January 26, 2007
By Anish Abraham
THE City has launched an integrated Land Information System – described by City officials as "history in the making".
Johannesburg's Corporate Geographic Information Systems (CGIS) hosted a briefing and workshop on the system on 26 January at the Metro Centre in Braamfontein.
Present at the function were the portfolio head of development planning and urban management, Ruby Mathang, and the City's chief financial officer, Mankodi Moitse.
The Land Information System brings together data from several City sources including geographic information systems (GIS), valuations, revenue and customer relations. It links maps, property information and billing information, giving the user more detail than previously possible.
It is currently being developed by the City in partnership with Masana, IBM, Business Connexion, Gims and Ubusi Consulting.
With the system design completed, the team is now moving towards the development phase and expect the system to be up and running by May.
"This is something that is making history, as there was previously no integration of available information. After a long time, LIS is becoming a reality," says the director of CGIS, Marcelle Hattingh.
Previously separate programmes and databases were used to access data for property information, billing information and mapping. This presented a problem, as not many operators were trained to use the different systems.
The City's chief financial officer, Mankodi Moitse, with Jean-Marc Lotthe, the Land Information System project manager
"LIS achieves completeness of revenue through integrating information from deeds, town planning, GIS and valuation into one system that will be the basis of bill computation," says Jean-Marc Lotthe, the LIS project manager.
This should result in more accuracy in billing, as valuations, town planning and GIS will be responsible for ensuring the billing system works properly.
"The City has been spending huge sums of money on data purification of our databases, to ensure that billing information is as accurate as possible," says Lotthe.
This will resolve problems of unbilled properties, unread meters, returned bills and make up for missing deeds information.
However, a big change will be that departments in the City will now be able to work more closely together, sharing information where necessary. "How we work together will be more vital than just technology. We have therefore brought in a change-management team to encourage this new culture," he says.
Benefits to residents include accurate billing, easier access to detailed information and quicker query resolutions.
For the City, the system will optimise its capital investments, ensure completeness of revenue, form the basis for field surveys and data purification and lessen the number of billing queries.
"The system can also be used to identify development trends on a strategic level, track and trace development applications on a managerial level and obtain stand numbers and street addresses on an operational level," explains Lotthe.
City employees will also benefit from the new system, becoming exposed to the latest state-of-the-art technology and gain knowledge from skills training. Employees are also more empowered as they have more information at their disposal when solving queries.
"LIS is not just about technology. It is a key component in creating a world-class African city," he says.
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