the Center of GIS"},"author":5752,"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":[1041,10372,401],"tags":[164992,203462,165242,309592,701],"arcnews_issues":[409212],"class_list":["post-302902","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaboration","category-gis-hero","category-government","tag-city-government","tag-early-adopter","tag-gis-careers","tag-hurricane-irma","tag-smart-communities","arcnews_issues-winter-2020","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ian Wint, the GIS manager at the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, takes risks and isn\u2019t afraid to fail. That\u2019s why he\u2019s a GIS Hero.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Curious, eager to learn, willing to take chances, and quick to act. Those are qualities that describe Ian Wint, GIS manager at the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. And that\u2019s how he\u2019s forged a successful 24-year career in GIS.\r\n\r\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid to fail. Try new things,\u201d he advises other GIS practitioners. And for managers, \u201cDon\u2019t admonish your staff for a failure if you\u2019re trying something risky. You\u2019ve got to create an environment where people feel comfortable taking risks.\u201d\r\n\r\nIn his 20 years at the City of Fort Lauderdale\u201419 of which he\u2019s spent as the GIS manager\u2014Wint has overseen the steady growth and development of GIS there. He\u2019s taken plenty of risks, being an early adopter of new technology and opening up GIS to other departments and city leaders before that was the norm, and that\u2019s paid off immensely.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got GIS proliferated throughout the city,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things where success breeds success. One colleague sees something happening in one area, finds out that their colleague received assistance from GIS, and then they think, oh, that could work for me, too!\u201d\r\n\r\nWint has always seen GIS as more than a mapping tool."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":302912,"image_position":"right","orientation":"vertical","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cAfter my initial introduction to GIS, I saw it as something that I thought could live on its own to solve problems,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nWint first became aware of GIS when studying urban planning at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. A couple of his geography teachers in high school, who queried him on what he wanted to be after he did well on an exam, told him about urban planning.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey probed enough in a way that would help them focus me into something that would be super interesting,\u201d Wint recalled.\r\n\r\nAnd they were right. Wint even remembers when he first discovered GIS: in the winter semester of his second year. He saw a class on his schedule that merged urban planning and computers, and he thought that sounded really interesting.\r\n\r\n\u201cI showed up and was immediately hooked,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nTo help pay his way through school and gain experience in the field, Wint got a job as a GIS technician at a company called Geomatics International, where his main responsibility was to digitize data. But he also wanted to learn about what others were doing and show value apart from digitizing, so he looked for ways to automate tasks.\r\n\r\nThis enterprising nature helped catapult Wint into his first job out of college, which could have easily intimidated any bright-eyed and bushy-tailed recent grad. A boutique community planning firm called Glatting Jackson was looking to introduce GIS to the company via its new environmental planning department.\r\n\r\n\u201cMy job was to come in and springboard that,\u201d said Wint. He was the sole GIS hire at the time. \u201cMy role was to bring GIS in and then work with project managers to show how GIS could provide added benefit to client work.\u201d\r\n\r\nWhen he thinks back on that being his first real job, Wint says he had a lot of confidence in his education and good preparation from his mentor, professor Brent Hall (who is now the director of education and research at Esri Canada).\r\n\r\n\u201cSometimes you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know, and ignorance is bliss,\u201d he said with a laugh.\r\n\r\nA few years later, while posting a job opening for his team, he came across a GIS specialist listing for the City of Fort Lauderdale.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen I read the job description, I thought, wow, this would help expose me to applying GIS to a variety of areas, not just in planning,\u201d Wint said. \u201cA decent-sized city has so many different departments\u2014fire, police, utilities, public works, finance\u2014and so many different disciplines, I thought it would be exciting and a challenge to apply GIS to all those different disciplines.\u201d\r\n\r\nSo he went for it and got the job. He was only the second person the city had hired to do GIS. Six months in, the GIS coordinator who had brought him on resigned, so Wint became the acting GIS coordinator.\r\n\r\n\u201cI was doing both jobs by myself for a little over a year and a half\u201d he said. \u201cI learned a lot during that time!\u201d\r\n\r\nThe city conducted a public search to find a new coordinator and landed on Wint as the best candidate for the job. And he\u2019s been leading the way in building up GIS at the City of Fort Lauderdale ever since.\r\n\r\nWint has taken GIS from being a mapping tool that only the GIS department used to a platform that his peers and even city leaders find indispensable. What that took was getting the technology into people\u2019s hands.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf you come and ask me for a map, and I create one and hand it to you, you\u2019re happy that you have a map, but you don\u2019t care what went into making it. If you\u2019re a city manager or department head, well, you\u2019ve got your map, and you don\u2019t think about me again until you need another map,\u201d Wint explained. \u201cBut if I can hand you GIS technology that you\u2019re using and that becomes part of your daily job, it becomes something that you rely on, something tangible that you need. What that does is, whenever I need to get support for funding or things of that nature, then you\u2019re more likely to understand why I need that funding.\u201d\r\n\r\nOne of the earliest GIS projects Wint did at the city is one that has paid dividends over the years. He and his team inventoried Fort Lauderdale\u2019s water and sewer infrastructure, most of which is buried. This gave field crews something to rely on to understand where the city\u2019s assets are. It also gave engineers and others base data on asset location.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat we\u2019ve done is we\u2019ve built on that through the years,\u201d said Wint. \u201cThanks to the advancement of Esri technology, we have field crews that go out there using Survey123 [for ArcGIS] and Collector [for ArcGIS] to do inspections.\u201d\r\n\r\nManagers and supervisors can also track progress using dashboards. And Wint says the people who use the technology now tell him that they wouldn\u2019t be able to do their jobs without it.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe\u2019ve had hiccups where we\u2019ve had to take a Survey123 solution down for a day,\u201d said Wint. \u201cAnd as much as some people would see this as a negative, I see it as a positive when people are calling the help desk about that, saying they can\u2019t get their work done.\u201d\r\n\r\nWint and his team have deployed solutions for fire hydrant inspections, which help find low water pressure patterns throughout the city; parking, which the customer service team can use to solve discrepancies when residents contest parking violations; the building department, which can now easily see whether a development can be built on certain property types; and more. The GIS department also assists tremendously before, during, and after hurricanes.\r\n\r\nFor Hurricane Irma in 2017, Wint\u2019s team helped first responders gain situational awareness before the storm, telling police officers where criminal activity was happening so they could get a handle on it before lockdown and showing wind levels to the fire department so it could send out the right equipment. During the storm, GIS helped utilities monitor sewer pump stations to mitigate inundation. And after the hurricane, the technology was instrumental in keeping track of customer service calls about downed trees, inoperable traffic lights, debris, and the like so authorities could act accordingly.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn times when things are moving very quickly, you want quick visuals,\u201d said Wint. \u201cGIS has become integral for hurricane preparedness and disaster relief.\u201d\r\n\r\nAs GIS grows more central to business applications that focus on everything from land use to asset management, Wint views that as a good thing.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt further cements why GIS is needed and the value of GIS in an organization,\u201d he said.\r\n\r\nWint is committed to continuing to develop GIS technology that can help the people around him, who are largely not GIS experts.\r\n\r\n\u201cIt can make their jobs easier, make them more efficient, and give them access to information they never had before,\u201d he said."},{"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 GIS Heroes<\/a> series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nGIS Manager Puts People at the Center of GIS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Ian Wint, the GIS manager at the City of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, takes risks and isn\u2019t afraid to fail. 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