As part of its mission to enhance the quality of local government through professional management and to support and assist local government managers, the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) took a number of steps during 1998 to promote interest and knowledge of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure among its members:
- Staff requested and was granted representation on the Coordinating Group of the Federal Geographic Data Committee. Eric Anderson, city manager of Des Moines, Iowa, and member of the NAPA panel that released the report Geographic Information for the 21st Century: Building a Strategy for the Nation in January 1998, is ICMA's member representative.
- The ICMA member newsletter published an article describing the organization's participation in FGDC activities.
- InfoTech Report, ICMA's monthly newsletter on information technology, published a series of articles on building an enterprise GIS and included information about the FGDC Clearinghouse. The series was subsequently republished as an IQ Report to be sent to approximately 900 local governments.
- ICMA in conjunction with one of its Corporate Partners, the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), held a focus group at its Annual Conference identifying ways for leveraging GIS as a communication and decision-making tool for local governments. As a follow-up to the focus group, ICMA is currently exploring possible pilot project(s) with its members. The pilot(s) will serve as a mechanism to develop easy-to-use and enhanced GIS applications for improved decision-making at the local level.
- ICMA staff provided materials and answered questions about local government use of GIS in response to requests from FGDC staff. Staff also attended the 1998 URISA conference and met with potential collaborators to explore methods of bringing more information about effective and efficient use of GIS to local government managers.