2023 SAG Award Winners

Utah State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO)

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Project Goal

The Utah State Historic Preservation Office provides advice and guidance to government agencies who undertake projects in accordance with the National Historic Preservation act of 1966 and Utah's cultural resource laws. The SHPO Records team has managed the spatial data from these agencies since the 80s, first with paper maps and file cabinets full of documents to what there is now: a streamlined web viewer managed through Portal. This gives customers the tools to query work areas for archaeological sites, and for SHPO to keep data as up-to-date as possible.
SHPO also is home to the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship program where hundreds of volunteers throughout the state of Utah use Survey 123 to keep tabs on the conditions of known archaeological sites in effort to combat the increasing trend of vandalism of cultural resources seen throughout the west. With the use of Survey 123, UCSS's goal is to bring this number down by engaging the public and volunteers in active stewardship.
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Business Problem Solved

SHPOs have been plagued by paper records for decades, but because of the efforts put in early on to move to digital business processes, Utah SHPO was able to function fully in 2020, and even upgraded to an Enterprise license in 2021 to better manage the increasing need for digital processes. Other SHPO offices around the country were not as prepared to make this crucial switch, and suffered huge lags in the ability to provide crucial data for development.

Technology Implemented

ArcGIS Portal, ArcGIS Server, hosting on a virtual machine, and many hours rebuilding our databases, and working with IT and ESRI to get this off the ground.

Development Team Biography

Chris Merritt, State Historic Preservation Officer
Deb Miller, SHPO Records Manager
Skylar Schulzke, GIS Analyst
Tyson Lewis, Database Analyst
Kiera Westwater, Records Assistant