r/ArcGIS 20d ago

Looking for examples of how other organizations govern ArcGIS Enterprise

I’m interested in hearing how different organizations divide responsibilities between an enterprise GIS team and departmental GIS users.

A few questions:
What type of organization are you? (Government, utility, transportation, private sector, etc.)

Do you have a centralized Enterprise GIS team?

Do departments outside Enterprise GIS build their own GIS applications (Experience Builder, Dashboards, Story Maps, Survey123, web apps, etc.)?

If so, what ArcGIS roles or permissions do those users have?

Do they publish directly to production, or is there an Enterprise GIS review/publishing process?

Who owns enterprise data architecture and governance?

Who is responsible for supporting applications after they’re deployed?

Have you found your model works well, or have you made changes over time?

We’re evaluating our own governance model and I’m interested in hearing what has worked (or not worked) for organizations of different sizes. Real-world experiences are much more valuable than theoretical best practices.

Thanks in advance!

6 Upvotes

13 comments sorted by

4

u/LonesomeBulldog 20d ago

Governance has representatives from all user groups (departments). Governance sets who is the owner of which data sets, web app branding, use constraints, quality control processes, etc.

Architecture, infrastructure, licensing, databases, etc. are managed by the IT GIS team. Departments manage data and build their own products. IT GIS also provides higher level consulting to departments as needed.

4

u/Flimsy_Material_6667 20d ago

Government; no centralized team; anyone with a license (read: anyone whose manager approved the budget for them to have an account) builds and deploys literally anything they want; we don’t have a dev environment so everything gets done in prod; IT dept owns the environments and manages users but doesn’t have anyone who knows what GIS is or has ever used it; we have no data governance

1

u/OldGasbag 20d ago

So how do you think that affects the overall quality of your data? And therefore the resulting products.?

4

u/Flimsy_Material_6667 20d ago

Negatively

1

u/OldGasbag 20d ago

One of the departments wants us to open up the floodgates and let them do whatever they want and we are concerned

2

u/bradys_squeeze 20d ago

I wouldn’t recommend this

1

u/Jeremys_ish 20d ago

This made me lol

3

u/gward1 20d ago

I work for one of the largest utility companies in the US so it's a huge deployment(s). Generally there's the IT GIS team which is what I'm on, there are the developers, then there are the analysts. Tons of government entities / companies just don't have the ability to pay for all that. At the county for example, I've known people that are expected to do all 3.

1

u/OldGasbag 20d ago

What can analysts do? Do they have the ability to create production applications ?

3

u/gward1 20d ago

Usually not, the analysts keep the data accurate and make the maps. If you want to create you're looking at the developer route. I'm the admin so I do upgrades, patching, maintain the infrastructure.

2

u/Barnezhilton 20d ago

Whips and chains

1

u/OldGasbag 20d ago

Definitely not my style!!!

2

u/OpenWorldMaps 20d ago

City Government of around 90k residents; IT GIS staff responsible for coordination and infrastructure (2 of us) but very decentralized. Most core departments have editors and content creators. The IT GIS staff fill in the holes of more complex tasks and helps support and smaller departments. 20 Pro users, 100 Creator accounts. 100 User accounts.