GIS to Improve Customer Service

The Town of Oakville was presented with an Award of Excellence at ESRI Canada's Regional User Conference in Toronto today. John Houweling, Ontario Regional Manager, ESRI Canada, presented the Award in recognition of the Town of Oakville's success in leveraging GIS to satisfy the needs of their customers. The Town of Oakville has demonstrated innovation in the delivery of services to their customers by being creative and showing initiative.

"The Award of Excellence is going to a very deserving municipality that is dedicated to the advancement of GIS through the development of an enterprise GIS system that has significantly improved the delivery of services to staff, residents, and their business community," said Mr. Houweling.

"The Town of Oakville's GIS Unit is honoured to be the recipient of ESRI Canada's Award of Excellence," said Gord Lalonde, Commissioner of Corporate Services, Town of Oakville. "For over 10 years, the GIS Unit, part of the Town's Information System and Solutions department, has worked hard to develop a comprehensive 'enterprise' approach to its GIS services."

Some of the GIS Unit's notable recent projects include the Urban Forestry GIS application for managing forest assets, an Automatic Vehicle Locating application for tracking vehicles in real time, and the Explore Oakville web mapping application. Explore Oakville is used primarily by the public with a significant focus on both recreation and real estate, generating millions of hits per month.

"Once we had a GIS base, we were able to begin offering many services and support programs internally to our departments, externally to the public through the Town's website and also to a variety of third-party users, including emergency operations services such as 911 and fire dispatch," explained Mr. Lalonde.

For example, the GIS Unit works closely with the Fire Department to provide a number of information products and services, and built the first map based dispatch package back in 1997. Recently, GIS Services has provided the entire emergency management team with mobile memory sticks that contain mapping and emergency plan information for emergency preparedness.

About the Town of Oakville
A vibrant and impressive community within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), the Town of Oakville is a beautiful lakeside city with a strong heritage, preserved and celebrated by residents and visitors alike.

Founded in 1857, this striking town has become one of the most coveted residential and business centres in Ontario. This thriving municipality of about 165,000 residents provides all the advantages of a well-serviced urban centre, while also maintaining its small-town ambiance. Oakville's strong and diversified economic base offers an excellent location for both new and expanding businesses. Currently, over 260 national and international corporate headquarters represent automotive, technology, business service, aerospace, pharmaceutical, and tourism sectors. For more information please visit www.oakville.ca.

About ESRI Canada:
Established in 1984, ESRI Canada is a Canadian owned company specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) solutions. ESRI Canada distributes the world's leading GIS software solutions from ESRI Inc., Miner and Miner, and Azteca. In order to provide organizations with complete industry-specific solutions ESRI Canada has established an extensive business partner program that includes more than 125 Canadian organizations. ESRI Canada also provides professional services including consulting, training, technical support, and enterprise GIS implementation. ESRI Canada is a leader in providing world-class enterprise GIS solutions for many industries including local government, utilities, public safety and defence, business demographics, education, natural resources, and transportation. ESRI Canada has fifteen regional offices across the country, with headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. For more information, please visit www.esricanada.com or call 1-800-447-9778.

Media Contacts: Heather Adams, Communications Specialist, ESRI Canada, 416-386-6463, hadams@esricanada.com, www.esricanada.com

Steve Czajka, Manager of GIS Services, Town of Oakville, 905-845-6601 Ext. 3127, sczajka@oakville.com, www.oakville.ca