A digital divide between rural and urban America persists, if only because of economies of scale: it is harder to support technical staff in counties with a smaller budget. Our interest was in the extent to which geographic information systems are being used in local Ohio government. There are GIS professionals working in the county government in nearly all of Ohio’s 88 counties. While counties with larger populations, unsurprisingly have robust GIS presence in terms of staff and online, we were interested in how smaller counties are faring. We found more GIS staffing and use than we expected, with 65 percent of counties employing more than five full-time GIS professionals. However, based on the survey and on an analysis of county GIS websites, we also found a heavy focus on a single theme: allowing users to view tax parcel data. There was less emphasis on social and environmental data viewing, and less still on making these data available for download. Our research suggests that while GIS professionals working for local government are interested in the opportunity for more training, local GIS clearinghouses that support local government, and other organizations could be equally valuable for boosting the use of GIS at the local level.

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