Janet Weir Creighton, the first woman elected as Mayor of Canto n (sworn in January 2004), attended the Ohio University Executive Leadership Institute program, Leading with Vision, Value and Strategy, in April 2001. At the time, she was the county auditor and trying with her office to develop a geographic information system (GIS). Janet believed that a GIS program would benefit not only the auditor’s office but other county offices as well.
Although Stark County is the seventh largest county in the state, Janet reports that many county offices were behind the curve in the use of technology. Using the Strategic Triangle Model as a framework, Janet began to create a plan that would help her realize this major technology upgrade.
Although Janet believed there was great public value in developing a countywide GIS system, she knew there would be political and operational capacity challenges to overcome. She wanted the auditor’s office to retain control of the project, but she knew that the project had the best chance of success if she developed a partnership of county offices. However, there was nothing in the Ohio Revised Code that authorized a consortium or the cooperative funding or partnership required for a countywide project.
Janet began by putting together a small group of offices that had physical infrastructure – including the regional planning entity, county engineer and county sanitary sewer office. They began to meet and think creatively about how to garner the needed resources and authority. Janet believed that by starting with a small group, they could get creative in their approach to operational capacity and slowly gain political buy-in from other county government offices.
The first order of business was to fund a position for a GIS expert to head up the project. Janet recruited Erik Parker (an Ohio University graduate) who began to help them think through the scope and potential of such a large undertaking. Additionally, they grew the project’s operational capacity by hiring people to transfer the paper copies of the data to digital format. The goal was to get the product right the first time around and Janet felt that keeping it in-house would do that.
The consortium then began to think about bringing in other partners. Janet said it was important to think outside the box as they sought to widen the consortium. She went to the United Way, which was interested in using GIS to plot all county service agencies, for example, daycare centers. Although the United Way wasn’t able to provide financial support, it did endorse the consortium’s goal and suggested that Janet and her partners approach the school superintendents. Indeed, the group was successful in getting funding from the superintendents whose districts stood to gain from a GIS capacity. Although some county offices were less enthusiastic about the public value of the GIS project, the consortium did attract new partners, including the Regional Transit Authority, the fire chief and law enforcement.
Once the consortium had reached a critical mass of countywide and local government offices, it then sought state legislation to authorize such an entity. As a result of the legislation, the county auditor now has the authority to use the Real Estate Assessment Fund (REA) to fund the GIS project. In addition, the consortium is now able to provide the GIS tools to all cities and villages in the county. The GIS is now up and running and is being used by the auditor’s office and other consortium partners.
Janet said it was a challenge to satisfy all the consortium partners, but the consortium approach was critical in gaining the resources and authority for the project. In addition, it brought together a bipartisan group of office holders working together to create public value. Janet said the public value approach was important to the success of the consortium.
One measure of success was bringing in the Regional Transit Authority. This agency had planned to use an outside consultant to develop GIS capacity but it elected to join the consortium, and an MOU was created for that process.
Janet keeps the County Commissioners and township officials updated on the consortium’s progress. She credits the Strategic Triangle concepts for helping her shape a successful strategy for implementation of such a large project.
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