At that time, Canada was beginning to realize problems associated with its large land mass and attempting to discern the availability of natural resources.
As Canada presented such large geospatial datasets, it was necessary to be able to focus on certain regions or provinces in order to more effectively manage and maintain land-use.
Eventually, Spartan met with IBM offices in Ottawa to begin developing a relationship to bridge the previous gap between geographic data and computer services.
Pratt was charged with creation of maps covering the entire region of Canada's commercially productive areas by showing agriculture, forestry, wildlife, and recreation, all with the same classification schemes.
CGIS continued to be developed and operated as a stand alone system by the Government of Canada until the late 1980s, at which point the widespread emergence of commercial GIS software slowly rendered it obsolete.