STATEWIDE GIS PROGRAM RELEASES “WHO’S YOUR LEGISLATOR?” APPS

Aloha

Background

As part of the Hawaii Digital Government Summit held on November 21, an Open Government workshop took place at which interested members of the public were asked “What information does the public want the government to provide?”  Senator Jill Tokuda, who led the breakout group on legislative information, told workshop participants that members of her group were very interested in an App to help Hawaii citizens/residents find their legislative representatives.

Solution

These cool public interest Websites/Applications (“Apps”) were developed by the Office of Planning (OP) and GIS vendor Esri in response to the interest expressed by Senator Tokuda and other workshop participants – and were completed in a couple of weeks (!). Please peruse at your leisure:

Interactive versions (click on any district or legislator):

Your 2014 Hawaii State Senate

Your 2014 Hawaii State House

Autoplay versions (watch as a slideshow):

2014 Hawaii State Senate Kiosk Map App

2014 Hawaii State House Kiosk Map App

Points of Interest

Besides OP and Esri answering the challenge expressed by Senator Tokuda in just a couple of weeks, here are some key points of interest:

  • The data is shared publicly using a combination of the State’s newly modernized GIS infrastructure and Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform (a tool used across our State that will soon be available to all departments via an enterprise license).
  • This is version 1, it’s live and open to the public now.
  • The App has a live connection to each legislator’s website.
  • The Kiosk Map App will run unattended – in kiosk, or auto-play mode – and will cycle through all the legislative districts automatically.  The idea is that a screen in a public place could run the auto-play version and passers-by would see the map and images changing every 10 seconds.
  • This project is an example of the Digital Government vision laid out in the Business and Technology Transformation Plan endorsed by the Governor.
  • It is also an example of the value of agile development methods that support collaboration and adaptability in meeting the needs of government with easy to use tools in relatively short time-frames.
  • More features (such as an address locator etc.) will be coming soon…

Mahalo

A Big Mahalo to Jesse Souki and Joan Delos Santos from the Office of Planning and Royce Jones, Esri Pacific Islands regional Manager, for a Job well done! This is an impressive use of GIS to quickly solve problems in an easy-to-use application.

As always, comments or ideas are welcome to continuously improve the app.

Mahalo