McKenzie County GIS

McKenzie County’s GIS Department provides spatial data management, analysis, and mapping resources to support the workflows of various county departments.

The GIS team aspires to integrate location intelligence across our county organization. With geospatial information and resources, county departments are more location aware, make more informed decisions, and are more efficient with their time.

“As a county, we are committed to delivering exceptional services to our residents, and our success is rooted in the collective efforts of our employees.”

The GIS Department strives to keep these core principles in mind….

• We intend to be INCLUSIVE in supporting county workflows, public needs, and inter-agency collaboration
• We follow industry and local government BEST PRACTICES in data standards and integrity, database security and fallback options, and web GIS access.
• We are VALUE FOCUSED in that our time is valuable, and your time is valuable. Therefore, we need confidence in the data, the resources need to be user friendly, and we need to be accessible when there are unanswered questions.

 Those core principles are met by making sure our work is based on ….

• Conversations where we ENGAGE our co-workers, partner organizations, and the public to understand their needs.
• Applying thorough and ELABORATE processes while creating and maintaining datasets.
• Developing applications that ENABLE our end users to answer their own questions.
• Continuing to grow our awareness and skills in this ever-changing technology so that McKenzie County can EVOLVE and not become stagnant.

Geographic Information Systems is a system of spatial and tabular data, software applications, and web IT infrastructure used to display information. Almost all County departments deal with information that is tied to a location. The Tax Director’s / Recorder’s office deal with property ownership. McKenzie County Water Resource District deals with water pipelines and infrastructure. Planning & Zoning deal with land use and development. Road & Bridge crews deal with the road network and it’s infrastructure. Weed control deal with areas of infestations. Sheriff’s Office deals with 911 incident locations. Each of these examples need to know the where & what of their data which are supported by various geospatial solutions. GIS makes information accessible!

Considering that GIS is a SYSTEM of data, hardware, and software, it is not something implemented within months or even a couple years. It is an on-going, developing enterprise. McKenzie County had a couple people “doing GIS” and a department or two using GIS service vendors to provide them data and software a couple decades ago. With the growth of oil exploration and extraction from this Bakken region, McKenzie County created the GIS Department in 2014. Since that time there has been at least one dedicated person for GIS-related development. At times, there have been two people in the Department and even reached three skilled people for a while in 2023. GIS service vendors still play a role in providing various components for the County.

Where does McKenzie County go from here? The GIS Department team will continue to support McKenzie County departments, outside entities, and public users with quality data, map resources, web services, and technical support.

o   Click  here  to view some interactive applications.

o   Stop by various county departments to see how they use GIS.

o   Technical questions can be directed to the GIS team.