AWARDS RECEIVED:
International Astrid Award in Design Excellence - Bronze winner in the Government Category
Founded in 1991, the International ASTRID Awards competition is one of the largest and most important in the world. The ASTRID Award symbolizes the stellar qualties of creativity, craft, innovation and originality in communications design. In its twelfth year, the International Astrid Awards program received nearly 450 entries from around the world including Austrialia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. Past winners in the website category include: ABC News, British Airways, NASA and Gucci.
Entries were judged by international panels of design professionals on the basis of concept, creativity, message clarity and production. Each entry is evaluated by three different organizations during the preliminary rounds. The three sets of scores are then averaged into a single score for the individual entry. A minimum score must be achieved to qualify for an award. Only one Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honours Award are given in each classification. If no entry scores high enough, no award is given. In the Government Website category for 2003, no award was given for Gold and Silver.
Gold Award - Best Municipal Geographic Information System (GIS) from the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA)
Gold Award - Best Web-Geographic Information System (GIS) from the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA)
**First time an organization has received both GOLD awards.
Both awards are presented annually to organizations that demonstrate clear leadership and quality in the management of spatial data. Chatham-Kent received these awards in May of 2003. The Best Municipal Geographic Information System (GIS) award recognizes that Chatham-Kent’s enterprise GIS deployment streamlines municipal processes, reduces cost and promotes efficiency in the organization where land management is involved. The system was established to serve the business interests of all municipal employees, clients, customers, and external consultants and was designed around the common theme of open access. All municipal departments now have access to centralized information to facilitate timely, accurate and detailed decision-making processes to expedite a resolution. An example would include the use of the system by all our emergency and 911 support services.
The Best Web Geographic Information System (GIS) award that was received in May of 2003 recognizes the integration of internet-enabled GIS into the Chatham-Kent Community Portal as well as overall web design, creativity, visual clarity, and ease of use. Of key importance was the creation of the “Map-It” concept which provides over 3,000 points of entry from the web into GIS. Also significant is the creation of more than 98 community directories which provide detailed listings of professionals, key community services, sites and organizations, all with direct linkages to location and mapping information.
First Place Award for the ArcIMS (Internet Mapping Server) Application was received in July of 2003 at the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) International User Conference.
“We are proud and excited to win 1st prize for our ArcIMS based Web-GIS application. This prize is especially important to us as we were judged against similar entries from organizations around the world. This reinforces the commitment that the Municipality of Chatham-Kent has to being a leader in GIS technology and is a testimony to the hard work and dedication of staff at the Muncipality. "Excellent support from our Web-GIS consultants, Concept Interactive and Orion Technology contributed to the success of our implementation." commented Helen McLaren, Manager, Information and Technology Services.
ESIG - Enterprise Systems in Government, Honourable Mention:
Chatham-Kent Online (www.chatham-kent.ca) is a unique web protal that provides 24/7 online access to 23 amalgamated communities geospatial information and various applications. The organization is dedicated in studying performance metric. Their examples and analaysis on return on investment is extremely important and critical to the success of their project. This organization has accomplished a great deal of success with very limited resources, within the established time frame, and under budget. The project eliminates redundant work and contributes to their Strategic Plan initiative.