TOPIC:

I need suggestions on how to organize department specific data for users other than the GIS Department. We are working to allow access to all of our base GIS data through our enterprise server to all staff, but we also need to allow other departments to access and store their own project specific data on the enterprise server so that there is a central location for them to access to eliminate redundancy and free up storage space on other servers. We could create Department specific enterprise geodatabases, but then all data might need to come to us (the GIS Department) for QA/QC before importing into the geodatabase. Any suggestions?

Are you going to run SDE or File Geodatabase? We run SDE and each user/department has their own login to the geodatabase. SDE requires more brain power to set up (I hire that part out) but I can administer it myself to create the users.

Then we use Versioning. That allows owners to edit an "Edit Version" that's a child of the DEFAULT version while the other users view the DEFAULT version. You can even add another version that's a QA/QC version between Edit and DEFAULT. It's not supported with a File GDB.

John has the correct idea. Currently we are working with our GIS department to have an enterprise implementation set up with SDE so that I can store my departments data on the enterprise server as well as have more than one editor at a time. The SDE portion will also allow my offices data to stay private from other GIS users outside my department. There are plenty of tribes with first hand knowledge, but the first ones that come to mind for me are Chickasaw Nation GSI Office and the Seminole Tribe of Florida's GIS Office.

Yes we are going to run SDE geodatabases, I am more concerned about how to "control" the data that is imported into each department's geodatabase so that it is usable information and doesn't take up a ton of server space. The problem that we have now is that each department has had separate file servers where they have kept copies of their data. I am migrating them all onto the enterprise server to get away from the redundancy of each program copying base data and saving all of their scratch data with no metadata onto their own servers, which has made it impossible for anyone else to make sense of it.