At Esri UK Annual Conference 2014 Moving 1000+ ArcGIS for Desktop Editor users to the web The Forestry Commission have a duty of care for over 700,000 hectares of woodlands in England and Scotland with a market value in excess of £3 billion. Forester Desktop is the Commission’s principal corporate asset management system that underpins all the key business processes and activities taking place on the Forestry Commission estate - from conservation and recreation to land ownership, civil engineering and forest management. The Forester Desktop application enables 1000+ front line staff do their jobs, helping to ensure legal and policy compliance, reducing and mitigating risks and acting as a corporate memory and knowledge base. However, in 2012 a number of challenges were identified by the business, namely the need for greater data transparency and collaboration; increase the user base; reduce complexity for users; meet the needs of a distributed and mobile workforce; to enable country divergence; not to be constrained by infrastructure. Coupled with advances in technology and increased bandwidth to rural areas, the Forestry Commission have met this challenge by delivering a centralised web editing solution.

1. Moving 1000+ ArcGIS for
Desktop Editor users to the
Web
Morag Hawkins
Forester Programme Manager
Tony Farndon
Technical Development Manager

2. IFOS

3. IFOS
Economic

4. IFOS
Economic

5. IFOS
Social

6. IFOS
Environmental

7. IFOS
Forester Desktop
Forester Desktop is a bespoke GIS software application
• Over 1200 desktop users
• Distributed architecture
located in 16 Forest
District offices across
England and Scotland and
4 offices in Natural
Resources Wales (NRW)
• Users edit and manage
their own data using
Forester
• Embeds business rules to
ensure standard,
consistent, accurate and
timely data is collected
and recorded

8. IFOS
Forester Desktop
Key Points
• Forester encompasses all of the FC business
• An intuitive solution allowing non-GI users to use GI
• 60%+ of all FC staff use this solution
• 85% of users see it as a critically important to their
job
• We have delivered a truly enterprise GI system for
the whole organisation

9. IFOS
Why move 1200 users to the web?
Business drivers for change
• We want a wider user base
• Our workforce is a mobile workforce
• We want a consistent view of GB data to the
make best decision for the future of FC
• Future proof Infrastructure

10. IFOS
Key Principles
In developing a web editing application it
was of paramount that the key principles of
desktop editing were adhered to:
• Embedding rules to ensure standard,
consistent, accurate data is collected and
recorded across countries.
• Intuitive easy to use UI thereby enabling
business users who own the data to manage
the data.

11. IFOS
Forester Web Demo
Demo

12. IFOS
Efficiencies
• A truly flexible web application that is configurable by the FC without
software development, thereby reducing future development costs.
• Available to all staff on the FC network with no requirement for
specialist GIS desktop software, only a web browser, thereby
significantly reducing support and infrastructure costs
• This enables staff to work at any location across the FC, thereby
reducing travelling costs.
• Intuitive and easy to use, achieved by reducing complexity. No
requirement for training.
• Potentially release cycles can be more frequent and deployed
instantaneously across the FC. Change can be implemented at pace.
• Ultimately reduce hardware, software, support and maintenance.
Benefits

13. IFOS
Resilience
• Robust technology platform that will serve the FC well for the long
term future business needs.
• Forester Web accommodates organisational change and through the
provision of an application that can be easily configured, ported
hosted, or provided as a service
Benefits