Led by the Committee on Government Reform, Congress has begun a comprehensive review of the many federal GIS initiatives spearheaded by the Bush administration. The centerpiece of the review was a June 10 Congressional hearing chaired by Representative Adam Putnam (R-FL). The legislative effort was mirrored by other reviews of GIS conducted by the GAO and the White House. Putnam made it clear the effort would take time.
"Getting our arms around the array of geospatial systems, issues, and the technical minutiae surrounding geospatial data and geospatial technology is a monumental task," he commented before the hearing. But some members of the House, as well as the administration, seemed committed to such a task, and in fact, one major review had already been completed and was detailed to the committee at the hearing.
For two hours, Putnam's committee heard testimony from eight witnesses on two panels. Included in the dialog were status reports on GIS from Mark A. Forman, administrator of e-government and information technology for OMB; Scott J. Cameron, deputy assistant secretary for performance and management for DOI (and chair of the Geospatial One-Stop Board of Directors); Linda D. Koontz, director of information management for GAO; and Susan W. Kalweit, chair of FEMA's IGPT. Along the way, MAPPS, NSGIC, ESRI, and STIA all weighed in with their views as well.
Standards elusive
The common refrain painted a portrait of a federal government clearly making an effort to define uses for and benefits of geospatial data. But it was also clear that GIS for Uncle Sam is diffuse, sometimes duplicated, and varied in use from agency to agency. And then there was the question of standards--commonality across users and platforms.
"As simple as it sounds, it is absolutely critical that we are all singing from the same sheet of music," Putnam said. "Geo-spatial systems and our geospatial infrastructure worldwide cannot operate without resolving the standards issue," he added. "It is my initial feeling that developing a unified game plan is generally not technology driven, but rather management and people driven."
Coordination efforts ongoing
Koontz detailed a GAO review that assessed how successful the federal government has been in a decades-long effort to reduce duplicative geospatial data collection through greater coordination among federal agencies and departments (see "Timeline of Federal Geospatial Efforts" sidebar). This coordination effort began in earnest in 1990, when OMB created the FGDC to better manage the sharing of GIS information. Four years later, the Clinton administration launched the NSDI initiative--a vision of a federal nationwide GIS network--to address incompatibility of geospatial information (see "Components of NSDI" sidebar). The successor to these early, and less than fully successful, initiatives is today's Geospatial One-Stop--itself part of the evolving shape of NSDI.
Koontz said that GAO found NSDI far from complete. "It remains a formidable challenge, and a time-consuming task," she told Putnam. "Achieving full participation across governments in their development has also been difficult," she added.
GOS is aimed at promoting coordinated geospatial data collection and maintenance across all levels, Koontz explained. A milestone for the project was the June 30 deployment of GeoData.gov (www.geodata.gov), an Internet portal designed to provide one-stop access to geospatial data and developing data standards while encouraging greater coordination among federal, state, and local agencies (see "Two Clicks at One Stop" sidebar). But the GOS project is limited.
"It was not intended to fully address the longer-term challenges of implementing the NSDI ... a much more meaningful effort will be required to attain the broader vision of seamless integration of GIS data nationwide," Koontz said. She explained that Geospatial One-Stop was more focused on limited, near-term tasks. And she told Putnam that implementation of a national GIS would not be simple or cheap.
"The (GIS) effort is likely to require a continuing effort over an extended period of time, due to the fact that significant investments have already been made in existing, nonstandard systems," she added. Existing draft standards will need revision, and a "more extensive" coordination effort may be required to reach the stage where all levels of government can gain an appreciation for and make use of GIS to the fullest extent.
A GAO progress report
As the foundation for NSDI, Koontz said that GAO found 34 different categories (or data themes) of geospatial data. "Each of these themes in turn may have any number of subthemes," she continued. The FGDC has made an effort to develop several versions of data standards but, "it has not attempted to finalize a complete set of the seven framework standards," Koontz said. These core standards would be an attempt to define the simplest level of geographic data commonly used in most geospatial datasets.
GOS is attempting to draft the seven NSDI framework standards. A draft of the seven, plus five transportation subthemes and a baseline, have been completed, according to GAO. These are to be submitted to the American National Standards Institute by the end of September 2003.
Other GOS progress reported in the GAO review include
* The first publicly available demonstration version of GeoData.gov launched this summer
* All federal GIS datasets with a value exceeding $1 million were documented and became accessible and searchable in the NSDI clearinghouse in spring 2003
* An intergovernmental board of directors for GOS (comprising representatives of local, state, tribal, and federal agencies) was formed to help assure collaboration from all government sectors.
In summary, GAO found that movement toward a comprehensive government GIS available to all was underway but incomplete. "Until these challenges are addressed, the goal of a single, coordinated nationwide system of geospatial data will remain out of reach," Koontz told Putnam.
One-Stop, DOI, IGPT set goals
Forman listed a number of goals for GOS in 2003-2004. They include
* Incorporate 1,000 datasets into GeoData.gov, then increase that number by 20 percent each month thereafter
* Tap 10 federal partners to help run the GeoData.gov portal
* Develop 10 geospatial data cost-sharing partnerships between federal, state, and local governments
* Disseminate 5,000 datasets via GeoData.gov during the portal's first quarter of operation (which began June 30), increasing data share by 10 percent each month thereafter
* Develop and deploy standards for 12 critical geospatial data layers
Finally, by the end of September, DOI is to complete a comprehensive review of all federal GIS sites and sources, Forman says. DOI's Cameron emphasized these goals.
"We are essentially compiling 'card catalogs' on both existing federal geo-spatial data holdings and data acquisition budgeted for FY04. We have also received data inventory information from many state governments, and we hope to capture information from local governments," Cameron said.
As of now, 256,000 federal data reports served by a dozen federal clearinghouses are on the GOS site. In the next phase of the project, 79 existing state and local government clearinghouses will be encouraged to make their framework datasets accessible. Cameron said that federal agencies had pledged $1 million in FY04, with three agencies reporting an additional 11 geospatial data projects with an investment pegged at $56 million in data value. Seven teams had been assembled to tackle the standards issue for the frameworks. These included elevation, orthoimagery, government units, hydrography, geodetic code, cadastral, and transportation data such as roads, rail, air transit, and waterways. While in its early stages, GOS "was already making a difference," Cameron said.
Meanwhile, the IGPT team is being assembled. Kalweit told Putnam that her team was building a "National Strategy for Geospatial Preparedness," and working to assure that the plan met the needs of all federal agencies involved in homeland security. In FY04, FEMA will be providing funds for an emergency management needs assessment for geospatial information technologies. Kalweit pledged that IGPT would also work with NSGIC and STIA "to leverage partnerships, knowledge, and expertise in those organizations' activities."
But all of these efforts needed additional support. "Efforts in the geospatial community alone are not enough to sustain a national geographic information capacity," she noted. "The users of geographic data and systems drive the demand for those of us responsible to acquire and maintain the data and systems ... in the end, it is the business practitioners and their dependence upon spatially enabled business practices that will make our vision a reality."
Continuing congressional oversight
Putnam pledged that his hearing would be the beginning of watchdog activities by Congress on both the portal and other efforts at coordination and standard setting.
"It is important that taxpayers and those of us involved in deciding how to spend their hard-earned money understand the return on the investments being made: how we are using geospatial information to solve everyday problems, how we plan to better utilize geospatial data, and how we plan to coordinate and share data across all levels of government to improve the quality of life for all citizens," Putnam said.
Congress, Putnam suggested, needs to understand what programs exist across the federal government, how much is being spent on programs, where the spending is occurring, how efficiently the government shares geospatial data, how government agencies separate security-sensitive geospatial data from that which is available for public use, and how the federal efforts match up with state and local concerns.
"The use of common data standards and an organizational and management structure to coordinate those investments is more essential than ever," Putnam said. "It can serve to reduce redundant expenditures, provide the most up-to-date information available, and improve utilization and availability of accurate data for public and private users." "We have a long way to go (in Congress)," Putnam told Geospatial Solutions. "But we have made a good start."
Glossary
DOI: Department of the Interior
FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency
FGDC: Federal Geographic Data Committee
FY: Fiscal year
GAO: General Accounting Office
GOS: Geospatial One-Stop
IGPT: Interagency Geospatial Preparedness Team
MAPPS: Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors
NSDI: National Spatial Data Infrastructure
NSGIC: National States Geographic Information Council
OGC: Open GIS Consortium
OMB: Office of Management and Budget
STIA: Spatial Technology Industries Association
RELATED ARTICLE: Components of NSDI
According to GAO, NSDI is a structure of practices and relationships among data producers and users that facilitates geospatial data sharing and use throughout government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and academia.
NSDI includes a geospatial data clearinghouse (www.fgdc.gov/clearinghouse /clearinghouse.html). This decentralized system of Internet servers contains field-level descriptions of available digital geospatial data as well as metadata. The clearinghouse allows individual agencies, consortia, and geographically defined communities to coordinate and promote the use of their available geospatial data.
Helping to address the institutional and financial barriers to development of NSDI are I-Teams (www.fgdc.gov/i-teams/ iteams/network.html). There are now 49 of these primarily state-based teams. These voluntary bodies of leaders representing all sectors of the geospatial community meet in open forums to plan, steward, and implement the production, maintenance, and exchange of community information resources.
Cooperative Agreements Program Funds provide seed money to engage organizations in building NSDI through metadata implementation, training, and outreach, and clearinghouse implementation of OpenGIS web services.
Geospatial One-Stop promotes coor-dination and alignment of geospatial data collection and maintenance among all levels of government. It is also responsible for GeoData.gov, the Internet portal for seamless access to federal geospatial information. The initiative also promotes geospatial standards and data models.
RELATED ARTICLE: Two clicks at one stop.
In just two mouse clicks, users of GeoData.gov (www.geodata.gov) can review spatial content provided by government and the private sector, and data searches that might have taken weeks in the past can now be accomplished in minutes. That's the contention of Hank Garie, executive director for GOS at DOI.
The long-anticipated Web portal is the centerpiece of the GOS project, one of 24 e-government initiatives aimed at making government more responsive and cost effective. Specifically, GOS's mandate was to make access to spatial information from multiple sources faster and less expensive for all levels of government as well as the public. The portal helps to meet this mandate by enabling one-stop access to federal, state, and local geographic data. Further, many expect the portal to accelerate the realization of NSDI.
Rolled out on June 30, GeoData.gov is a gateway to existing local, state, and federal data and users, providing details about planned data development activities; Web mapping services; information about standards; and tips about geospatial best practices. The site is built on ESRI's portal development work for the Bureau of Land Management's National Integrated Land System project (GeoCommunicator Portal), and its own Geography Network.
To ensure interoperability with virtually any GIS dataset or service, the portal uses commercial off-the-shelf software and open standards, with particular attention paid to both Web services standards and emerging GIS standards from OGC, the International Organization for Standardization, and FGDC. The site supports 15 data viewing products from a variety of software companies. Portal visitors may
* Search the GOS network for image and feature Web services, images, geographic datasets, and clearinghouses
* Register for notification when new or updated data, maps, references, and so forth are added in a favorite search area
* View metadata to determine if a product is suitable for intended use
* Access and view available geographic data directly through the portal
* Download large datasets through feature streaming or FTP services
* Publish (register) map services images, geographic datasets, geoservices, geographic and land reference material, and geographic activities or events through submission of online provider forms within the portal.--Scottie Barnes
RELATED ARTICLE: Timeline of Federal Geospatial Efforts
1953
A-16 circular issued to encourage coordinated mapping and surveying efforts
1967
A-16 revised to outline the responsibilities of Interior, Commerce, and State Departments
1990
Executive Order 12906 establishes NSDI.
1997
NSDI strategy published.
2002
* A-16 revised to reflect changes in GIS, and to clearly define agency and FGDC responsibilities.
* E-Govt Act of 2002 enacted.
* Geospatial One-Stop initiated
* GeoCommunicator launched
2003
GeoData. gov Internet portal goes live
Source: GAO
Frank Sietzen, Jr. is a technology journalist based in Washington, D.C. and can be reached at sietzen@erols.com. The Capitol Outlook column features analysis and commentary about federal policy issues affecting the geospatial community.
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