County GIS Awards

National Association of Counties 2004 Achievement Award

NACo's popular Achievement Award is a non-competitive program that recognizes counties for creative and innovative program development and implementation, efficient administrative management of county agencies and responsible government to local citizens.Since the program’s inception, NACo has honored hundreds of county government initiatives that have generated professional, well-trained workforces, maintained cost-effective measures and enhanced services to diverse populations to improve the overall quality of life. The award-winning programs provide NACo a members with an extensive database of successful model county programs.

Special Achievement in GIS Award

The Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) recognizes BentonCounty with a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award at the Twenty-Fourth Annual ESRI International Users Conference in San Diego, California.

This award was presented to Benton County on Thursday, August 12^th recognizing the County's achievements in their Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Program at the Seventh Annual Special Achievement in GIS Award ceremony which was presided over by Jack Dangermond, the president and founder of ESRI. Every year the Special Achievement in GIS award honors an elite group of organizations that have embraced GIS technology to better serve our world. By their extraordinary contributions to our society they have set new precedents throughout the GIS community. Benton County was chosen from more than 100,000 user sites worldwide, making this award quite an honor.

Recipients of the Special Achievement in GIS award are submitted by ESRI staff from thousands of organizations worldwide, then personally reviewed and selected by Jack Dangermond.  

BentonCounty was nominated by Ed Crane, ESRI St. Louis.  "Northwest Arkansas remains one of the top five fastest growing regions in the country due to the influence of retirement communities, recreation, plus being home to the World Headquarters for Walmart and Tyson Foods.  That growth and the subsequent demands on local government to keep up proved both positive and negative for Benton County GIS efforts.  The County began its efforts to automate roads for 9-1-1 and land parcels many years ago, and experienced the frustrations of changing technologies, limited staff and changing database strategies that are all too common to GIS implementation.  A single staff person began digitizing land parcels from deeds in 1990, and after multiple attempts to develop a 9-1-1 roads/address map, the county finally has a stable digital database of parcels and streets.  The vision, dedication and persistence of the elected Assessor and 9-1-1 Administrator to finally complete these tasks has made a big difference, and has enabled the county to pursue GIS implementation for all departments not merely these two pioneering departments. Over the last 2 years with the leadership of not only these veteran database visionaries in the Assessor's Office and 9-1-1 Administration, but the dedicated support of the County Judge and Assistant Administrator, Benton County has emerged as one of the leading GIS efforts in the state. "

This is not the first time an entity in Arkansas has been recognized by this world leader in GIS technology. In 2003, Central Arkansas Water and the State of Arkansas Assessment Coordination Department were also recognized by ESRI with the SAG Award.  In 2002, Arkansas One Call was recognized and in 2001 the City of Fayetteville was recognized for their GIS efforts. All of the SAG award recipients can be viewed at http://www.esri.com/sag/.