Henderson's GIS Technology is a Win With The Community
- Citizens: 310,000+
- Location: Henderson, Nevada
- Tyler Solution: Enterprise Permitting & Licensing, Data & Insights
Although Henderson, Nevada, is the state’s second largest city with more than 310,000 citizens, it proudly retains its small-town values and atmosphere. The community’s commitment to its ambience is backed up by its Forbes ranking as the second safest city in America and its three-time appearance on MONEY magazine’s list of Best Places to Live in America.
“Henderson is not just a place to live, but truly a place to call home,” said Tommie Weckesser, GIS coordinator.
Staying true to its familial outlook on what it means to be a city, Henderson takes as much care with the technology it implements to run city operations as it does with everything else. Henderson not only ensures the software it selects can meet its government and residents’ needs but can also set the community up for future growth and success.
Adapting to Change
When Henderson found out its legacy civic services software was no longer going to be supported, it issued a request for proposal in search of a new system.
“We needed to get off for supportability, technical reasons, security, all that,” said James Ketelsen, senior system support analyst.
Through the RFP process, Henderson decided on Enterprise Permitting & Licensing (powered by EnerGov™), Tyler’s civic services software designed to meet the needs of local governments of all sizes. Henderson implemented Enterprise Permitting & Licensing’s land management and business licensing functionalities along with its online portal for reporting issues and requesting inspections, permits, etc. This decision proved beneficial for the city in a few ways.
Reaping the Rewards
Henderson didn’t have to wait long to begin seeing benefits from its Enteprise Permitting & Licensing implementation.
The city, which has been on ArcGIS since 1989 and won the Esri® 2017 Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award, is a powerhouse of GIS knowledge and capabilities. So Enterprise Permitting & Licensing, which has embedded Esri-based GIS technology and integrates directly with ArcGIS, is a great fit for the city’s GIS needs.
“For GIS, EnerGov [Enteprise Permitting & Licensing] is a huge win,” said Weckesser. “The fact that [it] uses the feature services and uses this technology right…it’s made our lives exponentially easier.”
GIS is hugely important to local governments because it allows them to use spatial data to analyze complex situations, improve coordination, increase accuracy and transparency, and more. Esri is the most powerful platform for GIS technology available, so its capabilities play a major role in local governments’ successes.
When asked about winning the SAG award, Weckesser added,
“Actually, what we won it for was our addressing project that specifically came from our EnerGov [Enterprise Permitting & Licensing] upgrade.”
She said, “The whole time [we] were implementing, we were working on cleaning up the address data and making sure it was ready for use. So that’s a huge win for us also now.”
The biggest benefit Henderson has enjoyed, however, comes from its plan to make the most of their investment by taking advantage of new releases and upgrades via Tyler’s evergreen philosophy. This allows the city to receive new releases and upgrades for the life of their maintenance or subscription agreements without relicensing fees and with minimal changes to core business logic.
“We’re on a platform that provides regular updates. There’s responses on our requests for updates for security vulnerabilities. That’s huge for us,” said Maria Goldberg, senior system support analyst.
“We’re going through an upgrade right now and it’s much easier the way that [Tyler uses] the technology and it’s not hooked into certain versions of the database,” added Weckesser. “That’s what we like about [Enteprise Permitting & Licensing]: even upgrades, which can be very painful, are going to be a little bit easier.”
This positive, forward-thinking mentality can be seen throughout Henderson’s relationship with Tyler.
Looking Ahead
Henderson is excited to see what its future holds as it continues to roll out additional phases of its Enterprise Permitting & Licensing implementation, including upgrading to Tyler’s latest citizen portal, Enterprise Permitting & Licensing Civic Access.
“Our citizens are really chomping at the bit to start doing online plan submittal,” said Ketelsen, adding, “Online applications will really take us a big step forward.”
Enteprise Permitting & Licensing Civic Access gives citizens and contractors dynamic access to information and enables them to apply and efficiently be approved for permits and licenses, request inspections, pay invoices, and more — 24/7/365. Since connecting with citizens is a major priority for Henderson, the city is eager to begin using this tool to meet citizens’ needs.
The city is also excited about the future of GIS and what Enterprise Permitting & Licensing can help accomplish in that arena.
“What we wanted to do is be able to give our power users the ability to create their own applications, their own story maps. So that’s the road that we’ve been going down is trying to leverage ArcGIS online and let our users do a little more so that IT doesn’t have to develop all these custom applications,” said Weckesser.
“There’s a lot of cool stuff coming,” added Ketelsen.
This all boils down to a simple fact: Henderson is a city that cares. It cares about its citizens, its visitors, its government operations, its future, and the software it utilizes — the software itself and what the city does with it. Henderson is the type of city that will get the most out of every tool at its disposal. The city’s staff makes careful decisions and knows how to play to the city’s strengths, which ensures that no effort will be wasted. Henderson is a vibrant, connected community dedicated to innovation and success, and its use of Enterprise Permitting & Licensing demonstrates that dedication.