Geospatial data identifies the geographic location and characteristics of natural or constructed features and boundaries on the Earth. Although a wealth of geospatial information exists, it is often difficult to locate, access, share, and integrate in a timely and efficient manner. Myriad government organizations collect geospatial data in different formats and standards to serve specific missions. This results in wasteful spending on information assets, and impedes the ability of federal, state, and local government to perform critical intergovernmental operations, such as homeland security.
The Geospatial One-Stop initiative will promote coordination and alignment of geospatial data collection and maintenance among all levels of government. Initiative goals include:
- Developing portal for seamless access to Geospatial information
- Providing standards and models for geospatial data
- Creating an interactive index to geospatial data holdings at federal and non-federal levels
- Encouraging greater coordination among federal, state, and local agencies about existing and planned geospatial data collections
Geospatial One-Stop will accomplish these goals by accelerating the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), which will provide federal, state, and local governments, as well as private citizens, with “one-stop” access to geospatial data. Interoperability tools, which allow different parties to share data, will be used to migrate current geospatial data from all levels of government to the NSDI, following data standards developed and coordinated through the Federal Geographic Data Committee using the standards process of the American National Standards Institute. A comprehensive web portal will then be developed and deployed to provide “one-stop” access to standardized geospatial data.
By making it easier for government officials at all levels to share, coordinate the collection of and gain access to geospatial data, Geospatial One-Stop will help to improve decision making and the delivery of government services. Geospatial One-Stop will also accelerate cost efficiencies while reducing duplication as governments better allocate their data resources. Additionally, data consistency, compatibility, and easy access will stimulate vendor development of geospatial tools and reduce technology risk for geospatial data users. |