State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

Florida’s First Geographic Information Officer Maps Out a Statewide Strategy

Government Technology: The state of Florida, believed to have been one of just two states without a central geographic information system (GIS) coordinating authority, hired its first-ever geographic information officer (GIO) late last year and has planned an ambitious first year under her enterprise-level leadership.

Ekaterina Fitos, who worked most recently in the private sector but has more than a decade of state-level public-sector experience, joined the Agency for State Technology (AST) on Dec. 27. AST Spokeswoman Erin Choy said the hope is that the agency will be ready to publish a statewide GIS strategy near the end of the 2017-2018 fiscal year, June 30.

“Basically I’ve been tasked with a number of items. The first and foremost thing is to look at developing a GIS strategy for the state of Florida; chairing the enterprise GIS working group, developing data standards and basically addressing and identifying general GIS needs for the agencies,” Fitos told Government Technology.

Read article