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A Clear Vision of the NSDI

Apr 1, 2004 Geospatial Solutions

By: Barbara J. Ryan, Mark L. DeMulder, Ivan DeLoatch, Hank Garie, Karen Siderelis

Our nation has the unprecedented opportunity to implement a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) -- a physical, organizational, and virtual network designed to enable the development and sharing of this nation's digital geographic information resources. The NSDI can serve as the steward for a national geographic information strategy that includes a distributed network of technology, cross-organizational partnerships, and the processes and standards needed to facilitate data sharing. It can also provide access to digital geospatial information that enables decision support at all levels of government.

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), Geospatial One-Stop (GOS), and The National Map are three national geospatial initiatives that share the goal of building the NSDI. They also share at least one common problem. The geospatial community, especially outside of the federal network, is confused about the interrelationships among these three programs and concerned about the perceived duplication of effort among their activities.

As the senior leaders of these programs, the authors met for a summit in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 17-18, 2003. The summit was graciously sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration' s Coastal Services Center. Its intent was threefold:

  • To agree on and communicate program boundaries that will make our activities clearer to the broad geospatial data community
  • To realign our activities and identify and eliminate, if necessary, any duplication of effort
  • To exploit each program' s strengths and address potential weaknesses by rigorously coordinating activities among the three programs.

Revisiting Our Roles. Early in the summit, the three participating organizations agreed that the principal tenets of the NSDI, as identified a decade ago, are sound. Each program plays an important and distinctive role in helping the community at-large achieve the reality of the NSDI.

The NSDI is a work in progress and its complete implementation will require the participation of numerous federal, state, county, and local government contributing organizations. Federal agencies play a critical role in

  • Providing leadership
  • Promoting best practices and standards to ensure consistency of data
  • Fostering meaningful partnerships with state and local governments as well as the private and non-profit sectors.
Figure 1 Organizations and stakeholders in the NSDI
Figure 1 Organizations and stakeholders in the NSDI

Figure 1 shows a simple conceptual model of the NSDI, in which organizations that serve as stewards of diverse geospatial data are linked together in a distributed, virtual network that allows information sharing to support decision-making.

The following sections describe the specific programmatic roles the three summit participants will play.

Figure 2 FGDC's organizational structure
Figure 2 FGDC's organizational structure

FGDC Ties It Together

FGDC has ongoing responsibility for coordinating geospatial activities. Its primary focus is on spatial data standards, policies, clearinghouse technology, education, and outreach (see Figure 2). The FGDC has grown into a 19-member interagency committee comprising representatives from the Executive Office of the President, cabinet-level offices, and independent agencies. The committee also has involvement from 32 state geographic information councils and 9 nonfederal organizations representing broad sector interests.

Since its inception, FGDC has worked to implement the six basic building blocks, or common elements, of the NSDI: metadata, clearinghouse, standards, framework, geospatial data, and partnerships. Each of these components serves as a cornerstone in establishing consistency and structure when it comes to documenting spatial data for everyday applications, as well as in building a distributed network of producers and users that facilitate data sharing.

Figure 3 The role of Geospatial One-Stop
Figure 3 The role of Geospatial One-Stop

Geospatial One-Stop: Portal for Discovery

GOS is a Presidential Management Council initiative -- one of the 24 e-government priorities that the Office of Management and Budget oversees. This initiative makes it easier, faster, and less expensive for all levels of government and citizens to access geospatial information. GOS brings high-level visibility to the importance of geospatial information (see Figure 3). From a policy perspective, it adds three unique benefits to the implementation of the NSDI. These include raising the visibility of the strategic value of geographic information, increasing federal accountability for geospatial data stewardship, and establishing a collaborative model for an intergovernmental initiative. The priority status of the initiative also brings a sense of urgency to aggressive implementation. From a program perspective, GOS implements the basic elements of the NSDI by providing an Internet portal (www.geodata.gov) to facilitate data sharing in favor of decision support and by encouraging partnerships across organizations.

The National Map Forms the Base

The National Map provides integrated base geographic data in partnership with content producers at all levels. As a synthesizer of current, integrated, and accurate geospatial information, The National Map provides sufficient consistency to meet applications needs across federal, state, and regional jurisdictional levels. Users will find trusted content for base mapping operations, including orthoimagery (from Landsat and other high-resolution sensors), elevation, hydrography, boundaries, land cover, geographic names, transportation, and structures (buildings and select critical infrastructure). Users will also find they can share and contribute to all of this content. Since 2002, initial implementations have focused on locations where partnership opportunities have been strongest. However, future plans call for broader sharing of data applications. Additionally, in the relatively near future, the U.S. Geological Survey' s (USGS' s) topographic maps will be generated from this online geospatial data.

Cross-Agency Initiatives

What tangible activities or changes in programs can the community expect to see resulting from this agreement? First and foremost, those at the summit pledged to take a user perspective in evolving the NSDI. Our organizations intend to strive toward making it easier for users to access content and for data partners to participate in each program. For example, GOS and The National Map will employ a shared technology for Web-based interactions so that a user can move seamlessly across the two platforms. In other words, the content from each will be available as though it were being provided from a single activity.

Moreover, as the stewards of the NSDI, we will work together to develop an integrated registration process for data providers. When providers share data with the federal government, they will be asked to register only once. This will involve building on the decade of investment that the community has made in NSDI clearinghouses and metadata. The ability to harvest metadata directly from the clearinghouses is an appealing way to simplify the registration process for both GOS and The National Map.

One of the most important agreements that resulted from this summit involves focusing on making content provided by The National Map consistent with the type of information one expects to obtain from USGS. This includes content that has been depicted on USGS topographic quadrangle maps, other USGS scientific data that have a spatial component (such as the stream gauging network), and geographic applications of those data. This agreement will speed the implementation of The National Map across the landscape. Likewise, GOS would rely on The National Map as the underlying provider of base content for all other GOS-supplied datasets. Some technical developments will be needed to make this a seamless transition for users. In the meantime, no break in service will take place for any data currently being provided.

Figure 4 Benefits of The National Map
Figure 4 Benefits of The National Map
The summit also included discussion about the role of standards in the development of the NSDI and the respective parts each program will play. Both GOS and The National Map are highly dependent on the broad adoption of geospatial data and information processing standards, as is the entire NSDI. Participants agreed that FGDC is the appropriate organization to lead cross-agency geospatial standards. Although GOS has invested time developing framework content standards, the leadership for continued standards activities will move to FGDC. FGDC has pledged to revitalize its efforts in leading a broad range of standards activities. For its part, The National Map will support the standards efforts of FGDC.

Finally, participants at the summit agreed to work together to provide funding incentives for partner organizations working on the NSDI. This effort will augment the existing Cooperative Agreement Program that FGDC administers. The National Map, GOS, and FGDC will pilot an initiative in fiscal year 2004 to develop a single program announcement with common requirements that can leverage available grant funds. The goal of this initiative is to ensure sustainable participation from other federal, state, and local organizations and to encourage partnerships.

FGDC, GOS, and The National Map leaders acknowledge the concern that has been expressed regarding each program' s boundaries. We commit to focusing on those areas that are core to NSDI success:

  • FGDC -- policy, standards, and advocacy
  • GOS -- discovery and access
  • The National Map -- integrated, certified base mapping content.

Together, FGDC, GOS, and The National Map can spearhead the development of a broader community that is focused on building the NSDI. All three will work with federal, state, local, and tribal governments, the private sector, academia, and the public to keep programs on track and achieve the shared vision of a national spatial data infrastructure.