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 How do geospatial data and the federal government ?fit? with regional stewardship? Kathy Covert, Associate Strategist for the Federal Geographic Data Committee and an ARS member, thinks it?s a no-brainer. Covert and her colleagues believe that regional stewards need accurate, consistent and updated geographic information to enhance decision-making and they are here to help. Following the first law of geography, in which everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things, the FGDC has developed the National Digital Geospatial Framework to provide regionally relevant, nationally consistent, community owned and operated geographic data. A critical aspect of the Framework is the institutional relationships and practices that support the environment of interaction among the users, manager and creators of geographic data.
The FGDC is an interagency coordinating committee of 19 cabinet level agencies formed in 1990 to coordinate geographic information across the federal government. The group is chaired by the Secretary of the Interior. The USGS serves as the secretariat for the FGDC. Ivan DeLoatch is the staff director of the FGDC.
DeLoatch and his colleagues believe that the region is the logical unit of analysis to support the interactive environment required to have geographic data used effectively. They recognize that regional stewards need geographic information to make effective decisions. They also recognize that the available data is often out-of-date and not well integrated within and among regions. Moreover, getting regional geographic data integrated and updated is expensive and time-consuming. The Framework can greatly reduce time, effort and expense in developing and using key geographic data and information by providing reliable and accurate data sets around a common set of geographic data themes.
The Framework represents "data you can trust" -- the best available data for an area, certified, standardized, and described according to a common standard. It provides a foundation on which organizations can build by adding their own detail and compiling other data sets.
The Framework leverages individual geographic data efforts so data can be shared. It provides basic geographic data in a common format and an accessible environment that anyone can use and to which anyone can contribute. In this environment, users can perform cross-jurisdictional and cross-organizational analyses and operations, and organizations can funnel their resources into applications, rather than duplicating data production efforts. All this goes a long way to reducing duplication of efforts among organizations as well as reducing the expense associated with such duplication.
Development of the Framework embodies many of the multi-sector collaborative problem-solving approaches ARS embraces. Bringing together representatives from federal agencies is only one part of the FGDC?s agenda. State, local and regional agencies, the private sector and the academic community are also brought into the mix to develop the data sets; so jurisdictional boundaries are crossed, albeit on a different plane than most ARS members might be used to.
For more information on the Federal Geographic Data Committee, contact Kathy Covert at .
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