2024 SAG Award Winners

County of Franklin GIS Department

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Project Goal

At just over 50,000 population, Franklin County, VA is one of the leading small county governments in the Commonwealth in establishing GIS as an integral component of government operations. We have established our "Online GIS Office," a comprehensive, easy to use Hub site, that incorporates Survey 123 for address requests, AGOL and AGS viewers, Open Data links for a growing catalog of data, and direct links to other entities' data sources. Other recent wins include a successful Redistricting process, successful launch of NG911, significantly reduced time for parcel edits to be updated online, and we have also solidified our role in the local and regional Public Safety and EM community. Critically, we are now getting asked to the table by more and more offices and entities as they undertake their own projects or try to solve their own challenges. These include our Planning & Zoning Office, Parks & Recreation Department, Office of Tourism, and our Broadband Authority to name a few.
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Learn more about our application: Site 1 | Site 2

Business Problem Solved

We have solved several business problems. The list includes projects like the reduction in time for parcel geometry updates to be available online from 3-6 months to 2-3 weeks. We have worked with our local Broadband Authority to secure millions of dollars in grant funding to begin improving local broadband internet access to homes and businesses across our rural community here in the Appalachian foothills. We are improving the lifestyles of residents by working with our Parks & Recreation partners to manage and expand trails, Blueways, and other opportunities for families and individuals to get out and take advantage of the tremendous local beauty of our community. We are currently working with our Planning & Zoning Office on the first full Comprehensive Plan re-write in over a decade and a half. This kind of work used to have to be outsourced. But we are empowering these and other community leaders to make informed decisions based on defensible local data and hard statistics.

Technology Implemented

We are using:
ArcGIS Pro (and Desktop...shhhh…it’s a third-party thing)
ArcGIS Online
ArcGIS Server
Hub Sites
Story Maps
Survey123 (Connect and Web Design)
Track Viewer
Field Maps
Business Analyst
ArcGIS Solutions – especially the new Emergency Management Solution.
WebApp Builder apps, though we are now in the early stages of starting the process of replacing these with Experience Builder.
We’re getting into Dashboards
Maps for Adobe Creative Cloud

Development Team Biography

The project team consists of local power users, early adopters, and everyone that has grasped the power of GIS and incorporated it into their workflows and business processes.
That said, the County GIS Coordinator has championed this expansion of the GIS footprint in Franklin County. Eric Schmidt, MA, GISP, GIS-S hails from East Tennessee where he attended the University of Tennessee and came out a cartographer. He later moved to North Carolina for a Master’s Degree in Geography from Appalachian State. Then on to South Carolina for ten years in private sector GIS. But the lure of the west drew him and his family to Nevada for eight great years. There he shifted to county government GIS and really went deep into supporting Fire, EMS, Law, and Emergency Management as a special area of personal focus. But the pull back east brought Eric and his family to Virginia where he took on his current role. He is also the current Past President for VAMLIS, Virginia’s professional GIS association.