In latter years, Johnston County, N...

In latter years, Johnston County, N.C., has undertaken a major effort to automate its information management using state-of-the-art technologies. For starters, the shire put in place a UNIX-based GIS and created a graphical database of more than 55000 land parcels from characteristic deeds.

With this extensive database of valuable information in place, the challenge has been to provide greater access to the information, at a reasonable costliness to the county's many departments, as well as to the public.

on 1995, the county's economic disclosure department had access to the GIS database, which it used to originate maps showing the location of tracts of land available to industries. The database allowed creation of maps quickly to illustrate the relationship of propos sites to existing municipalities and transportation courses and provided population statistics for projections of available work forces.

Interest in database access grew