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Spring 2000
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North Norfolk District Council provides computer-generated Local Land Searches for an area of 1000km2 using a combination of GIS spatial data, graphical images and MultiValue-based land charges and building control systems.
North Norfolk District Council is responsible for an area in excess of 1000 square kilometres, with a population of approximately 100,000. It has a coastline of over 70 km and includes a substantial proportion of the world famous Norfolk Broads.
The Authority has been a major user of MultiValue-type systems, from a variety of suppliers, as well as in-house developed ones, since 1981 and continues to maintain a strong in-house IT capability.
NNDC embarked on a pilot GIS implementation in May 1993, using UNIX hardware and software supplied by several companies, as well as in-house main systems.
From the outset, the objective was clear and simple, namely to be able to produce spatially related, computer generated Local Land Searches, to at least the standard that the existing manual system could provide.
To achieve this, it would be necessary not just to extract information from a newly purchased Land Charges system, but also from the in-house Planning and Building Control systems, all of them MultiValue-type systems.
Within eight months of the start of the pilot project, i.e. in January 1994, this Authority was able to release computer generated, spatially related Local Land Searches to the enquiring public.
Following on from the success of the pilot, in May 1994, the Authority decided to pursue GIS coverage for the entire district . This would entail a data capture exercise stretching over 3 years, and involve the plotting of some 60,000 separate polygons on the map based, graphical system. It would also be necessary to link each of these graphical records with corresponding MultiValue-type textual records, a large number of which would have to be retrospectively and accurately entered.
This process continued without event until its completion in September 1997, thus finally allowing the Authority to produce fully computerised Local Land Searches.
The success of the original GIS, and in particular the computerisation of the Local Land Search function, allowed the Authority to halve the average time taken to return a search.
At the same time, the number of staff employed on the task has also been significantly reduced.
Equally, the Development Control and Building Control functions of the Authority have benefited from more consistent and rigorous access to spatially related data, further improving the quality of work in those areas.
The very success of the original GIS paradoxically threatened to weaken this Authority’s necessary independence in the provision of the services which made the greatest use of the spatially related data provided by the GIS, namely Planning, Building Control, Land Charges & Local Searches.
Several specialist hardware and software suppliers were involved in its delivery. Gradually, however, over a period of several years, several of these companies ceased to trade, were taken over, or began to pursue strategies that were not necessarily compatible with the Authority’s declared policy of independence as a user of GIS.
In this climate of flux, it was of concern that commercial priorities and events threatened to compromise the Council’s need to tread an independent path in its provision of GIS dependent functions.
There was quite clearly a divergence between public service and private profit.
From the outset the desire was to reduce, as far as possible, our dependence on externally supplied, specialist, proprietary systems, whilst preserving the investment made over several years in the textual MultiValue-type systems, which made use of the GIS generated spatial data.
Early on, it was decided to employ the ubiquitous PC, running Windows, as the preferred graphical hardware platform. This would now be possible because unlike the situation prevailing in 1993, PCs were now capable of handling the large quantities of data required by GIS applications.
The main consequence of this decision was that the Authority would no longer be tied to a particular hardware manufacturer for the graphical solution, and so would be able to source the platform from a far greater selection of competing suppliers, as opposed to one. In addition, the unit price of such desktop machines is far less than that of the UNIX Workstations previously used.
In a similar manner, it was decided to create the new graphical, map-based software in-house, with Microsoft’s Visual Basic development tool and using the GIS-oriented SIS OCX, as supplied by CadCorp Ltd of Stevenage.
The Land Charge/Local Search system originally purchased from an external supplier in 1993, would be replaced by an in-house MultiValue-type system consistent with the Planning and Building Control systems already in operation.
Finally, the all important link between the graphical, Windows based data and the textual MultiValue-type data would be achieved using the Transverse ActiveX VB control, as supplied by SOS Ltd of Barnet.
Commencing January 1997, development work on the replacement GIS began, within the IT Services Unit at North Norfolk D.C.
This work was completed in April 1999, to spec, on schedule, and under budget.
1) The ease of migration from one graphical environment to another. Unusually for a replacement system, the new graphical environment, whilst preserving the same feel and data hierarchies as its predecessor, is far easier to use and more robust in its operation. This has reduced user re-training to a minimum, as well as enabling a greater acceptance of GIS as an Authority resource.
2) The separation of graphical from textual data. This has enabled the total preservation of all the MultiValue-type systems which tap into the spatial data produced by the GIS. Again, the users of these main systems perceived no change, and so required no re-training.
3) The link between the graphical and textual environments. Crucially, this link remains essentially very simple, relying essentially on a well-defined Telnet-type link between the graphical and the textual systems. This means that the interface remains within the Authority’s domain of competence and control, thus contributing towards its autonomy in the field of GIS.
4) All this has been achieved by a Local Authority acting on its own behalf. The Authority deployed its own in-house IT resources, making use of the best that the IT private sector has to offer, whilst still preserving its necessary independence in the provision of services that are dependent on GIS.
The Authority recently exhibited its new GIS, by invitation of CadCorp Ltd, at the ‘GIS99’ event, which was held at Olympia, London. In order to avoid the necessity of bringing two machines to the event, all the textual MultiValue-type main systems connecting to the graphical system were transferred to an environment running on a Windows NT4 machine armed with the ‘mvBase’ MultiValue-type database, as supplied by SOS Ltd of Barnet, North London. This port was achieved in just over 1 working day, thus underlining not only the simplicity of the connections within the GIS as a whole, but also the generic nature of code written in any MultiValue-type environment.
John Higgins
North Norfolk District Council
Last Updated: 01 May 2000