The Pulaski Area Geographic Information System (PAgis) is an independent government agency specializing in the acquisition, maintenance and distribution of GIS related data within Pulaski County. The PAgis member agencies currently include Central Arkansas Water, the City of Little Rock, the City of North Little Rock, the City of Jacksonville, Little Rock Wastewater, North Little Rock Wastewater, and Pulaski County Public Works.

PAgis began in 1988 as a grass-roots effort by members of the City of Little Rock Public Works Department, Little Rock Municipal Water Works and the Little Rock Wastewater Utility who realized a need for a high quality, consistent base map that could be shared across jurisdictional boundaries.

During a 1986 URISA conference PlanGraphics was contracted to prepare a strategic plan to address hardware, software, data and personnel needed to build a Geographic Information System. Between 1988 and 1990 the consortium contracted with Greenhorne & O’Mara (G&O) to create their first digital map of the Little Rock metropolitan area. This map was created from hard copy stereo aerial photos which were used to digitize features into the city’s first GIS environment. The base map was updated over time for areas experiencing rapid growth and other changes to the landscape.

In 1997, PAgis contracted Merrick and Company to acquire new digital orthophotography and to update the base map planimetric data and topographic mapping.

In 1998, the four charter members signed an inter-local agreement establishing PAgis as a separate government entity and set its mission to create and maintain a shared Geographic Information System (GIS) database. Also, during 1999 the PAgis Board of Directors voted to implement a dues-based funding system. This type of funding simplifies the expansion of the membership base and strengthens its independence. It also encourages affiliation by additional government agencies within Pulaski County. PAgis also began implementing other pieces of the strategic plan by staffing the office with GIS technical staff and a programmer. The initial focus of the staff was to quality control the data provided by the contractor and to setup and populate the GIS database.

Between 2000 and 2002, the PAgis staff completed the data acquisition and quality control for the base map while at the same time compiling the data and infrastructure needed to build out the addressing aspects of the GIS database.

In 2003 and 2004 PAgis was re-organized under the management umbrella of Central Arkansas Water (CAW). PAgis is now housed in the same building as CAW, uses CAW HR staff resources, and has adopted many of CAW's benefits, policies and procedures. The CAW GIS Manager also serves as the PAgis Manger, by supervising the PAgis staff, preparing the annual budget and maintaining daily operations.

Since 2005, PAgis has achieved many successes including a 95%+ match rate between the building point address layer and the CAW customer address list. PAgis has also partnered with the Pulaski County Assessor's office to complete and maintain a countywide parcel layer that is linked to the Computer Assisted Mass Appraisal (CAMA) data. PAgis operates a fully functional internet mapping application web site that can be used by anyone with internet access. The internet mapping applications will be upgraded and improved in the near future to allow more flexible and intuitive user interfaces.

PAgis has reached and exceeded some of the initial goals set out by the consortium in 1988. PAgis has completed developing a high quality, centralized enterprise class geodatabase with many layers that are shared and updated each month based on member input. PAgis' daily focus is on maintenance of framework data layers that provide the foundation for each member's own custom GIS data applications as well as meet the needs of local engineering firms planning for development in the region.