Curtis Pulford took over as the new state Geographic Information Officer in late December 2007 after working for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation for the past ten years. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Curt about his new role in state government, and where he thinks things are headed in the future.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background, and your most recent position with the WI Department of Transportation?
When I started in the field 20 years ago, I was unaware of any formal programs for GIS. I used my education in information technology to land a position managing what turned out to be a spatial database for Pima County Arizona. I was immediately drawn to, and discovered, mutual benefits in working with their fledgling GIS led by Gene Trobia (the current Arizona State Cartographer). I ended up working 10 years for this extremely progressive organization. I rose through the ranks, and eventually managed some complex inter-agency programs for them.
I moved back to the Midwest in the mid-90’s, and spent the last 10 years with WisDOT. At WisDOT, I was initially brought in as a technical lead, shortly made manager of the Geographic Information Services Unit (GISU) in the Bureau of Information Technology Services, became team leader of the GIS/CADD Section, and then GIS Coordinator for corporate and enterprise activities.
What led to your interest in the GIO position?
I was interested in the position when it was first created a little over two years ago, and almost applied for that original vacancy. But I didn’t feel I was ready, or willing, to work within the DOA Division of Enterprise Technology (DET), then headed by former Chief Information Officer Matt Miszewski. The re-structured DET is a much better fit for me, and is an environment where I believe it will be possible to achieve meaningful successes in state GIS.
You’ve spent the last ten years in Wisconsin, and know the geospatial community here very well. What do you feel are some of the strengths we can build on in the coming years?
The Wisconsin geospatial community is certainly blessed with many talented and dedicated individuals; we all share a passion for building and supporting technology solutions that benefit the citizens we serve.
There have been some fantastic individual and group successes over the years that earned Wisconsin geospatial recognition for innovation and leadership. Ironically, those same brilliant solutions may be why we struggle today.
To be sure, we have created brilliant designs, effective and practical GIS solutions, and fully met the needs of our primary customers. But, as times changed, budgets tightened, resources dwindled, and customers began to request bigger, broader, and Web-based solutions, we discovered that we never adequately addressed external interchange. Almost every aspect of what GIS shops do today requires new relationships. It involves all of the technical and non-technical facets of our new workings with the outside world, and movement away from our old stand-alone workstations. GIS used to be done off in the corner of some company or organization’s building. But, we now need to look externally for interchanges with traditional IT areas, with other GIS providers, and we now need to work towards external interchanges that better share data, applications, software, and hardware through strategic planning, optimized communications, standards, practice, and governance.
The strength we need to build on is that passionate community of geospatial professionals. Everyone I talk to wants to eliminate barriers to success, and wants to promote geospatial technology sharing. I believe that if we effectively prioritize logical steps towards these goals, and band together as a community to address them through standardized methods and processes, we can then build innovative successes that are community-based, shareable, and beneficial to all potential geospatial consumers.
Are there any specific problems, initiatives, or issues that you expect to focus on as you get started as GIO?
I have very strong opinions on the need for coordination amongst stakeholders, standardization of methods and processes, and strategic planning at the IT architectures level. I expect my office to augment existing coordination efforts, capture and catalog best practices for enterprise GIS, and to develop and provide updates to an enterprise GIS strategic action plan.
What are your short-term priorities?
I feel that I need to do two things in the short-term. One is to be an effective advocate for important statewide GIS issues. There are pending issues and actions that need further support, and have been in a holding state while the GIO position was vacant. I feel the Wisconsin Land Information Association’s Orthophoto Task Force and the proposed Wisconsin Geographic Information Coordination Council (WIGICC) are the two best examples that started with GIO support and will be better served through continued GIO support.
My second priority is to create an effective office within DOA in order to work toward enterprise GIS services. I am beginning the process of staffing a couple of vacancies which will be critical to our future enterprise GIS successes. [Editors note: one of these positions was recently posted on the SCO GIS jobs page.]
What are some of the challenges you expect to face as GIO?
The main challenge I foresee is a challenge many in the GIS community deal with regularly, only perhaps on a different scale. That is trying to convey the notion of a “forest” when interests and pocketbooks only want to consider a tree. GIS is most often driven by customers. Customers have specific problems to solve, within time and budget constraints.
I have no problem bite-sizing solutions, so long as what we are working on is in line with strategic objectives. The continual challenge lies in convincing customers – a business unit in the organization, an outside interest, or even a coordination body – that the forest is just beyond that easy-to-reach sapling.
The GIO has the difficult job of engaging in both statewide GIS coordination, and state agency GIS coordination. How do you expect to balance these two activities?
I am often asked how I feel about an issue, or what I think we should do to solve a particular problem. Having very strong opinions about correct ways to build geospatial success, I am always willing to share my thoughts. But in order to build community solutions I know that I really need to listen to concerns in the geospatial community, and then turn those concerns into strategic actions that we can solve together.
Instead of trying to do this all at once, and be everything and everywhere, I plan to selectively join in the most comprehensive statewide GIS coordination activities, and work towards building logical and requested enterprise service solutions.
While there are certainly others I will pay attention to, I anticipate that the proposed WIGICC, and the State Agency Geographic Information Coordination (SAGIC) Team will greatly influence my activities in this regard.
Speaking of WIGICC, what is your role in establishing and supporting a statewide GIS council?
WIGICC is one of the issues I am promoting wherever possible. I am currently working in concert with the CIO and DOA Inter-Governmental Relations to strengthen the current draft proposal for probable endorsement by DOA. I have been active in the processes that led us to this point from day one, and recognize the value a council offers us. As a potential implementer of enterprise GIS services, this channeled voice of the stakeholder community is a voice the GIO should listen to closely.
Anything occurring on the national level that you think is important for Wisconsin to be aware of or involved in?
Certainly Imagery for the Nation is something we will all be watching, and something we can thank Ted Koch and the National States Geographic Information Council for leadership on. Two other topics that could be very important to geospatial stakeholders come to mind. The first is the Federal Land Asset Inventory Reform Act (FLAIR), which would work towards a national land parcel database, potentially cost sharing grass-roots efforts in cadastral mapping. Additionally, I see great possibilities in the NSDI expansion of current framework layers to encompass regional, local and topically-important data.
What’s your vision for what GIS in the state might look like in 3-5 years?
In that timeframe I would like to see state GIS leaner and stronger. We should be leaner in terms of redundancies and individual system variants which are difficult to unify. And we should be stronger in terms of coordination, sharing, rapid deployment, and consumer satisfaction.
How we achieve that vision, and how much change is actually accomplished, depends on many variables. But, given the strength and dedication of the WI geospatial community, I certainly think it is a very realistic goal.
I will do my part to the best of my abilities, and I encourage others to get actively involved in helping not just me, but the community as a whole, reach those goals.
Please join me in wishing Curt the best in his new job. He can be reached via e-mail, or at (608) 261-5042.