Heather Studley, Bannock County’s GIS manager, gave a semiannual update on Dec. 16, describing staffing, technical upgrades and interagency work on next-generation 9-1-1 data.

Studley said the GIS team currently includes two full-time employees, one part-time employee and one intern, and that the county has arranged to hire a third full-time position; the transcript records the hire’s start date phrase as “they’ll be starting on the 20 ninth of this month,” which is not unambiguously specified in the record. She said the position drew more than 70 applicants.

Major projects include migrating online web maps from a platform scheduled to retire, ongoing address and records-of-survey data entry, and coordination with the county’s Motorola contractor to ensure 9-1-1 data are up to date. Studley said staff also have been working with local partners — Pocatello, Chubbock and Idaho State University — to clean address and road-name inconsistencies so emergency and elections systems align.

On next-generation 9-1-1 work, Studley said the county is coordinating with the state Geospatial Information Officer’s (GIO) office to clean service boundaries and resolve small sliver-matching issues; she said that work may slow while the state completes an internal staffing shift. Studley noted that both she and a colleague recently volunteered and attended professional conferences, and she mentioned a service award she received from the Geospatial Professional Network.

Commissioners asked how to explain GIS value to the public; Studley framed it around everyday services: address and road-name maintenance, 9-1-1 location services, elections and delivery services. She emphasized the practical benefits county residents receive from accurate mapping data.

Studley said county GIS and the 9-1-1 GIS server will receive software version updates in the coming months and that staff will bring in vendor assistance to help ensure smooth upgrades.