1.2 GIS is authoritative

I encourage you to comment as you read about this factor. - Paul

About this factor

• It is in category 1. Organizational Structure & Leadership 
• It is part of the Data Management Initiative, important for Strategic Alignment and supports Strategic Data Capability.
• This factor is in both the base model and Slimgim-T (Transportation)
• This factor is very difficult to improve. 

How to assess:

Does senior leadership walk the walk when it comes to GIS.  They recognize the importance of spatial data to their operation and to the bottom line and rely on the data to make critical decisions. More importantly, they have given a directive to their departments to use GIS as the single source of the truth for spatial and business integrated data. GIS refers not to a department but to self serve enterprise data & platforms.

​Low maturity:

• your senior leaders celebrate outdated methods and PDF maps. Although heavily invested in their location platform, they are unaware that their corporate data is now available on their handheld devices in cool interactive web gis apps. Really. This happens.
• senior leaders never extol the value of GIS data to the organization as they remain unaware of what Enterprise data is and what their organization produces and maintains. GIS is not understood nor communicated as mission-critical data. In fact, they're often making decisions with the wrong data and continue to miss the opportunity of data stored and available in their enterprise system.
• you feel an elephant in the room -  that the required Enterprise GIS mindset is best left for a tech-savvy leadership that you hope will arrive after the current crop of senior executives retire or leave .

High maturity:

• senior leaders get it. They talk about the importance of spatial data and it's centralization. They advocate for the data.
• senior leaders have given a clear directive to section heads "Make sure that the data in GIS is being added to, maintained, used, etc. by employees and at the right times".  Corporately, the message is clear and understood at all levels of the importance of GIS as the corporate system of record for many data-sets that are mission critical to their day to day operations or help create a competitive edge. The statement of it's importance continually & consistently trickles-down.
• upper management anticipate accessing enterprise spatial data, apps and dashboards on their devices and desire to use these in meetings to drive decisions. They want the right data, at the right time and where they need it - a level of service that everyone in the organization should expect. They spread the message that everyone has a part to play.

​Difficulty (how likely will you move the needle on this factor):

• No leaders get it:  ask, how likely  is it that you can get the executive level to recognize the importance of spatial data and will mandate it's use and care by the end of this year?​ The larger & more hierarchical  the organization, the tougher this is.
• One leader get's it: ask, how likely will this one champion help shift mindset with her/his peers and raise their awareness of the importance of Enterprise level (not desktop!) GIS data for the organization?
• Culture is adversarial: ask, how likely will leadership start acknowledging the importance of quality spatial data to their bottom line.  Data and people are what drive transformation but are your HIPPOS in the way, in-fighting & unwilling to begin focusing on data-informed decisions and providing the leadership support your program requires.

The "Senior management learning" and "Strategic use of GIS by senior management" factors are good indicators of your executives' level of #gettingitness AND buy-in. If they're learning and using GIS as their location & business intelligence tool, then they are more likely to understand the importance of the underlying data as a critical corporate asset and mandate it's care. This will and commitment will help drive their support for GIS as the organization's authoritative source of spatial data.

Increasing the score of factor 1.2 is very difficult and requires maturity across a large number of factors across the model (more on this in another post related to initiative design).  1.2 reflects how well your senior leadership comprehend the subject matter beyond maps and align their operations and transform their business with geospatial data & integrations.

For this factor, you measure the alignment of leadership to data through their enforcement and directives that set GIS as a mission critical system of record. Factor 1.2 requires that you go beyond convincing the C-Level to declare "GIS data is important". They need to understand and believe this statement, repeat it, enforce it and have a genuine interest in the health of the corporation's data.

When measuring this factor, measure only if the organization states that "GIS is authorative" consistently and effectively not if "the GIS data we have is of sufficient quality" or "our people and systems are of sufficient quality to maintain authoritative data". The model has dozens of factors geared specifically to measure maturity and capability in those areas.

Impact (how significant is this factor from a holistic enterprise view ):

This factor has a significant impact​ on the success of the program.  Without the top level mandating the importance of GIS data and stating regularly that GIS is authoritative and a critical component of business systems, then the rank and file will have no obligation to align their business to your efforts.

Strategy (Data Management Initiative)

More information about the Workforce Initiative coming in future blog postings.

Have a peak at your peers

TBD

​Resources to learn more & tune your mindset

Working on adding a few resources for you here.  If you can recommend any, kindly drop them as a comment below.