Imagery For The Nation

IMAGERY FOR THE NATION

THE VISON

The nation will have a sustainable and flexible digital imagery program that meets the needs of local, state, regional, tribal and Federal agencies.

Executive Summary

The Imagery for the Nation (IFTN) initiative aims to provide a sustainable and flexible nation-wide imagery program to meet the needs of government at all levels. IFTN will take advantage of existing programs that acquire imagery for Federal purposes.  These programs include the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and a joint effort between the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to conduct the Urban Area Imagery Partnership (UAIP).  This initiative will integrate these efforts with state, tribal, regional and local government imagery programs to supply a complete, standard, and comprehensive national coverage. Federal guidelines, established in OMB Circular A-16, identify orthoimagery as a data theme of national significance and include it in a list of core sets of digital spatial information that require development, maintenance, and dissemination.

Aerial and satellite imagery has countless applications – from agriculture to civil engineering, from fighting crime to fighting wildfire – at all levels of government. Intergovernmental partnerships to acquire imagery have clear advantages: lower costs, reduced duplication of effort, greater standardization, and more data available to a broad spectrum of government, private, and commercial users.

To improve the coordinated acquisition of imagery and optimize public investment in these data, the Imagery for the Nation (IFTN) initiative was designed by the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), a state-based group, and adopted by the National Digital Orthophoto Program (NDOP), a federal imagery coordination body. The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has acknowledged the need for a coordinated national imagery program and has initiated a project to define the Federal enterprise role in IFTN. Under Federal guidelines established in OMB Circular A-16, Appendix E, imagery is a part of the “Digital Ortho Imagery” theme, for which theme the Department of the Interior (DOI) U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the responsible Federal agency.

PROJECT DESIGN

The FGDC Phase 1 Project is designed to:

Define Federal imagery requirements

– consistent, comprehensive documentation of Federal imagery requirements is being gathered to validate or revise the proposed specifications and cycle times proposed in the IFTN vision; includes Federal requirements for Alaska, Hawaii and territories.

Document Federal imagery expenditures

– the project seeks to provide a clearer understanding of how and where imagery is being acquired across the Federal government in order to maximize efficiency of acquisitions.

Improve Federal imagery acquisition within existing resources and capabilities

– the project is not seeking new funding, instead it is defining efficiencies and an enterprise approach to leverage investments across agencies.

Explore IFTN implementation

– as part of the project, a plan will be developed for meeting a majority of Federal, state and local imagery requirements. The plan will include technical specifications, contracting approaches, data hosting and archiving architecture, partnership strategies and practices, a communication plan, guidance and direction for Federal agencies, and a funding strategy. The plan will be presented to the FGDC Steering Committee for review and as a decision point for further action.

two outcomes:

OUTCOME 1: Rescope existing Federal programs to move towards IFTN goals:

• The USDA National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) is the foundation of the 1- meter program for IFTN. NAIP is being rescoped by USDA and NDOP to reduce its cycle time from 5 to 3 years to achieve 1 meter national coverage. The project is seeking to move from project-based funding for NAIP to institutionalizing prescribed Federal annual contributions at the executive level over 3 years in order to complete national coverage.
• The USGS-National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) Urban Area Imagery Partnership (UAIP) is the foundation of the high-resolution (1’ or better) program for IFTN. The project is seeking to broaden the requirements and planning process to allow for greater coordination and to potentially increase leveraging of funds and the amount of coverage of imagery data that are acquired.

OUTCOME 2: Develop a plan for implementing IFTN

• The plan will define and document Federal imagery requirements and expenditures to determine if the current IFTN vision and specifications meet Federal enterprise needs or if they should be revised.
• A plan will be developed for implementing IFTN across the Federal enterprise in partnership with state and local government, as scoped through the requirements process.
• The IFTN Plan will address Alaska and Hawaii. 

The FGDC Executive Committee has agreed in concept to the following assumptions, upon which the Work Groups will perform their tasks:

• The general assumption is that IFTN data will be available in the public domain, though in some circumstances there may be exceptions.
• IFTN is a Federal program conducted in partnership with State and local government that is intended to leverage resources across all levels of government to address their basic business needs. From the Federal perspective, the intent of IFTN is to address the needs of the Federal enterprise, including all agencies that acquire and/or consume imagery products. Requirements documentation will include all FGDC member- agency needs as defined by available agency documentation, survey response and Work Group findings.
• Work Groups will consider both aerial and satellite solutions to meet Federal requirements as determined in the IFTN Phase 1 project.
• The Phase 1 Project will build upon USDA’s National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and the USGS-NGA Urban Area Imagery Partnership (UAIP) to implement IFTN. Depending on the documented requirements, the 1 meter program will be managed by USDA, and high resolution by USGS. New costs to these agencies associated with acquiring and managing IFTN, hosting and archiving IFTN data, etc. must be factored into the overall IFTN plan via the input of the Work Groups.
• Outcome 1 of the Phase 1 Project is intended to accomplish a few near-term steps to move the existing programs towards IFTN goals while a more comprehensive plan for IFTN is developed as part of Outcome 2.

An IFTN governance body that is approved by the FGDC Steering Committee will be defined in the Phase 1 Project. The governance body will serve as a Federal forum for coordination with state agencies/plans, perform annual program reviews, ensure requirements are being met, and adjust the program as needed. The form and specific functions of the governing body will be determined by the Work Groups as part of the IFTN plan.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

• The NSGIC website www.nsgic.org 
• The FGDC website www.fgdc.gov

The form and specific functions of the governing
Related Information

• FGDC Imagery for the Nation RFI released, 
• Imagery for the Nation Factsheet [PDF 109KB]
• National States Geographic Information Council IFTN Site
• National Digital Orthophoto Programs (NDOP)
• IFTN Record of Decision,  [PDF 99KB] - The FGDC Executive Committee members have unanimously approved a Record of Decision (ROD) documenting agreement on the major elements of the IFTN Phase 1 Plan.  The ROD addresses and establishes the approach on a number of key IFTN management and policy issues.