WDH moves to cloud GIS
Migration to cloud hosted desktop GIS and web mapping supports social housing provider’s digital strategy
Note: As of 1st April 2025, Wakefield and District Housing (WDH) became Vico Homes
WDH has been using the Geographic Information System (GIS), SIS, since 2014. It is deployed throughout the social housing provider, where mapping and business data are made accessible via the intranet, internet, and mobile devices.
As part of its strategy to transform its IT infrastructure to support an agile workforce and develop its digital capability to deliver improved customer service, WDH is taking the opportunity to migrate its desktop GIS and web mapping to a cloud-hosted environment.
SIS Desktop licences are being migrated to a cloud-hosted and managed environment. SIS Desktop in the cloud can be accessed as a virtual desktop application or via a web browser. No specialist hardware or resources are required, making it ideal for remote and flexible working. The software is maintained and upgraded as part of the contract, allowing the housing association to immediately benefit from new functionality within the latest release.
The project also involves migrating SIS WebMap to the cloud. This includes Local Knowledge™ to assist the Estates and Development teams with tenant queries and new development sites. ReportIT will allow users to report activities and incidents, including fly-tipping. The Edit facility will be used for tree management and the accurate capture of grounds maintenance to help ensure the best value for money from contractors.
The Commercial Land Ownership team at WDH provides its surveyors with information relating to ownership, site plans, development planning applications, as well as digital information on an area’s local plan, utilities data and environmental constraints. FindIT will provide them with a simple way to query a large number of planning datasets and display the results in a comprehensive report. This will act as a site sourcing tool, significantly reducing the labour required to evaluate a site’s suitability for development. The social housing provider is also taking advantage of the Spatial Database Service, which provides a cloud-hosted spatial database for loading and managing business data. SIS ETL, a data management tool to manage and control the flow of data between files, databases, and servers, will also be implemented to aid data migration.
“Geospatial data is key in supporting the organisation’s asset management requirements and enhances analysis and reporting. WDH’s web-based mapping service is accessed by hundreds of users across the organisation. By transitioning the GIS to the cloud will make this even more accessible.”
–Fraser Lumb, GIS Analyst, WDH
GIS technology in the cloud can deliver significant benefits to housing associations. It has the potential to reduce both the overall cost of ownership and the administration overhead of keeping data and software up to date. NEC offers a wide range of cloud-hosted software and services.
