Former Wyoming Governor Spreads Gospel of GIS

As governor of Wyoming, Jim Geringer became a national leader in use of geospatial systems in government operations

By Darby Patterson Govtech.net

During his eight-year tenure as governor of Wyoming, Jim Geringer built a reputation as a leader in the use of GIS in government operations. But, it was not his background in engineering or his stint with the Air Force space program that distinguished him as a staunch advocate for GIS. It was an enthusiastic state employee who inspired interest that quickly grew to something close to GIS fervor.

Technology governor

"When I came into office, governors were really enamored with technology," Geringer said. "It was going to be the golden spike to make their economies grow. People were adopting this beyond Silicon Valley to Silicon Prairie to Silicon Village." But Geringer, like other governors who embraced technology in the mid-90s, did not consider himself an expert in the arena. "During my time in public office, which all together amounted to more than 20 years, … I always viewed my role more as a teacher than anything else," he said. "I always viewed myself as a resource provider, but not the person who had to make things happen. I could, instead, explain thing to people so they could make things happen." Now, recently retired from public service, Geringer is planning to continue his role as an educator and advocate in a senior position with GIS giant ESRI.

Although GIS now permeates most levels of government, Geringer easily recalls the days when the technology was somewhat esoteric — a specialized and little-used resource for maps. But the former governor saw other possibilities. Among his first ventures into the GIS arena was to ask the Federal Bureau of Land Management to share data with the state. Next came meetings among other federal agencies within the states — agencies that, Geringer says, had never before sat around the same table. That activity eventually led to new partnerships with organizations such as the forest service, natural resources and conservations services. "Over a period of time, two or three years, we had federal agencies agreeing to share data with Wyoming agencies," he said.

The idea of more collaboration caught Geringer’s attention. "People need to make decisions just like when they get together over a cup of coffee," he said. "In the West, we hook a boot over the bumper of the pickup when somebody just happens to drive by the ranch and you go inside the house for coffee or iced tea. And that got me to thinking, when you go to anybody’s house for a social event … everybody ends up in the kitchen."

Kitchen Tables

Thus, Geringer’s annual Kitchen Table Conferences with federal, state and local agencies became the foundation for continued GIS deployment in Wyoming. The new collaboration also highlighted some problems such as incompatibility of systems. "There is no point in leveraging data if you can’t use it," Geringer said. "That’s when I became aware of standards. I have always thought in terms of the big picture. Then, this term came along — enterprise solutions. Well, that’s the same thing as seeing the big picture, isn’t it."

But it was the benefits of GIS that won the day as Geringer recognized the power of the technology to impact public policy. "It is a way you can find out everything that impacts a given location," he said. "That’s when I started grasping the idea of overlays. GIS is a decision making tool, not just a technology. It is a way to make better decisions, not just faster decisions." Geringer added that decision-making is often based more on "gut feeling" than facts. "The most complex, the most difficult decisions for the head of any organization — the CEO of a state as well as the CEO of a company – is how can you make the best decision possible," he said. "I became keenly aware that you don’t make the decision based on one thing. It’s human nature to use an anecdote to stimulate a decision. It takes a lot of patience to be able to gather enough information to make a decision where you recognize an interrelated impact on something you wouldn’t ordinarily even think about."

Layered GIS data not only provides facts, but it also puts those facts in a visual context that reveals interrelationships, such as roads and terrain, infrastructure and population and transportation and economic development. "That’s when I started grasping the idea of overlays. The overlay allows you to see how individual data sets interrelate with each other," he said. "This to me is a decision making tool, not just a chunk of technology."

Similarly, GIS plays a role in sociology. "The most complex decisions for a CEO are people relationships," Geringer said. "If you apply technology to a bad process, all you have is a very fast, bad process. You need to establish better people relationships which technology helps to further."

GIS 2003

The priorities for governors in 2003, he said, are education, the economy, healthcare and the environment. Years ago, elected officials might not have thought that GIS could bring any information to topics seemingly unrelated to technology — such as the No Child Left Behind federal mandate. But, Geringer pointed out that Detroit’s outstanding problem with 132 schools on Michigan’s "failing list" could benefit from the analysis of GIS data. "Parents, under this law, have the right to take their kids out of those schools. What are you going to do with kids from 132 schools?" he asked. "Along with that, you want to know what’s causing these schools to fail and every part of that question probably has a geospatial element."

It is the location-based feature of GIS that Geringer says makes the technology user-friendly and ubiquitous. People are already using GPS enabled phones and hand held devices without thinking twice about GIS. "My observation is that people are going to accept what GIS delivers before they understand GIS," he said. "The public will jump beyond where we are." It is the grass-roots popularity of GIS-enabled technologies that will lead to increasing demand, he added. "The technology will always be ahead of our culture unless our culture makes it a commodity," he observed.

Geringer recalled a meeting of the Western Governors about three years ago, when a company from the Silicon Valley was asked to create a zoom-view of Earth from distant space to bird’s eye to on-the-ground detail. "It took a bank of supercomputers," he said. "Today we can do the same thing on a laptop in seconds."

Creative collaboration

The Internet aggregates knowledge as never before in history and Geringer believes this collective pool of information will support the democratic process while empowering individuals to be creative. "It’s the next great step in democracy school," he said. "People can now assimilate knowledge through portals at the kitchen table and make better decisions for themselves."

This kind of learning will be increasingly enabled through the Internet, according to Geringer. "An individual can study by him or herself and they’ll pick up knowledge. But put two people together, and all of a sudden they get creative. You put ten thousand together and it’s just extraordinary," he observed. "It’s the leveraging of each other’s talent, bounced off the other. The most creative people are those who can interact."

Geringer hopes to follow his passion to teach. Being able to tap the resources of geospatial technologies, he says, is a wonderful opportunity for students to experience the joy of learning. "Discovery learning is the most enduring. When it’s fed to students, they might retain till the next day," he said. "But if they discover it own their own, they will never forget it."

Darby Patterson

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