Creators and Vision

The LOUIS Toolkit is developed by the team at Apropos Information Systems. We created the LOUIS Toolkit because we recognised that small communities and Indigenous communities needed tools that match their size and available resources. We strongly believe that good data are essential to good decision making and so we are driven to ensure that our solution supports good data management practices so our users can make informed decisions. Lastly, we created the LOUIS Toolkit because we believe that these local voices need to be heard for local, regional and large scale planning to be effective and to meet larger societal needs.

The LOUIS Toolkit provides a broad scope of capabilities and continues to be developed and refined. Ongoing development is guided by careful consideration of user needs, practicality and the need to share information securely and easily.

Platform History

A solution like the LOUIS Toolkit was conceived by our founder, Trevor Wiens, in the early 1990s because of the challenges he observed with First Nations often losing control of their own information. In 2011, Apropos Information Systems was founded and the first part of the LOUIS Toolkit we created was LOUIS Heritage. From 2016 to 2018 we developed the first version of LOUIS Assets with guidance from a small group of Alberta First Nation's housing and public works staff. In 2021 we released LOUIS Planner to provide a flexible and effective solution for consultation.

Since 2021 we've continued to make updates to our platform based on user needs and requests. We think of all our clients as partners in making our platform better so we carefully consider their feedback to guide ongoing development.

For more information on how the LOUIS Toolkit might be beneficial to you and your organization, contact us and we will happily provide a demonstration and put you in touch with existing users for their perspective.