BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – November 12, 2014 – GISi recently completed several enhancements to Esri’s Polling Locator template application just in time for the big election on Tuesday November, 4th, 2014.
Collin County Texas Reports Success with Election Polling Place Application
The application allows voting citizens of Collin County, Texas to locate the most convenient polling location in their area and is just one way the County is leveraging location technology to better serve its citizens.
One of the new enhancements allows users to visualize wait times for people to decide which polling place to visit. They then have the ability to print these locations, along with directions to their polling place destination. If a user has arrived at a polling location and finds that the lines are too long, they can use the app to scan a QR code, printed out and placed on the wall at the polling location, and select a different location to vote.
In the past, the County had difficulty with server downtime during elections. This caused several interruptions for users attempting to use the website and Election Polling Place Application. In contrast, the 2014 Mid-term elections proved to be an enormous success with zero server reboots, 174,242 total pageviews, 19,020 visits to the Election Polling Place Mapping Application, and 26,842 routes generated from the Election Polling Place Application.
Tim Nolan, IT Applications Manager with Collin County, had this to say about the enhancements: “With the help of GISi we were able to put together a more sound application and an overall better experience. We rolled out a new website version earlier this year and were pleased that we experienced no downtime during the recent Mid-term elections due to the follow-up improvements to our system. Also, having self-contained routing directions created a much better user experience for our citizens and allowed them the ability to more easily find the best location to vote.”
“This is just a great example of how powerful it is to combine a few “usability” requirements with the right location technology and the profound effect it can have, in this case, for improving the citizen voting experience” says Kevin Stewart, GISi Managing Partner for State & Local Government.
About GISi
GISi is an award-winning GIS professional services firm located in Birmingham, AL, with offices throughout the United States. GISi has a passion for delivering customer driven location technology solutions to federal, state and local governments, and commercial organizations.