A-16 Stakeholders Roles and Responsibilities Table

Purpose of Roles and Responsibilities Framework

This section of the guidance defines the roles and responsibilities of Federal agencies and organizations and defines their relationships with the stakeholder community  as they implement OMB Circular A–16.  Consistent implementation of OMB Circular A-16 will help ensure that the Nation has a rich collection of themes and associated datasets in place and that this information is accessible to Federal agencies and their stakeholders to support business needs and business requirements.

The successful management of the Federal portfolio of OMB Circular A–16 data themes as listed in Circular A-16 Appendix E and associated datasets and requires the coordination of a wide variety of organizations, each of which has specific roles to fulfill.  All the entities and individuals both lead and support responsibilities to ensure the successful maintenance and improvement of each theme and associated datasets.  Some of these roles and responsibilities involve management across themes that allows for maximizing potential return on investment as well as identifying and reducing any overlap that currently exists.  The OMB and OMB Circular A–16 promote geospatial data portfolio management to Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) efforts through the Geospatial Line of Business (Geospatial LoB), the Chief Information Officers Council (CIOC), the Architecture Information Committee (AIC) of the CIOC, and agency-specific data architectures.  Additionally, OMB and OMB Circular A–16 help measure performance and inform budget dialogues related to NSDI activities.

Implementing this framework will help—

• Facilitate proactive execution of business and implementation strategies for each OMB Circular A–16 theme and associated datasets
• Help each lead agency for themes identify, develop, quantify, allocate, and sustain the resources necessary to develop its respective themes and datasets
• Enable a range of key people to be involved in every part of the portfolio management process
• Ensure that the people involved in making management decisions about OMB Circular A–16 themes and associated datasets meet OMB Circular A–16 goals, FGDC goals, and user requirements

Implementation of the Roles and Responsibilities Framework

Detailed descriptions and typical tasks for each organization involved in OMB Circular A–16 portfolio management are listed in the A-16 Stakeholders Roles and Responsibilities Table.  These roles are intended to reflect the types of activities needed for geospatial portfolio management; the role descriptions are not meant to suggest that organizations cannot perform multiple functions in the management process.  It is important to note that these roles are generic, particularly in the cases of the lead agency <lexicon> and stakeholders.  Agencies will customize geospatial data portfolio management approaches for specific themes and associated datasets within the prescribed framework to meet the needs of the specific theme community.  To accommodate the planning needs and planning horizons of agencies, FGDC agency Theme Leads <lexicon> or, by extension, National A–16 Dataset Managers <lexicon>  shall submit an implementation plan for roles and responsibilities to the chair of the FGDC Coordination Group.  The agency plan shall indicate which roles will be operational by what time period and will become a part of annual reporting as required under OMB Circular A–16.  All agencies are encouraged to make these roles and responsibilities operational as soon as practical, especially for those agencies that have theme leadership responsibilities.

Graphic Depicting A–16 Data Production and Management Relationships

The figure below shows the relationship among the major organizations that are A–16 theme stakeholders in both the Federal and non-Federal communities.  It also depicts the relationship of these entities to the FGDC and the OMB.  FGDC Representation and Theme Lead Responsibility Table maps Federal agencies and bureaus to FGDC groups, subcommittees, and working groups and identifies the theme lead agencies and bureaus listed in OMB Circular A–16, appendix E. 

A–16 Production and management relationships