City Of Elgin: Elgin Police Department Transparency Website Receives Special Achievement Award

Press release from the City of Elgin:

July 28, 2021

The Elgin Police Department (EPD) is a recipient of a 2021 Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award for its transparency website. This prestigious award is given to user sites around the world in recognition of outstanding work with ESRI's Geographical Informational System (GIS) technology. In 2021, 197 organizations received the SAG award, which represents one-tenth of 1% of GIS users worldwide.

The transparency website was launched January 13, 2021 after intensive work by staff from both the City's police department and GIS division. The website has four data dashboards plus a significant amount of supplemental information to help showcase all functions of the police department. The website is the first of what will be many similar dashboards and mapping tools for various City services that are being created for the City's online portal, expected to launch later this year.

The police department's transparency website was put together by a cross-departmental team including Elgin Police Department's former Public Information & Community Outreach Manager Kristie Hilton (now retired), GIS Specialist Chris Nawrot and GIS Analyst Rich Snyder from the City's Information Technology Services (ITS) Department and Senior System Specialist Joe Bush from the police department.

“I am very proud of the work that Kristie accomplished here at the police department during her 20 plus year career, and especially the work she did on our transparency website right before she retired. Her attention to detail, thoroughness and finding a way to make the site the best it can be for our community is no doubt what helped to make this site an award-winning site," said Police Chief Ana Lalley. "I am thankful for the partnership we have with the ITS department and specifically want to thank Chris and Rich for their work on this project.”

Each staff member played an integral role to ensure the platform was a meaningful tool for the Elgin community, making sure the content was easy to understand while also securing a stable and reliable platform that hosted and delivered timely updates and information.

"By working together as a team, the GIS division and EPD were able to produce an award-winning site.  Here at the city of Elgin, we are all thrilled with their accomplishments and anticipate more quality contributions." said Jeff Massey, Chief Technology Officer.

The innovative site provides constant and consistent communication to the Elgin community, which Chief Lalley notes as a giant step forward in fostering community trust. 

This press release was produced by the City of Elgin. The views expressed here are the author’s own.