1. National Map Overview Keith Grochow, NICTA
(Initiative of Commonwealth Department of Communications, NICTA and Geoscience Australia)

2. The Problem Main Driver Current State Goal
The Australian government must make data open by default.
Current State
Most gov’t entities (~all) have very little experience in how to do this in a usable, reliable way.
Larger organizations (Fed/State) usually have an existing content management system.
Smaller ones have nothing or, if a motivated soul exists, they have an open source solution like GeoServer.
The viewing solutions are limited (2D) or expensive (GE).
Goal
They are searching for cheaper solutions that are compelling, flexible, open, and leverable across various gov’t environments.

3. The National Map Project
Initiative of Department of Communications to:
Provide easy access to authoritative and other spatial data to government, business and public
Facilitate the opening of data by federal, state and local government bodies
Provide an open framework of geospatial data services that supports commercial and community innovation
More data services available
More users using data services

4. Vision: An open national map
C/wealth govt agency authoritative data services
Map imagery
Tile map server
State govt authoritative data services
GA data
ABS data …
BoM data
Elevation data …
WA data
QLD data
State data …
Map browser code and data mgmt
Terrain server
Govt open data directory
Internet
Other data and services
Data.gov.au
Value-add commercial and community services (analytics, visualisations, mashups)
Tablet
Web browser

5. System design goals: open national map
Open data
Direct service from open data repositories (like data.gov.au and similar state ones)
Easy access to actual data sets from NM UI (not just visualisation)
Open protocols and data formats
Supports OGC protocols (WMS, WFS), GeoJSON, KML, CSV, etc
All data services can be accessed outside National Map as well as inside it
Open source
Open source front-end; back-end data services can use open source
Vendor neutral at back end (government agency)
ESRI’s ArcGIS, Google Maps Engine, open source software (eg Geoserver)
Vendor neutral at front end (browser)
Work with any modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, IE9 and later, iPads, etc)
Direct access from data custodian
Live data service direct from government agency (or delegate)
Authoritative data services
Eg Administrative boundaries, place names
Multi-jurisdiction
Commonwealth, states, local government
Multi-custodian
Data from many different agencies - GA, ABS, BoM, ATO, Dept of Comms, state agencies
Platform for commercial, community and agency innovation
Interfaces to support value-add services (eg analytics, visualisation, sharing, printing)

6. Architecture: In-browser
National Map User Interface
NICTA is developing
these
Connects to services:
OGC, ESRI, GME
Data loading:
URL, Drag and drop
Data formats:
KML, CSV, GeoJSON, etc
Geospatial Data Manager
(Selecting and loading data sets and services)
Existing open source software
Cesium (open source 3D map display)
Leaflet (open source 2D map display)
Browser (eg Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari) on desktop and mobile
HTML5 Canvas support
WebGL support

8. Integration with CKAN (eg data.gov.au)

9. Demo

10. Results Proof of concept delivery – mid-July
Small team – 1-2 dev, 1 ui
3 months kickoff to delivery
Successful release at national GovHack
11,500+ unique visitors to date
4+ minutes average session
Signed up for 6 month project to create production Australian National Map
Refactor – csv/wfs/wcs datasource, leaflet vis
Implement unique, compelling features – smart regions
Bring in more gov’ts – especially state gov’ts
Check out nationalmap.nicta.com.au

11. End

12. Currently available data services
All now available from their custodian and in National Map
Land (Geoscience Australia)
Gravity, land cover, magnetic image, surface geology, hillshade
Water (Bureau of Meteorology’s Geofabric)
Water bodies, streams and rivers, catchments, estuaries, boreholes, waterholes, river regions, drainage divisions, aquifer contours, water table aquifers
Infrastructure (Geoscience Australia’s Geotopo 250k)
Roads, railroads, airports, ferry routes, pipelines, power lines
Boundaries (Australian Bureau of Statistics)
States and territories, local government areas, postal areas, commonwealth electoral divisions, state electoral divisions, state suburbs, natural resource management regions, Australian drainage divisions, tourism regions, statistical boundaries
Population (Geoscience Australia)
Cities
Populated places
Other data sets and services via data.gov.au
More coming!