Written by KTOY 104.7

March 24, 2021

The Department of Transformation and Shared Services (TSS) Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Office announced the publication of a series of maps and charts for the state’s congressional districts dating back to the 1940s.

The GIS team compiled the historic census information by the county to analyze the redistricting statistics for each decade. The data shows the total population of each district at that time and the population for each county in the district for the decade.  The project was led by GIS Director and State Geographic Information Officer Shelby Johnson.
 
When asked what prompted his research, Johnson said, “The past four years we have been working on providing Arkansas’ GIS data to the U.S. Census Bureau so we can make sure that population is correctly counted, this includes school districts, election precincts, and cities. When the Bureau announced they were pushing back the deadline to deliver population data to the states to September 30, 2021, we realized this was going to create a compressed timeline for the redistricting work.”

Read the full article HERE.