2010 NSDI CAP is Closed for Proposal Submissions

Applications are no longer being accepted for the 2010 National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP).  The closing date was January 7, 2010.  The awards for this year's program will be made in February.  A total of over $1.3 million has been made available to fund up to 31 innovative projects spread across seven geospatial data categories, which are summarized below.  Each project will focus on ways to build new and improve existing geospatial data infrastructure necessary to effectively discover, access, share, manage and use digital geographic data.

Summary of 2010 Award Categories

Category 1: Metadata Trainer and Outreach Assistance provides support to organizations with NSDI knowledge and experience to assist others in geospatial metadata implementation. Implementation projects may include the development of training materials in coordination with the NSDI Training Program and/or training delivery via workshops, presentation, or online applications with an outreach component which includes but not require a presentation at a local, regional, or national conference.  Outreach specific projects include the development/enhancement of informative, collaborative or promotional websites, networks, documents, applications. Special consideration will be given those projects that target managers and non-traditional geospatial communities and those that utilize social bookmarking, wiki’s, and other Web 2.0 innovations.  This category will award up to 4 cooperative agreements of up to $25,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Sharon Shin, sharon_shin@fgdc.gov.

Category 2: Framework Data Exchange through Automated Geo-Synchronization
A synchronization service is required to coordinate the publishing, availability, and access to Framework data content among local, state, and national data partners. The objective of this category is to promote and facilitate the exchange of standardized framework data between state and national data stores through a synchronization service that uses common data models, services, and addresses the governance challenges required to enable automated data exchange.  A key framework data theme of interest for this category is hydrography, other nationally significant dynamic framework data themes will also be considered. This category will award up to 3 cooperative agreements of up to $50,000 each with the recipient matching 100% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Rob Dollison, rdollison@usgs.gov.

Category 3: Fifty States Initiative: Strategic and Business Plan Development
Projects in the category will develop and implement statewide strategic and business plans that will facilitate the coordination of programs, policies, technologies, and resources that enable the coordination, collection, documentation, discovery, distribution, exchange and maintenance of geospatial information in support of the NSDI and the objectives of the Fifty States Initiative Action Plan.  This category will award up to 5 cooperative agreements of up to $50,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Milo Robinson, mrobinson@fgdc.gov.

Category 4: Fifty States Initiative: Business Plan Development and Implementation
Projects in this category will develop and implement statewide business plans that will facilitate the alignment of federal agencies with statewide geospatial planning activities that advance the NSDI. This category will award up to 9 cooperative agreements of up to $30,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Milo Robinson, mrobinson@fgdc.gov.

Category 5: Return on Investment (ROI) Methodology and Business Case Development for Multi-agency NSDI Projects
Statewide geospatial initiatives generally require the planning and participation of multiple agencies in order to reap the desired benefits, yet representatives of disparate agencies will have varied understanding of financial analysis for projects. This cooperative effort would provide training in ROI methodology to participating agencies, through a series of webinars, a two-day kick-off workshop and follow-up evaluations of project progress, designed to facilitate project decision making based on the development of a detailed business case comprised of costs and benefits to the individual agencies.  Ongoing support would be provided to agencies as they develop their financial analysis, with the business case for the multi-agency project provided as a final report in text and spreadsheet format.  The methodology presented would leverage multi-agency financial analysis methodology previously developed by FGDC in cooperation with Geospatial Information Technology Association (GITA).  The deliverables are an ROI case study describing the project, including the details of collecting metrics to support the financial analysis; completed ROI spreadsheets for individual participating agencies; financial analyses summary, and a multi-agency business case for the project comprised of the rollup from all individual spreadsheets as well as analysis of tangible and strategic benefits of the project.  This category will award up to 2 cooperative agreements of up to $50,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services. Category Lead - Milo Robinson, mrobinson@fgdc.gov.

Category 6: FGDC Standards Development and Implementation Assistance and Outreach will provide funding to organizations to assist in the development of and/or implementation of standards in the FGDC standards program of work other than those for metadata (see Category 1 above) and the U.S. National Grid. This category will consist of a total of four cooperative agreements that can provide support that will assist in advancing a draft standard through the FGDC standards process, implementing an FGDC-endorsed standard, or enhancing adoption of the Geospatial Data Model.

PART 1: The first two cooperative agreements will focus on existing FGDC standards or FGDC standards in development.  In many cases, there are few, if any, materials that can be used to guide others when implementing an FGDC-endorsed standard in their organization.  Without materials that document best practices, provide experienced advice, and new techniques, an implementing organization has a steep learning curve.  These two cooperative agreements can provide materials that provide step-by-step assistance, or at least, a roadmap for implementing FGDC-endorsed standards.  Two cooperative agreements of up to $25,000 each, with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services, will be awarded. Category Lead - Julie Binder Maitra, jmaitra@fgdc.gov.

PART 2: The latter two cooperative agreements will focus on the Geospatial Data Model (GDM).  The GDM was developed to support geospatial interoperability and information sharing among federal, state and local entities. To promote the adoption of the GDM as a standard across the homeland security community this cooperative agreement will allow users to transition their existing model into a GDM conformant data model or use the GDM to implement a standards based model as the basis for sharing data.  Two cooperative agreements of up to $50,000 each, with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services, will be awarded.  Category Lead - GMO@dhs.gov.

Category 7: Demonstration of Geospatial Data Partnerships across Local, State, Tribal, and Federal Government
The vision for the NSDI includes the integration of all levels of government including the processes for local data to feed into State holdings, which then feed into Federal programs such as The National Map.  This category will support the further development and documentation of partnerships and processes to implement this nested approach for one or more data themes of NSDI using The National Map.  This category will award up to 4 cooperative agreements of up to $75,000 each with the recipient matching 50% of the award with funding or in-kind services.  Category Lead - Tracy Fuller, tfuller@usgs.gov.