In 2001, the Citrus Heights (California) Water District embarked on an IT Master Planning activity. The
result of this planning activity was a series of recommendations to
completely replace all of the core information systems of the District with
a set of highly integrated applications. Key to the success of this strategy
was the implementation of new financial systems, customer information
systems (CIS) and maintenance management systems (CMMS). The
cornerstone of these systems was to be a fully integrated geographical
information system (GIS) that brought all of these applications together to
support office, field and management requirements.
In less than 18 months, Citrus Heights Water District has installed a
complete ESRI GIS system for their entire service area containing 20,000
service/meter locations and 250 miles of buried infrastructure. The 20,000
customer account records have been tied to this map with a new customer
information and billing system from Cogsdale. A full function
maintenance management system from Azteca has been installed and
integrated with the GIS for recording all field work orders and
maintenance activity. The system provides full wireless capabilities to 15
field personnel, including full GIS services, using Sprint services and a
highly secure VPN architecture. The CIS and the CMMS both feed a new
financial system from Microsoft/Great Plains to comply with GASB-34
requirements. Integration between these core components is designed to
insure that information is entered as close to the originating source as
possible, with full quality and security control.