News from NGAC meeting on USA and China SDI

18 December 2009, 10:43am

BSI president, Dennis Klein, attended the last National GeoSpatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) meeting in Washington, DC, on 1-2 December, preparing this recap of the highlights.

Collaboration Directly with Obama's White House Team.

The meeting kicked off with presentation from two top guys from Obama's White House. First, Derek Douglas, Special Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs talked about ambitious plans to hook up geospatial technology to national policy to better identify priorities, allocate resources and account for results. This was followed by Xavier de Souza Briggs of Office of Management and Budget who talked dollars and cents on how to make this happen. Both took on a broad round of questions, comments (accusations) from many of the 30 FGDC selected NGAC members. Yes. This is working. FGDC sets up outreach and that is exactly what was going on in this most productive exchange that sent both of these gentlemen back to the White House (one would hope) with a much enhanced sense of how to leverage industry's needs and aspirations to make National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), one of Clinton's Presidential Decrees, a reality.

The National Parcel Layer is on Fire.

Nearly every presentation mentioned, promoted and/or voiced frustration on the lack of an accessible National Parcel Layer. Though the National Research Council's report, Land Parcel Databases: A National Vision provides a fine blueprint, there is no federally sponsored national parcel boundary layer program in sight. However, on an up note, Larry Sugarbaker, USGS National Map Strategic Advisor, made it clear that the Geospatial Information Office has a firm grasp of the issues to be resolved to expedite getting this job done.

Economic Recovery Subcommittee gave a report on why geo has missed the boat so far in getting its share of federal funds and what to do about it. Quite briefly, this includes:

- Establish more authorized programs to which Congress can Attach funding.
- Establish better metrics for measuring need and tracking results.
- Focus on Solutions that require data rather than data alone. There are no "data champions" in the Congress.

China/NSDI

Jack Dangermond, Pesident of ESRI, presented China's progress in implementing their national map. What a revelation! One can keep turning NGAC on all sides looking for "policy" to start emerging, but Jack's comparison of China and US NSDI efforts perhaps communicates NGAC's true mission the best so far. China has centralized amazing massive geo infrastructure in Beijing and is streaming it out over the internet to every province and village. Meanwhile, America's confidence to trust its citizens throughout the nation to make decisions that advance all or some at the expense of none has spawned top notch, self-sustaining geo sponsored at every level, right down to the smallest neighborhood. The bad news is that the fed has wound up, in comparison, a geo backwater, with ridiculously thin national offerings. China concentrates; America disseminates. Close, but no cigar until what has to be done at the center is in place to make the nation's decision support model complete.

NGAC and its management team looked better than ever at this meeting to lead the way to that day.

Geo: International