THE CHALLENGE

Environment Canterbury is the regional council for Canterbury. It works with the people of Canterbury to manage the region’s air, water and land. Its vision is to ‘Facilitate sustainable development in the Canterbury Region’. Currently, Environment Canterbury’s use of spatial information and tools is prevalent and spatial is seen as critical to enabling them to deliver on its strategic vision and priorities. Environment Canterbury is changing its operational environment to deliver a range of new and improved services, supporting and encouraging a client centric business model. They requested e-Spatial undertake a high level review of the processes, governance, policies and resources in the spatial arena to review the extent to which Environment Canterbury is investing wisely and heading in the right direction with regard to its spatial activities.

THE SOLUTION

Creating long-term sustainability solutions, delivering regional profitability and adhering to best practice requires an unprecedented amount of collaboration between Environment Canterbury and its stakeholders including the public, partners, Iwi and Central Government. Access to “fit-for-purpose” information, tools and ideas is imperative. In the area of water management, Environment Canterbury is involving the community to a much greater extent than ever before. For this to be successful, the community needs to be well informed. Spatially linked data will be a key enabler of this.

e-Spatial undertook a review of Environment Canterbury’s current systems, resources and processes, and identified that their spatial resources are at full capacity supporting business as usual processes. To date, they have invested wisely in establishing a robust spatial environment of people, process, data and technology. There is strong spatial leadership and an awareness of the challenges and increasing demand for more spatial capability. To continue with their current spatial activities and plan for future developments would require further investment in spatial capability and infrastructure.

RECOMMENDATIONS

e-Spatial recommended two main areas of focus:

· Spatial is governed and led effectively within Environment Canterbury, however better integration of spatial across the levels of governance will produce better outcomes for the organisation and region. Standalone spatial governance will not deliver the expected benefits.

· Develop a Spatial Operational Plan to align spatial initiatives with Environment Canterbury and wider regional objectives to ensure they can be appropriately prioritised, funded and managed. The plan would address the following components:

· Integrating and aligning spatial across business units and within governance and leadership groups;

· Aligning spatial data management initiatives with the Information Management strategy;

· Ensuring investment in capability and capacity is defined and incorporated into external and internal objectives;

· Planning for an enterprise technology platform that meets the needs of mobility and self-service interaction.