Working on the GIS Strategy Project at the Environment Agency

I just wanted to add a quick blog post about my time with the Environment Agency.

I was lucky enough to work within this organisation on the GIS Strategy Project: initially as a Business Analyst, then leading Business Analysis and Software Development on the project.

It was a great time, I really enjoyed it, and I’m sad to go. I worked with a great team of folk there, on the project and outside it. There are some terrific people that work for the EA who are genuinely committed to making, not just the country, but the world, a better place. For my very small part I helped on collecting the requirements and designing the user interface on a bit of software, building on Easimap,  that made it easier for internal users to understand what environmental constraints there are round some kind of activity. I’d like to hope that somewhere, a farmer is spreading slightly less sludge around a field because the software told a user that there was a natural habitat nearby, that would otherwise have been a longer process. ‘Location’ definitely has a place in the Environment Agency, and I’d like to hope that I contributed to making it more useful and ubiquitous.

The EA may face government cuts in the shorter and medium term. But I really hope it doesn’t cause the organisation too much hardship. It’s easy to bash the EA because it doesn’t obviously help out the population in the same way that the nurses, or the Police, or teachers do. But it definitely has its place, and deserves to be preserved and revered, hopefully in the same way that the BBC or the NHS are.

So next time you cross a bridge over a clear-running stream, or look at the Thames Barrier in wonder, or notice that there’s a bit of wildlife in that wood that wasn’t there last year, it just may be that someone at the EA made life just that little bit better.

Thank you, EA.