Dotted Eyes web mapping solution now being adopted by housing associations

Shoreline Housing Partnership, a provider of affordable housing in North East Lincolnshire, has rolled out Dotted Eyes’ latest intranet mapping solution, RMX4, to provide its customer service team with greater visibility of its assets whilst improving the efficiency of its workforce.

RMX4 is supporting Shoreline in building upon its current way of working to become more sophisticated in terms of accessing, analysing and using its data. With coverage of over 7,900 homes across North East Lincolnshire, Shoreline’s staff are using the intranet mapping solution to easily visualise and share information about their properties.

This is already helping it to improve the efficiency of its customer service team and reduce costs. For example, in the case of a customer complaining about fly tipping, the service team can now easily identify on a map whether the incident occurred on Shoreline’s land, enabling them to deal with it more effectively and save unnecessary removal costs. 

Built on top of a single, open source technology stack, RMX4 provides the flexibility Shoreline needs to accommodate future change whilst significantly reducing the cost of multiple desktop licences.  Due to RMX4’s user friendly interface Shoreline’s staff were able to use the solution from day one, rather than having to undergo intensive training or being reliant on costly analytical resource to manipulate the data for them.

Andrew Eayres, Performance Manager at Shoreline Housing, commented:  “What’s great about RMX4 is that you don’t need to be highly skilled to use it. The simplicity of the solution makes it accessible to staff across the whole organisation. At the click of a mouse, we now have instant visibility over our properties and the data related to them on a map.”

Click to read more ...

Dotted Eyes Chairman to give key note speech at AGI Cymru

Mapping solutions caught the attention of senior politicians this year when Dotted Eyes Chairman, Jamie Justham, demonstrated how GIS techniques could help redraw the political map in response to recent legislation. Following his plenary speech on the subject at the AGI GeoCommunity ’11, Jamie will present a keynote speech at the AGI Cymru conference later this month.

From the current 650 Members of Parliament (MPs), 50 are due to be cut at the general election in Spring 2015. This means that around 85% of constituencies are likely to have new boundaries, which will transform the political landscape in terms of safe seats and marginal ballots.

When the Boundary Commissions published their initial proposals for England and Northern Ireland, there was criticism from members of the press that there was no single map of the UK in a user friendly format. Dotted Eyes created and released BoundaryMap™ free of charge for download at www.dottedeyes.com/boundarymap, using the Open Government licence.

Jamie’s keynote speech at AGI Cymru, on the 29^th November at City Hall in Cardiff, is proving to be timely as Wales will be the final part of the UK to publish its initial proposal. Jamie will discuss what lessons can be learnt from other parts of the UK. He will also extend this discussion to show how GIS could assist in analysing the proposed changes to electoral registrations proposed in the new white paper.

Jamie Justham, CEO of Dotted Eyes, commented: “I am delighted to be asked to speak at the AGI Cymru annual conference, especially as it provides excellent timing for a sequel to my presentation at AGI GeoCommunities '11.

Click to read more ...

Dotted Eyes provides Herefordshire with a web mapping solution to help reduce costs

With more and more councils now shifting their costly face to face and phone transactions online, Herefordshire Council announces it has chosen Dotted Eyes’ web mapping solution to enable residents to instantly visualise planning applications in their area, replacing legacy technology.

Residents within Herefordshire will soon be able to use the council’s website to easily pinpoint the locations and details of both live as well as historic planning applications on an online map. This will help free up the resource required for dealing with these queries, enabling them to work on more things, whilst improving the service Herefordshire council provides to its residents.

Herefordshire will be implementing the recently launched web mapping application, Local Government Portal by Dotted Eyes, one of the UK’s leading GIS development houses. Local Government Portal is specifically designed for the needs of councils and for this reason it was identified as the perfect choicefor Herefordshire’s requirements.

The council’s key requirements included the need to integrate with in-house software such as CRM, EDRMS and planning systems, be cost effective and deliver a refined user experience across the Herefordshire Public Service and its partner organisations.

Built on top of a single, open source technology stack, Local Government Portal provides the flexibility the council needs to accommodate future change whilst significantly reducing the cost of multiple desktop licences.  The public facing planning application is the first in a series of modules to be delivered by Dotted Eyes for Herefordshire.

Duncan Trumper, GIS Team Leader for Hoople Ltd (formerly The Shared Services Partnership), Herefordshire said: “With the drive from central government to cut costs in local authorities, Local Government Portal could not have come at a better time, as it provides us with an affordable and user-friendly solution for driving our channel shift from phone to web.”

Click to read more ...

East Staffs Borough Council create cost savings through channel shift

Residents in East Staffordshire can now get instant, online access to planning applications – current and historic – at the click of a button as the Council launches a new web-mapping solution from Dotted Eye.

The new software, which can be found on the Council’s website, should significantly reduce the amount of time the Council’s planning officers spend dealing with phone enquiries received regarding planning.

The web-mapping application provided by Dotted Eyes, one of the UK’s leading GIS development houses is built on its new Local Government Portal technology stack and enables the public to self-serve information by clearly displaying data taken from the council’s Northgate system on an online map.

Users can quickly visualise the locations of live planning applications, examine the outcome of historical planning applications, including appeals, and view the sites of listed buildings and trees subject to preservation orders.

Philip Somerfield, Head of Regulatory Services at East Staffordshire Borough Council, commented: “This is the ideal solution to enable us to deal with residents queries much more efficiently whilst also helping us to reduce costs. It instantly brings our data to life, allowing people to easily pinpoint planning application locations and further improves the usability of our website.”

Click to read more ...

The map finally catches up with the applications

Hot on the heels of launching its new web-mapping application, Dotted Eyes brings background mapping into the modern era with MapChest.

Over the last 10 years mapping applications have become increasingly effective and user friendly, yet backdrop mapping has remained the same. 

Ordnance Survey’s background stack is renowned for its accuracy and quality but its feature density and variation of styling between zoom layers requires concentration to understand and interpret.  For example, the colour schemes between the different scales can vary significantly and almost every possible feature is shown. Users therefore waste time understanding the background instead of the business information it is supporting, and GIS Managers spend time adapting and altering the maps to support the data.

MapChest 1:250k Raster                                                         OS 1:250k Colour Raster

Dotted Eyes, one of the UK’s leading Data Optimisers, has released MapChest to solve these problems by creating one comprehensive set of data files across all scales, with a single clear uncluttered style. This makes interpreting information across organisations consistent and straightforward, enabling individuals to make decisions significantly faster.

MapChest is available in a wide range of formats and supply feeds that ideally match customer requirements – internal, external, CRM and project based.  Derived from the full range of PSMA supported Ordnance Survey data, formats can include SHP, TAB, Tiff, Tile Cache and WMS. Take one or take all.

Finally the map matches the technology.

Click to read more ...