Geopunt is the Flemish Government’s geoportal that bundles all available, location-based information within the Flemish Government in one place and makes it publicly available. Geo Solutions helped draw out the roadmap for renewal.
The desire
The Geopunt Portal was first launched in 2013 and became increasingly popular over time. The portal now has more than 6,000 maps and receives more than 1 million unique visitors annually, nearly half of whom use Geopunt daily. In recent years, various analyses and queries have established that the portal is in need of renewal, both technologically and functionally. With an investment budget VRD2 (Flanders Radical Digital II), an ambitious renewal project to completely rebuild Geopunt started in January 2022, and with a very tight deadline: 2023. So there was a need for a thorough analysis.
Geo Solutions in action
Digital Flanders is calling on several experts to bring this project to fruition. From Geo Solutions, we provide business analysis support. The project is organized within the Scrum methodology, with two-week sprints. As a business analyst, we work along in this cadence to write out the user stories, discuss them with the team, and finally schedule them together in the next sprint. In some parts of the project, we perform a broader business analysis or in-depth functional analysis. Finally, we also support the product owner to set priorities and help outline the road map.
The value
In the first half of 2022, the focus was on two components of Geopunt. On the one hand, on the analysis and development of Geopunt Admin, Geopunt’s underlying configuration tool. An important foundation on which Geopunt will be built. On the other hand, great strides have already been made in the analysis and development of the Geopunt map. This will result in an initial test release for a select group of Geopunt users in late Q3.
During the second quarter, the team also began revamping the other two components of Geopunt. These are the website (both design and content) and the Geopunt Catalog. For these two components, the Geopunt team collaborates with colleagues from the Web Platform team, the Metadata team, and the Datavindplaats team.
