Action 1: If Alison (adishman@fgdc.gov) does not hear from you by February 1, she will assume your agency approves the 50 States Action Plan. Please send any comments to Alison.
Action 2: If Alison (adishman@fgdc.gov) does not hear from you by February 1, she will assume your agency approves the Future Directions Strategic Communications Action Plan. Please send any comments to Alison.
Action 3: Please consider partnering in the FY05 Cooperative Agreement Program to leverage funds and possibly expand the categories. Please contact David Painter by February 4 (dpainter@fgdc.gov).
Action 4: Donna Scholz will arrange a meeting to discuss how agencies will be credited for in kind contributions to GOS.
Action 5: Please send Donna your signed Interagency Agreement for GOS partnering (dscholz@usgs.gov).
Action 6: Please email your annual report to Alison if you have not already done so (adishman@fgdc.gov).
Action 7: Please email David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) with success stories or article ideas for the upcoming FGDC newsletter by Jan 28.
Host: Donald Draper Cambell, FCCAlan Stevens, FGDC
Alison Dishman, FGDC
Milo Robinson, FGDC
Chuck Croner, CDC/HHS
Anne O'Connor, Census
Betty O'Connor, GSA PBS
John Clark, GSA
Hank Garie, NGPO/CTM
Brenda Smith, EPA
Marge Cole, NASA/GST
Wendy Blake Coleman, EPA
Wendy Francis, URISA
Rob Dollison, GOS/FGDC
Donna Scholz, GOS/FGDC
Bill Burgess, NSGIC
Zsolt Nagy, NSGIC
Billy Tolar, National Atlas
Kevin Neimond, NACo
Patrick Easton, DISDI
Tony LaVoi, NOAA
Ed McLaughlin, ESRI
Leslie Wollack, GOS
Brett Abrams, NARA
Rhonda Getters, IONIC
Eddie Pickle, IONIC
Scott McAfee, FEMA/DHS
Tricia Gibbons, LEAD Alliance
Randy Fusaro, Census
Bonnie Gallahan, FGDC
Sam Bacharach, OGC
Ed Wells, URISA/DC
Nancy Doyle, NOAA/NOS
Martha Lomard, URISA
Carolyn Austin Diggs, Treasury
Chris Clarke, NRCS
On the Phone:
Nancy Blyler, USACE
Barb White, FWS
Future Directions Update - Milo Robinson, FGDC
Milo stated that all of the action teams were making progress, although the Urban Areas Team was slow to get started. The next team reports are due January 28 and the team lead quarterly reports are due at the end of the week.
The Governance team has been very active and has planned outreach efforts to industry and other sectors - the first will take place at the OGC Conference on January 17 and then with the USGIF on January 19.
The approval process for the action plans will be: FGDC Staff Director review, then going out two weeks in advance to the FGDC Coordination Group for their review, then approval by the Coordination Group and endorsement by the Steering Committee through electronic ballot. The action plans can be appendices in the report that goes to the Steering Committee.
[PowerPoint 120KB]
Future Directions 50 States Action Plan Discussion - Bill Burgess, NSGIC
The Fifty States Team completed their action plan.
The Action Plan identifies characteristics of effective statewide coordination and coordinating bodies and outlines steps that can be taken to implement the initiative. "Statewide" includes Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Territories. The proposed strategy further defines NSGIC's 9 coordination criteria, calling for: full time coordinator, defined authority, formal relationship with state CIO, Political Champion, etc. The newly defined council characteristics include broad representation, business and marketing plan, formal authorization, and funding support for staff, contractor support and PR materials. The FGDC can encourage States to hire GIS coordinators by implementing uniform grant guidance and conditions and providing access to grant programs for only those states with Cooperator Agreements. We need to provide incentives for the States to get their plan together through discretionary grants.
Q: Circular A-16 says something about expending funds only if following standards, correct?
A: Yes, we could come up with something to give it more teeth - to encourage States to follow standards.
Suggestion: You could have two types of grants: competitive grants and State grants. We can condition the competitive grants, so that States can't apply unless they have a coordinating council.
Comment: Grants.gov will only add a geospatial search if OMB forces them to. Right now they only have a keyword search - so you can't do a blanket search for "geospatial" grants.
Q: Maybe it's better to seed something regionally to make it more cost effective?
A: We don't have uniform Federal regions, so we would have trouble breaking up the counties. It would be too difficult to do it that way.
Comment: You could break the country up by characteristics, if not region.
Comment: The CIO Council has found that it is most efficient to work at the State level (more so than the regional level).
Comment: It may be more cost effective to deal with 7 NSGIC offices that deal with the State offices rather than 50 States. There are high costs associated with this and we don't want to self defeat.
Alan Stevens commended Bill Burgess's group on all of their hard work on this action plan.
Action 1: If Alison (adishman@fgdc.gov) does not hear from you by February 1, she will assume your agency approves the 50 States Action Plan. Please send any comments to Alison.
[PowerPoint 448KB] [Handout PDF 116KB]
Future Directions Communications Action Plan - Leslie Wollack, FGDC/GOS
The Strategic Communications Action Plan focuses on the benefits of collaboration - and includes all sectors of the geospatial industry.
The key goal is to communicate and support geospatial activities and encourage participation in FGDC, GOS, and TNM activities. Leslie stated that the Communications activity would like to coordinate with each of the FGDC member agencies' communications offices to communicate the benefit of the NSDI to OMB, Congress, and those within your agency.
Theme Message: We all have a leadership role to play in building the spatial data infrastructure for the nation - the NSDI.
The Communications Action Team would like your help in identifying and defining those roles, responsibilities and relationships. There is a question as to whether we should create a communications subcommittee or working group to guide implementation of this plan.
Comment: FGDC has been criticized for not bringing everyone to the table. Have we thought about the approach of electronic communication with other organizations across the country - like we did at the Multi-Sector Crisis Center where we met early this summer? GAO has criticized us for our meetings not representing all sectors of the geospatial community.
Suggestion: Make sure we include the private sector because interoperability depends 99% on the private sector.
Comment: We need to communicate a message on what the Federal agencies are doing and this message changes every year. We need to clarify for those outside the Federal government what the Federal agencies do and how they coordinate.
Comment: Magazine articles are a great way to convey information. The article "A Clear Vision of the NSDI" in Geospatial Solutions was very effective. http://www.geospatial-online.com/geospatialsolutions/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=89953
Comment: Maybe we could develop an annual report from FGDC member agencies and the States to Congress to demonstrate our successes - as a Federal and State report card to measure progress.
Action 2: If Alison (adishman@fgdc.gov) does not hear from you by February 1, she will assume your agency approves the Future Directions The Strategic Communications Action Plan. Please send any comments to Alison.
[PowerPoint 88KB]
FY2005 Cooperative Agreements - Hank Garie, NGPO and David Painter, FGDC
Please consider how your agency can best contribute and participate in the FY05 Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP). The goal of the FY05 CAP Program is to serve as a magnet to attract other agency resources and serve as incentive to NSDI partners. This year TNM and FGDC are pooling $1.5 million for the CAP. The proposed focus areas are: partnership incentives (agreements for data stewardship and strategic plan development); making Framework real (implementing web services and encouraging implementation of Framework standards); and education and outreach (NSDI training and curriculum development). The CAP program is shifting from its focus on metadata to focus on other activities.
The CAP announcement draft will be complete by January 28. The CAP will be open for 60 days (available at grants.gov) and then applications will be reviewed in May, with the awards announced in June. The CAP kick-off meeting will be in June or July.
Comment: The announcement should support a payoff - enabling webservices to solve a particular problem. For example: land use planning to solve a problem, not just for the sake sharing data.
Comment: This could be a way to get the States to develop a strategic plan.
Comment: The CAP program can require a deliverable in exchange for the money (it is different than a grant program).
In May David Painter will send a request to the Coordination Group members for help reviewing the proposals.
Action 3: Please consider partnering in the FY05 Cooperative Agreement Program to leverage funds and possibly expand the categories. Please contact David Painter by February 4 (dpainter@fgdc.gov).
[PowerPoint 157KB]
Status of GOS Version 2 Portal Procurement - Donna Scholz, GOS
The contract for Version 2 (V2) of the GOS Portal will be awarded on January 15 and V2 will be deployed on April 15. The new features will include: intuitive interface; greater OGC interoperability; true Web Feature Service (WFS) support; 5-second or faster response to queries; and more extensive performance statistics. Donna Scholz will send the Coordination Group an email when she is able to announce who was awarded the contract.
GOS FY05-06 Budget Overview - Donna Scholz, GOS
The FY05 GOS Budget is the same as FY04 ($1.9 million). The FY06 budget will be $3.4 million and will include grants to states and local governments, pilots among Feds, and paid FTE support for GOS.
Comment: There is discontent with the way FTEs are being accounted for. It doesn't seem right that a Channel Steward only counts as 1/2 FTE. GOS might want to tweak this to give the agencies more credit.
Action 4: Donna Scholz will arrange a meeting to discuss how agencies will be credited for in kind contributions to GOS.
Action 5: Please send Donna your signed Interagency Agreement for GOS partnering (dscholz@usgs.gov).
Comment: Last March Donna held a needs assessment meeting. There is a need for an ongoing process like that - maybe as an FGDC subcommittee that meets every six months.
[PowerPoint 136KB]
FY04 Annual Reports - Alison Dishman, FGDC
We are very thankful for the agencies that have sent in their annual reports. Alison is still missing annual reports from nine agencies (due December 17, 2004).
Action 6: Please email your annual report to Alison if you have not already done so (adishman@fgdc.gov).
Upcoming FGDC Newsletter - David Painter
Action 7: Please email David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) with success stories or article ideas for the upcoming FGDC newsletter by Jan 28.
Next Coordination Group meeting:
February 8, 2005
Hosted by: Monica DeAngelo, FERC