Understanding roles in GIS becomes more complex each year. The field has expanded beyond traditional responsibilities into a wide range of users, specialized skills, and subjects. Yet we still use “GIS Specialist” to describe roles requiring anywhere from five to thirty years of experience. This mismatch creates real challenges. Titles and expectations are often unclear and projects are scoped without a full understanding of the expertise required. Esri user models now use a license structure designed to help but can be tricky to implement well. The result is not a lack of skill, but a lack of shared structure for understanding how GIS work is organized. This presentation explores how keeping up with new skill sets requires shared terminology across the organization. It highlights why evaluating roles is critical to organizational capabilities and how to address this shift moving forward with changing Esri models. Especially relevant for people in organizations with many GIS users and limited capacity for designing the systems and workflows behind them.
Michelle Toner is a Senior Technical Specialist - Spatial Solutions Lead at Haley & Aldrich. Her work includes designing and implementing approaches for environmental and climate-related analysis on projects that require new or adapted methods. This includes infrastructure vulnerability... Read More →
The Regional GIS Hub at UMass - Amherst is a partnership between UMass - Amherst's Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences and Massachusetts’ Bureau of Geographic Information (MassGIS), part of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS). The Hub's goal is to support geospatial data and technology development and use throughout the region. Once operational, the Hub will assist local, state, and regional organizations—including regional planners, private businesses, and higher-education institutions—in using geospatial data and technology, and acquiring data, software, and consulting services. Students will conduct much of the work of the Hub, under the direction and close supervision of campus GIS faculty and research staff. This will provide real-world experience and training for the next generation of the geospatial workforce. This poster provides an update on the Hub's formation and operations.
