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City of San Jose uses FME to break down data silos

The City of San Jose had important data for staff and citizens; the problem was that it was hard to find and open.

Extending the enterprise

The City of San Jose continually received requests from its internal departments and citizens for city maps and information on municipal projects. Though all this data existed, it was siloed across departments, making it hard for administrators to find. Even when they did find the data, they were frustrated to realize they did not have the correct application to open it.

The solution was to offer a lightweight, mobile-friendly, self-service interactive map gallery for the city’s staff and citizens. Goodbye, frustration and hello, organization!

How they made it possible – no code required

The first step was to find a tool that was capable of integrating all of their systems, both general IT systems and spatial systems. They also needed a product that was able to keep their maps up-to-date without maintenance. After assessing many options they decided to use FME.

The city integrated various datasets using FME and produced interactive maps containing all the information citizens and employees needed. This included affordable housing maps, building permits, city council districts, code complaints, and cone zones. To ensure the maps were always current, they configured FME to update the maps every night automatically.

Even when their mapping output, Google Maps Engine, was deprecated, they could remain flexible.

Simply swapping out the writer in their FME workflow to output to CartoDB avoided duplicate work, which is costly in both time and money. Best of all, their switch from GME to CartoDB went unnoticed by end-users of the data.

$3B
operational Budget
6K
employees
“We use FME daily and have evangelized its use throughout the city to automate, extend and homogenize data workflows which once were impossible.”
Mike Brown
GIS Manager, City of San Jose
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