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Using Statistics to Manage GIS Growth in a State Agency-ESRI UC2007 Paper
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Daniels, Richard C. Callar, Jay W. |
| Copyright Year | 2007 |
| Abstract | In small government agencies or offices the maximum user base for GIS can often be estimated prior to deployment of the technology. In larger agencies, or agencies that are distributed over a wide geographic area, the GIS manager may not be aware of all GIS initiatives underway. This makes scaling of the GIS environment difficult. A required step in addressing this problem is the development of a GIS usage tracking methodology. It is necessary to track both the number of GIS installations as well as to measure actual usage of the technology. Once a sufficiently long period of record has been compiled, usually twelve months, you will be able to develop usage projections, plan for growth, and justify funding requests. By planning in this way you will be able to encourage the use of GIS in your agency without being hampered by foreseeable resource constraints. Introduction In small offices or agencies the maximum potential user base for GIS can often be estimated prior to deployment of the technology. In larger agencies, or medium size agencies that are distributed over large geographic regions, this is often not the case since the GIS manager may not be aware of all GIS initiatives that are being undertaken -since the decision to use GIS for a given project is often driven more by the technical background of the project manager than by the capabilities of the available software solutions. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is a large State Agency with approximately 7,800 employees, of these 7,500 have desktop or laptop computers. As one would expect for an agency of this type, it is geographical disperse across the State. To manage this dispersed work force the agency is divided into six Regions and the Washington State Ferry System. Thus WSDOT epitomizes the most challenging case for a GIS Manager, a large agency made up of geographically dispersed semi-autonomies departments. GIS at WSDOT GIS was first endorsed for use by the WSDOT Executive Committee in 1993. In 1994 this endorsement lead to the selection of ESRI’s ArcView 3.x software as the standard desktop GIS solution for the agency and ArcInfo as the solution for professional cartographers. However, this endorsement came with several caveats, chief among these were: • GIS is a tool – users control its use, • GIS funded from current budget levels – no new funding, • GIS applications will be office level, not corporate, and that • GIS will be incrementally implemented within the agency (GIS Support Team 2006). 2 In 1995 the WSDOT Information Technology Committee (ITC) adopted a stronger vision statement for GIS, “GIS is the foundation on which future information needs will be met” that encouraged the continued growth of GIS at WSDOT. By 19971998 the first GIS Data Administrator and GIS Programmer were hired within the MIS department (now the Office of Information Technology). A GIS Manager position was created in 1999 and a dedicated GIS Application Development Team was formed in 2006. Not withstanding the across the board growth in GIS usage at WSDOT (e.g., MacDonald 2004); GIS is still negatively influenced by the caveats imposed in 1993 by the WSDOT Executive Committee. Specifically, the GIS community has had difficulty obtaining funding to support the increased demand for GIS in the agency, and until recently, has not been consulted during the development of large corporate IT solutions. Monitoring License Usage Given the static nature of base funding for GIS at most government agencies, the ability to answer the following questions on-demand is of great importance (Tomlinson 2003). 1. What data is needed? 2. What hardware is required? 3. What and how much software is needed? 4. Where will the hardware be positioned within the organization? To be able to answer questions 2, 3, and 4 with any certainty the responsible GIS Manager will need to develop, or have access to, a system for tracking and measuring GIS usage. Though often seen as unglamorous, the tracking and measuring of usage through time is a key component in successfully managing a GIS environment. It is necessary to track both the number of GIS installations within an agency as well as to develop ways to measure the actual usage of the technology (e.g., one of our Regions installs ArcGIS on all new computers prior to delivering them to the end user thus some installations may never be used). If a concurrent licensing model is used, measurement of license usage can be logged with some sort of license management software, such as FLEXnet Manger (Macrovision 2007), or a custom solution using system event logs. If you are using a single use or node locked license model you will have to develop other ways to track usage, for example by deploying a VBA script for ESRI’s ArcMap that would log the startup of the software to a database. If you are using web mapping solution you would want to capture the identity or number of unique users who are accessing your site. In either case, it is imperative that this information be collected and analyzed on a scheduled basis to identify usage trends and, if necessary, for billing purposes. Usage Tracking at WSDOT Currently WSDOT is using a custom solution to obtain the information required to calculate usage trends. Our methodology revolves around the use of a batch job that has been scheduled to run on our ESRI concurrent use license server. The batch job executes the FLEXlm lmstat command, used to monitor network licensing activities, to obtain the list of currently checked out licenses (Globetrotter 2004). The results of each 3 run are appended to a log file. The log file is copied each month to an archive and the original log file truncated as needed. The frequency at which this job runs is user defined, currently we run the process every thirty minutes. The reoccurrence intervals of this process can be set to any interval; however periods of one minute or less would be difficult to implement since you would start running into situations where the new job was starting prior to the completion of the previous job. Potentially impacting both the performance of the server and causing issues with the license manager itself. If real time usage statistics are required, vs. 5 minute, 30 minute, etc. snapshots you would need to use a purpose built usage tracking system. The code shown in Table 1 is what is run at WSDOT to monitor our license activity. At this time we store the user id, machine name, and the license check out date/time. Two versions of the code are running at this time, one for tracking the usage of ArcInfo and the other for ArcView. When ArcEditor is added to our software suite in 2007 a third job will be scheduled. Note that this same code may be modified to track usage of ArcGIS extensions such as 3D Analyst and Spatial Analyst. Table 1. Batch job code for tracking ArcInfo usage using the license manager statistics (lmstat) command provided with the ESRI license manager. REM ESRI License Usage Utility for Arc/Info REM REM Jay W. Callar REM Office of Information Technology REM Washington State Department of Transportation REM Olympia, WA 98504-7430 REM REM This bat file is scheduled to run every 30 minutes on the license REM server, but could be scheduled more or less often. REM This version of the batch job is setup for Arc/Info, to run for REM ArcEditor or ArcView you would modify the lmstat REM command parameters (e.g., lmstat -f viewer). REM REM Create variable "count" and set it to zero. Note the /a specifies a REM numeric expression to be evaluated. set /a count=0 REM Run the lmutil command which is part of FLEXLM. The results of the REM lmutil command is a list of all the currently checked out licenses. REM tokens=1,2,8* capture the 1st, 2nd and the 8th variable. The 8* REM means take all variables after the 8th and combine them into one. REM The first and second values are the userid and machine name, the REM 8th value is the start date and time when the license was checked REM out. REM For every license that has been checked out we call the LOOP. for /f "tokens=1,2,8*" %%i in ('lmutil lmstat -f arc/info -c "\\myServerName\c$\program files\esri\license\arcgis9x\37104232.lic" ^| findstr MyLicenseServer') do call :LOOP %%i %%j %%k %%l goto :EOF :LOOP REM For every current user of ArcGIS we will run the following code. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc07/papers/papers/pap_1280.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
