The city of Mandeville is working to better organize its data to make retrieving information more efficient

Consultant Michael Lauer said the good news is the city has been collecting the necessary information for a very long time and it has a good map system.

The problem is, he added, there is not a very good connection between the data and the maps. Right now, he said, the data is stored using five different programs.

He said most of the information, which includes work orders, ordinances, zonings, approved developments, public work projects, business licenses and citations, could very easily be connected to the maps.

Lauer said the city is at the point of attaching the information to the maps, and the next step is to make the information available to city employees via laptops.

Right now city employees are working to streamline a lot of the information so it is compatible with each other.

“We are cleaning up the addresses,” Public Works Director David deGeneres said. “Public Works might have North Causeway and the Planning Department might have it N. Causeway.”

Before the city makes information in theses databases available to employees and eventually to the public, it needs to develop policies as to who will have access to view what information and who will have access to edit information.

“We need to be careful as to who has access to the data,” Lauer said.

Lauer said the city will have to spend “tens of thousands of dollars” to purchase a server necessary to compile the information. After the first of the year he will make a recommendation of what server to purchase and will have a figure to present at that time.

The next phase will be to provide links to the information contained in the server. Part of the process will be to review the parish’s database to ensure all of the addresses it has for 911 are accurate.

Lauer said the process will likely take three or more years, and the long-term plan includes developing a plan as to how the information will be made available to the public in 2010.