Town of Little Elm, Texas

The Town of Little Elm has grown rapidly, transforming from a small lakeside community into a thriving, complex municipality. GIS, once a departmental tool, became essential for managing infrastructure and operations, prompting the town to partner with NewEdge Services to assist with modernizing systems, infrastructure, and workflows with a scalable, enterprise-wide solution that supports integrated operations across all departments.

Little Elm’s GIS department was operating with a single staff member and the demands within the rapidly growing city were becoming overwhelming and unmanageable. Existing GIS applications were functional, but the sheer volume of work left little time for fine-tuning or updating detailed attributes. As a result, while the system contained a wealth of information, it lacked the level of organization and completeness needed to fully support the Town’s growing services and amenities. Additionally, new technology or concepts could not be implemented because day-to-day tasks occupied all available time, leaving little room for strategic improvements or innovation.

NewEdge Services conducted a full GIS assessment of Little Elm’s hardware, software, data, and business processes, engaging stakeholders across all departments and ultimately presenting the findings and recommendations to Town leaders. This led to an Esri Enterprise License Agreement and migration to an ArcGIS Enterprise hosted solution within Amazon Web Services (AWS), supporting hundreds of internal users and citizens.

The GIS department was given two additional staff members and organized a GIS advisory council. Data was organized into a single authoritative database and data was reviewed and corrected as it was loaded. Esri’s Utility Network was implemented for water, sewer, and stormwater systems, using engineering plans as reference and ultimately tying all assets to the source document. A new GIS request ticketing system improved service delivery and KPI tracking. GIS was positioned as a mission-critical platform, supporting Public Works, Fire, Finance, Marketing, and Communications with dashboards, mobile apps, and spatial analysis. 

The modernization delivered measurable benefits across the organization. GIS adoption expanded, now supporting 28 data layers, 15 custom applications, 8 dashboards, and an expanding suite of field and web tools. The centralized hosted system now connects all departments, improving coordination and eliminating redundancy. Field crews use ArcGIS Field Maps for live and offline edits, improving accuracy and confidence. Citizens can quickly access information, enhancing service delivery, improving communication, and fostering greater transparency.

Internally, custom dashboards track over 675 internal and external GIS requests annually, supporting weekly metrics and cross-department accountability. Overall, these improvements have increased operational efficiency, reduced response times, and empowered staff to make data-driven decisions.

“Partnering with NewEdge Services has been transformative for the Town of Little Elm. Their expertise and guidance have helped us modernize our GIS systems, streamline operations, and better support our rapidly growing community. By 2026, with a full GIS staff of four, this partnership will enable us to introduce innovative processes for Stormwater Pollution management, GeoAI applications, and Capital Improvement projects.”

Suzanne Whitcomb, GISP, PMP, Managing Director of GIS for the Town of Little Elm