2026 SAG Award Winners

City of Goshen

Project Goal

GIS at the City of Goshen, IN is leading the way for AI preparedness city-wide through strong data governance and innovative thinking. Operating under the mantra that AI tools are only as powerful as their inputs, the City is leaning on lessons learned from building its GIS architecture to prepare records and data for AI tools.

Last fall, Goshen was awarded the Sagamore Institute's inaugural Goldsmith Prize for an AI Preparedness Initiative and public-facing pilot AI tool that can query Goshen’s development regulations. While not exclusively a GIS project, the project pitch was developed by the City’s GIS Coordinator.

The goal of the AI readiness initiative is to define and implement best practices for storing, managing, and accessing the City’s data and records for AI tool optimization. The project at its core is about data governance – clarifying sources of truth, establishing management standards, and making information readily available to staff and the public through AI to
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Business Problem Solved

Finding accurate answers to questions about Goshen’s operations, rules, infrastructure, and more has always relied on deep institutional knowledge or massive investigative efforts. Staff comb through conflicting sources across departmental data silos trying to determine what is the most recent and accurate information. The public may seek answers to questions about downtown public parking or other services but stumble upon legacy documents on the City’s website.

As the City begins to embed AI tools into its workflows, the challenge of determining what is true will only persist and exacerbate without interventions that improve data governance. The example of Goshen’s GIS program development offers a path forward by prioritizing a single source of truth and creating a clear platform for accessing authoritative data.

Technology Implemented

Goshen’s GIS data governance efforts are built on the architecture of ArcGIS Enterprise. The Enterprise portal creates an internal staff environment for hosting authoritative data. The portal is configured with highly restrictive publishing rights for maintaining a data catalogue made up of authoritative data sets only – ensuring that staff accessing the City’s GIS only ever find the best available data. The City’s ArcGIS Online environment is used as a sandbox that allows for layer development, experimentation, and learning. Here metadata tools, categories, tagging, deprecation markers, and more are all leveraged to clearly differentiate a data set’s authoritative value and status.

Development Team Biography

Mattie Lehman recently became Goshen’s first-ever Director of Innovation and Technology. During her three years as the City’s GIS Coordinator, she re-built the system architecture and grew the program from a few users and editors in Engineering to nearly 100 editors contributing to and using Goshen’s spatial data. Recognizing the value of aligning infrastructure management with data strategy, Mattie was chosen by Mayor Gina Leichty to lead a new department overseeing the City’s GIS and Asset Management programs along with its enterprise IT.

Dustin Sailor is the Director of Public Works and Utilities and was an early champion of GIS and has overseen Goshen’s GIS program from its inception 20 years ago to its maturation embedded into daily operations across the City. His leadership helped position GIS as a critical tool deserving resources.

AmeriCorps volunteers Jordan Gibbs and Nathaniel Wise were critical in building the capacity of the GIS program during their service terms.