Janna Baker, Tazewell County GIS Coordinator, is a great proponent of applying GIS at the county government level.
Janna Baker is the GIS Coordinator for Tazewell County, Illinois. Here is a little bit of information about Janna, how she got to where she is today, and what GIS has done for her.
Janna has been with Tazewell County for over 2 years. She was an intern with the County from April to November of 2014, and then took over as the GIS Coordinator.
As part of her duties, Janna is responsible for administering GIS databases through SQL Server software and ESRI software, managing GIS websites/services hosted on-site, creating new GIS websites/services, handling map/data sales, distributing map services and policy development, troubleshooting hardware/software issues, and identifying data needs, quality, accuracy, and standards,
When asked how her and her staff currently use GIS on a daily basis, Janna says, “GIS is used to increase efficiency in managing spatial data and serving it to the public. An example being parcel data in the Assessor's Office. GIS allows for quick access to parcel information by both staff and the public. Web access to the parcel data reduces the number of public calls to the Assessor's Office, freeing staff for other work. GIS provides staff with the ability to visually identify errors with ease and to correct them quickly. Through the enterprise database platform, these corrections can be immediately served out to GIS users in other departments, like Zoning, who rely on the parcel data to aid in their decision making, and to the public through GIS Web Maps.
Janna knows that GIS will play a large role for Tazewell County moving forward. She emphasized that by saying, “GIS is a very effective method of relaying information both between government entities and to the public. The ability to display tabular data as a model of the real world, and to visually display analysis of that data, is a benefit to government decision making in all areas. GIS will continue to integrate into more departments as it provides a fast, centralized way to manage and share spatial data, both internally throughout the organization and externally to the public."
Cloudpoint would like to thank Janna for her commitment to GIS technology and use of the Esri platform in helping her organization to succeed with providing detailed geographic data to the citizens of Tazewell County. Because of Janna’s insight, the County is tracking their information and infrastructure like never before, allowing them to build upon her work for years to come.