Des Moines Advances NG911 with Sustainable GIS Workflows

The City of Des Moines, Iowa, acts as a regional geographic information system (GIS) data repository and hub for public safety and emergency response, supporting three public safety answering points (PSAPs) and serving half a million residents. The city’s GIS Division, part of the Information Technology Department, has led efforts to transform how address data is collected, managed, and delivered for Next Generation 911 (NG911).

Over the past two decades, the GIS team has grown from a small group of analysts into a sophisticated operation that supports regional data stewardship, quality control, and real-time collaboration across jurisdictions. Led by deputy chief information officer Aaron Greiner, GIS manager Heather Schafer, and GIS analyst Erik Brawner, the team has implemented a series of technical innovations using ArcGIS technologies to streamline workflows, improve data quality, and meet evolving NG911 standards.

Des Moines began its journey toward NG911 readiness with a regional GIS initiative involving 17 partners, with each partner responsible for maintaining address point and road centerline data within their jurisdictions. Des Moines acted as the regional data steward. While this decentralized model allowed each partner to retain local control of their GIS data, it introduced significant challenges in data consistency, quality assurance, and workflow efficiency.

Initially, regional partners shared data using distributed geodatabases and file-based replicas. They checked out datasets, edited them locally, and returned them via FTP. This process was slow, error-prone, and difficult to manage. And with no set deadline for submitting updates, some partners would take months—sometimes half a year—to provide their updated data back to the city. Once submitted, address updates could take weeks to process. Errors often went undetected until late in the workflow, sometimes forcing teams to restart the process and delaying the GIS team’s updates to mission-critical NG911 call routing systems.

As NG911 standards evolved, the State of Iowa increased the frequency and accuracy requirements for GIS data submissions. What started as annual submissions quickly shifted to biannual, quarterly, and eventually monthly updates. The legacy workflow could not keep pace with these demands. A single record error could block an entire submission, and manually identifying and correcting issues became unsustainable.

The GIS team also faced ongoing training challenges with regional partners. Frequent staff turnover among regional partners’ GIS departments meant constant onboarding and retraining. Many GIS editors lacked visibility into how their changes affected downstream systems like CAD and NG911, leading to recurring errors and inefficiencies.

To address these challenges, the Des Moines GIS team overhauled its NG911 data aggregation, quality control, and provisioning workflows. Central to this transformation was the adoption of ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Pro, and branch versioning to enable real-time editing and validation. The technical implementation shifted the process from file-based replicas to a centralized feature service.

Each regional partner now edits data directly in ArcGIS Pro through a named version within their assigned enterprise geodatabase.

This new system eliminated FTP transfers and manual check-ins, dramatically reducing update times.

To enforce data quality, the team applied attribute rules across their address point and road centerline feature classes. These rules require mandatory fields, validate attribute values, and prevent invalid edits from being saved. For example, rules were created to restrict editing rights based on user credentials and jurisdiction boundaries. Partners also now have two-week editing windows scheduled each month, followed by two weeks for QA/QC and provisioning updates to the state’s NG911 system.

After the editing period ended, further updates had to wait to be submitted until the following month. The two weeks that followed the editing window allowed the GIS team to process the regional partners’ edits, perform data quality control checks, and provision the updated GIS data to the state’s NG911 system.

The team also built a custom web portal using ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript and Calcite components. This portal serves as a central hub for regional partners, providing a calendar showing their scheduled editing windows, access to their data layers, and real-time QA/QC reports. Partners can view their active editing windows, submit issues, and run live QA/QC reports against their data. Regional partners can validate their edits in real time. The report checks for errors across multiple layers and related tables, providing detailed feedback and map-based visualization of issues.

This self-service model has improved partners’ accountability and has saved the Des Moines GIS team time and effort previously spent helping to identify and correct data problems.

To support provisioning GIS data to NG911, the team automated the extract, transform, and load (ETL) process using SQL stored procedures and Python scripts. These tools reformat address point, road centerline, and boundary data to meet NG911 schema requirements, including reprojection and field mapping. What used to take days now takes less than 30 minutes. The state now has timely and accurate submissions, ensuring that the City of Des Moines meets the state’s requirement for monthly NG911 data submissions.

The impact of Des Moines’s GIS transformation has been profound. Time savings alone are substantial. Tasks that previously took days or weeks—such as checking in replicas, resolving errors, and preparing NG911 submissions—now take minutes. The team estimates that what once required half a day to a full day every few weeks has been reduced to 10 to 15 minutes.

GIS data quality has also improved dramatically. Attribute rules help keep data clean, and the QA/QC reports available in the portal empower partners to identify and correct errors independently. For example, when a new editor deleted critical street name records, the new system caught the error immediately and, instead of taking days to fix, resolved the error without impacting the master dataset.

Another example involved the accidental deletion of 13 United States National Grid (USNG) points used for dispatch and routing within CAD. In the past, recovery required extensive manual effort. But with branch versioning and built-in archiving, the team restored the points in 15 minutes, avoiding disruption to emergency services.

The system has also improved training and onboarding of new GIS professionals. The combination of scheduled GIS data editing windows, on-demand data validation, and automated error detection has minimized mistakes and led to higher data quality.

From a public safety perspective, the benefits are substantial. Accurate address point and road centerline data ensures that CAD systems can quickly locate 911 callers, select appropriate units to respond, and generate reliable routes—ultimately reducing response times and improving outcomes. Since the GIS data supports NG911 core services, 911 calls can be routed to PSAPs geospatially with greater accuracy and fewer misroutes, ensuring help arrives faster.

The regional GIS dataset maintained by Des Moines is used across multiple systems, including permitting, police records management, and asset management. The improved workflows have enhanced data consistency across these platforms, reducing discrepancies and improving service delivery.

The City of Des Moines’s GIS team transformed NG911 GIS data management by replacing manual processes with workflows powered by ArcGIS. The team implemented ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Enterprise, branch versioning, and custom web tools to deliver real-time editing, automated validation, and faster data provisioning. These changes created a sustainable, scalable system that meets evolving public safety standards.

They embraced change and the possibility of making things better for not only themselves, but their regional partners and the State of Iowa as a whole. As NG911 standards advance, the city is positioned to adapt and lead. Des Moines’s success offers a clear road map for other jurisdictions. With the right technology and collaboration, agencies can modernize NG911 workflows, improve data accuracy, and strengthen emergency response—making a measurable difference for the communities they serve.