2004 Annual Report Summary

2 Summary of Responses

3 Federal Agencies: Key Facts

4 Compliance – 94% have spatial data holdings compliant with FGDC Standards. Partnerships – 94% coordinate data and build partnerships for data collection and standards development.

5 Federal Agencies: Areas of Concern Subcommittees and Working Groups Retire groups that served their purpose. Define clear missions for subcommittees and working. Unfunded Mandates Unfunded spatial data mandates increasing. Services resources stretched to cope with mandates. Metadata More user-friendly FGDC authoring tool needed for authoring FGDC metadata. FGDC should promote easy to use tools that develop metadata at the time the data are collected.

6 Subcommittee: Key Statistics

7 Subcommittee: Key Facts Recommended for Discontinuation: Base Cartographic Data Subcommittee Soils Subcommittee Wetlands Subcommittee No Response From: Base Cartographic Subcommittee Ground Transportation Subcommittee International Boundaries & Sovereignty Subcommittee Spatial Water Subcommittee Wetlands Subcommittee

8 Subcommittee: Areas of Concern Lack of Guidance Lack of overall guidance has resulted in inconsistencies and variance for standards. No definition for compliance standards. Geospatial One-Stop themes vary widely in the level of detail within each standard. Duplication of Effort Between framework, clearinghouse/portal efforts We also have duplicate standards (e.g., FGDC metadata standard and the Geospatial One-Stop Standard which are not the same)

9 Subcommittee: Areas of Concern Definitions Needed Inconsistent use of terminology for framework and framework data Coordination Needed Between Subcommittees Coordination will be essential with other FGDC entities, e.g., Wetlands, Earth Cover, and Forest Sustainability Data. What mechanism exists to ensure compatibility among standards promulgated by these entities relative to vegetation?

10 Subcommittee: Lessons Learned Financial Incentives There should be financial incentives to implement standards. …Especially in cases where data already exists. Standards We need to focus our efforts on testing and implementing existing standards. All standards should be tested and proven before they are finalized and recommended for ANSI status. Not enough emphasis has been put on testing, maintenance and implementation from FGDC and Geospatial One Stop. Base Funding Funding has been inadequate to meet demands for these products within and outside the Federal government. Funding is only through special projects and has not developed the collaboration needed.

11 Working Groups: Key Facts

12 Working Groups: Key Facts Recommended for Discontinuation: Earth Cover Working Group Tribal Working Group No Response From: Clearinghouse Working Group (the questions did not apply to the working group’s activities) Earth Cover Working Group Facilities Working Group Sustainable Forest Working Group Tribal Working Group

13 Working Groups: Lessons Learned Security concerns – Homeland Security There is a need to safeguard some information and processes. Challenge: Different views regarding what is sensitive and contradictions between the need to restrict access to information and to provide broad participation in processes and data development and sharing. Tabular/statistical databases/tables, with geospatial attributes or referencing, are not held to Circular A-16 metadata requirements. “Stove-pipes” are an obstacle to providing training to the statistical data community within agencies where GIS applications operate apart from statistical research applications. Standards development takes time ISO directives recommend three years between approval of a project proposal and final approval and publication of a standard. The need to reiterate steps in standards process often lengthens the time for standards development.

14 A-16 Leads: Key Facts

15 A-16: Areas of Concern Enterprise business model Needed: A fully-implemented multi-agency enterprise business model for data collection, data integration, data archive and data access. Best Practices Lead agencies should share their best practices to provide baseline information for levels of effort, resource requirements, costs, etc. Sharing this information will ensure a better, more cost effective result for the group.

16 A-16: Lessons Learned Funding Strategies Government should pursue long-term funding strategies that more effectively develop, preserve, and host geospatial data for the benefit of many agencies and programs. Partnerships are needed to accelerate the development and updating of the wetlands and riparian layers of the NSDI. Collaborative long-term strategies are needed to effectively fund hosting and maintain large multi-terabyte datasets