Report on Activities, Calendar Year 1998
The group has met several times and has failed to define either its role or its responsibilities. Everyone argues that communication and education are the most important issues facing the FGDC as a whole, but the scope of what that might encompass is enormous, and we feel we have been given little guidance from the secretariat or the coordination group.
At our last meeting, we agreed that each member would identify an emerging program within his or her own agency and we would focus on communicating NSDI ideas to the managers of that emerging program. Our effectiveness this fall has been stymied by two issues: 1) the need for the chairperson to focus on another important communication activity (the framework data survey) and 2) our uncertainty about CFIP and how our activities would relate to that.
At the retreat, the chairperson hopes to obtain more specific guidance from the coordination group and the secretariat leadership regarding appropriate activities in order to renew this group.