MnGeo is culmination of many years of work

MnGeo was a long time coming.

It’s been 18 years since former Gov. Arne Carlson signed an executive order creating the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Geographic Information in 1991. That body’s vision for a state office was advanced by Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Drive to Excellence initiative in 2008, which led to the 2009 legislation creating MnGeo.

The Governor’s Council was itself the outcome of 20 years of work dating back to the dawn of GIS technology, said Gelbmann, who chaired the council for the past four years.

Beginning in the late 1960s, computer-based mapping that began at the University of Minnesota resulted eventually in the state’s Land Management Information Center (LMIC) in 1978 – the nation’s first-ever state-level GIS office – to harness the power and potential of GIS technology.

Governor’s Council paved way for MnGeo

The last-ever annual report from the Governor’s Council on GIS, published last summer, lists a number of lifetime accomplishments of the organization over its 18 year history. Among them:

Helping build a statewide GIS community that is “second to none.” The Council brought together “representatives of state agencies, local and regional government, the federal government, academia, and the private and nonprofit sector who worked together for the common good.”
Delivering to the GIS community the data they needed, in such areas as aerial photography, elevation, hydrography, soil maps and more.
Promoted best practices and standards, from developing ID codes for cities and townships to authorization of the U.S. National Grid as a preferred method of providing location information.
Provided information and training for a wide range of workers in the field, including staff and publicly elected officials, and for statewide and national audiences at numerous GIS, IT and emergency management events.
Provided policy and technical advice to numerous agencies and organizations across the state, and helped to get geography and GIS into the graduation requirements for Minnesota schools).

All of these accomplishments provide a sound foundation upon which MnGeo will build, Gelbmann said.

One major accomplishment of the Governor’s Council, oddly enough – and its very last one – was its undoing. By helping create MnGeo, the Governor’s Council dissolved itself.

State benefits are rooted in MetroGIS

The public benefits of statewide GIS coordination – like the metro-area benefits resulting from MetroGIS – are many and varied, Gelbmann said.

MetroGIS was launched in 1996 as an independent policy board facilitated by the Metropolitan Council to further and expand the mutual GIS interests of the Council and its partners in other local, regional, state, federal, private, academic and nonprofit organizations. Results from the collaborative community working together are plentiful, including:

Expanded resources through partnering.
More efficient use of resources through reduction of duplicative costs.
More efficient and effective core stakeholder operations.
Enhanced and broadened understanding of the region.
Expanded participation by users, contributors and jurisdictions adjoining the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

The effective work and positive results from MetroGIS’s 14-year history provide a good idea about how the new MnGeo office can function – and deliver – on a statewide basis.

"I think it’s safe to say that MetroGIS has been quite a success story for the Council, for the region and all our stakeholders,” Gelbmann said. “As such, I think it’s been a good model for the state office to follow, and I fully expect that success to be matched on a much larger playing field,” he said.