2004 Annual Report Summary

2

Summary of Responses

50%61% 62%

69%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

A-16s WorkingGroups

Agencies Subcommittee

Responses Received

3

Federal Agencies: Key Facts

Agencies That Have Conducted the Following:

72%61% 61%

55%44%

33%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Strategy tointregrate

geographicinformation into

businessprocesses

Performancemeasures forspatial dataactivities

Contracts/grantsinvolving data

collectioninclude costs forNSDI standards

Metadatapublished on the

NSDIclearinghouse

Registeredclearinghouse

node togeodata.gov for

regularharvesting

Post informationon plannedgeospatial

investments toGOS portal

4

Federal Agencies: Key Facts

Compliance – 94% have spatial data holdings compliant with FGDC Standards.Partnerships – 94% coordinate data and build partnerships for data collection and standards development.

Agencies that Conducted the Following:

89% 89% 89% 89%83%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Ensure that datais not already

available prior tocollection

Geospatial data intheir missionactivities to

provide betterservices

Involved ingeospatial onestop initiative

Enterprisearchitecture thathas/will includegeospatial data

Coordinate dataand build

partnerships fordata collection/

standards

5

Federal Agencies: Areas of Concern

• Subcommittees and Working Groups • Retire groups that served their purpose.• Define clear missions for subcommittees and working.

• Unfunded Mandates • Unfunded spatial data mandates increasing.• Services resources stretched to cope with mandates.

• Metadata • More user-friendly FGDC authoring tool needed for authoring FGDC metadata. •FGDC should promote easy to use tools that develop metadata at the time the data are collected.

6

Subcommittee: Key Statistics

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Percentage

Charter for Collection

Metadata in FGDC Clearinghouse

Data sharing policy in place

Performance Measures

Subcommittees that Contain the Following Elements:

7

Subcommittee: Key Facts

Recommended for Discontinuation: • Base Cartographic Data Subcommittee• Soils Subcommittee • Wetlands Subcommittee

No Response From:Base Cartographic SubcommitteeGround Transportation SubcommitteeInternational Boundaries & Sovereignty SubcommitteeSpatial Water SubcommitteeWetlands Subcommittee

8

Subcommittee: Areas of Concern

• Lack of Guidance • Lack of overall guidance has resulted in inconsistencies and variance for standards.

• No definition for compliance standards.• Geospatial One-Stop themes vary widely in the level of detail within each standard.

• Duplication of Effort Between framework, clearinghouse/portal efforts

We also have duplicate standards (e.g., FGDC metadata standard and the Geospatial One-Stop Standard which are not the same)

9

Subcommittee: Areas of Concern

• Definitions Needed • Inconsistent use of terminology for framework and framework data

• Coordination Needed Between Subcommittees • Coordination will be essential with other FGDC entities, e.g., Wetlands, Earth Cover, and Forest Sustainability Data. • What mechanism exists to ensure compatibility among standards promulgated by these entities relative to vegetation?

10

Subcommittee: Lessons Learned

• Financial Incentives • There should be financial incentives to implement standards.• …Especially in cases where data already exists.

• Standards• We need to focus our efforts on testing and implementing existing standards.• All standards should be tested and proven before they are finalized and recommended for ANSI status. Not enough emphasis has been put on testing, maintenance and implementation from FGDC and Geospatial One Stop.

• Base Funding • Funding has been inadequate to meet demands for these products within and outside the Federal government. • Funding is only through special projects and has not developed the collaboration needed.

11

Working Groups: Key Facts

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Percentage

Have a currentplan or charter

Have performancemeasures

Working Groups that:

12

Working Groups: Key Facts

Recommended for Discontinuation: • Earth Cover Working Group•Tribal Working Group

No Response From: • Clearinghouse Working Group (the questions did not apply to the working group’s activities)• Earth Cover Working Group• Facilities Working Group• Sustainable Forest Working Group •Tribal Working Group

13

Working Groups: Lessons Learned

• Security concerns – Homeland Security• There is a need to safeguard some information and processes. • Challenge: Different views regarding what is sensitive and contradictions between the need to restrict access to information and to provide broad participation in processes and data development and sharing.

• Tabular/statistical databases/tables, with geospatial attributes or referencing, are not held to Circular A-16 metadata requirements.

• “Stove-pipes” are an obstacle to providing training to the statistical data community within agencies where GIS applications operate apart from statistical research applications.

• Standards development takes time • ISO directives recommend three years between approval of a project proposal and final approval and publication of a standard. • The need to reiterate steps in standards process often lengthens the time for standards development.

14

A-16 Leads: Key Facts

82% 84% 86% 88% 90% 92% 94% 96% 98% 100%

Percentage

Data Sharing Policy

Metadata in NSDI clearinghouse

Performance Measures

Current Plan/ Charter

A-16 Leads With:

15

A-16: Areas of Concern

Enterprise business model • Needed: A fully-implemented multi-agency enterprise business model for data collection, data integration, data archive and data access.

Best Practices • Lead agencies should share their best practices to provide baseline information for levels of effort, resource requirements, costs, etc. Sharing this information will ensure a better, more cost effective result for the group.

16

A-16: Lessons Learned

Funding Strategies • Government should pursue long-term funding strategies that more effectively develop, preserve, and host geospatial data for the benefit of many agencies and programs.

• Partnerships are needed to accelerate the development and updating of the wetlands and riparian layers of the NSDI.

•Collaborative long-term strategies are needed to effectively fund hosting and maintain large multi-terabyte datasets