Summary of NSDI CAP Feedback

Every NSDI CAP recipient must complete a final technical report for projects that recieve a CAP award. In the report they requested to provide their feedback on the program. Below is a summary of comments related to the strength and benefits of the program. These come from final reports that were submitted between August 19, 2009 and July 31, 2013. The full feedback comments can be found on the final report links within the individual project pages.

• The funding from the CAP Program is targeted at projects (metadata, planning, ROI analysis, etc.) which typically are neglected when government agencies are operating with reduced resources.
• The project provided important collaboration experiences and led to coordination with other states leveraging CAP awards.
• Provides a national forum on establishing best practices, standards, and coordination. The CAP grants are catalysts, providing important seeding to much larger efforts.
• Participation in CAP ensures compliance with FGDC standards rather than striking off on your own.
• The Metadata training program brings to the forefront the discussion of data credibility and the need to keep the Metadata current in order to prove that the data your sharing is accurate and from reliable source.
• The CAP program allows us to conduct metadata training for groups that otherwise would not be served. The Native American GIS community in the southwest is chronically short of training opportunities.  
• The program promotes community building.
• The CAP provided opportunity to try new technologies and approaches.
• The Fifty States Initiative is a coordinated vision with clear a process and goals/objectives and the materials are very accessible.
• The CAP affords a break from routine activities for strategic and business planning that otherwise might not take place.
• The project provided the ability to better understand the GIS Community around the State.
• Made it possible for Mississippi to compile information on the state of the adoption and use of geospatial technologies at the county level and integrate the findings into the recently completed State GIS strategic plan.
• The Appalachian Ohio Geospatial Data Partnership was given the opportunity to build a partnership with the FGDC Cadastral Subcommittee.
• Although the funding is relatively small, the CAP award helped Idaho achieve milestones in the State's SDI strategic plan.
• The "selling" of $1.1M geocoding project was a direct result of the previous planning CAP Iowa received from FGDC.
• Federal support of these types of initiatives [for building data stewardship] lends credibility to the use of unfamiliar technologies to solve existing problems with data sharing.
• CAP does a great job stimulating efforts and is very useful for ‘seed’ type projects that foster collaborative relationships.
• CAP helps support and advance local projects and programs to identify best practices that can potentially have a wider regional or national impact.
• Provided are great opportunity to build an innovative service for the community without cumbersome restrictions about sharing the technology and making it publicly available. There was a latitude of freedom to create iterative innovations and expand the project as we developed the concepts.
• The greatest program strength is that it exists and creates the opportunity for States to contribute to the national effort of collaboration and data sharing. It allowed us to develop relationships with local data providers, which in turn provides a pathway to move authoritative local data to the NSDI.
• The mixture of government, enterprise, and academic teams was also very beneficial.
• The FGDC CAP program has proven over the years to be a good vehicle for State and local agencies to partner with software developers and spatial system integrators to explore new technology that would not normally be available.
• The program has helped develop key elements of the NSDI and more operational resources are now available to the user community as a result of CAP. The program has been consistent in its support of standards-based services over the last few years and this focus is now yielding tangible results across the NSDI.
• The CAP project helped the Indiana to be positioned to implement its Geosynchronization Suite for NHD GNIS Names, Broadband Mapping and potentially other statewide data sets.
• CAP “seed” funding is essential to having States carry out strategic and business plans. Without the CAP funds, these activities would be unlikely to occur.
• The program provides seed funding for collaborative geospatial data sharing projects.
• The strengths include the programs adherence to, promotion of, and support for development of geospatial data standards. The concept of a “federal standard” carries weight among State and local geospatial practitioners who want to do the right thing and are grateful for the thinking, definitions, and framework achieved at the federal level.
• The program is very operable and is directly linked to real applications across a wide-range of communities.
• From our perspective, that of a small business with considerable experience in developing and implementing geospatial interoperability standards, the CAP provides a vehicle for engaging government customers that might otherwise be reluctant to try new approaches in developing geospatial solutions.
• The NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program provided an opportunity for Indiana University computer science researchers to work with applied science researchers and water science practitioners on an initiative that has real world implications annually in much of the U.S. The program provides for the injection of new technologies and approaches into the geospatial community. The grant provided both research challenges and important collaboration experiences.
• The CAP provides an incentive to conduct research that is critical to realizing the full vision of the NSDI at the local and regional levels.
• If the question is “Where does the CAP Program make a difference?” the answer in Hawaii is that the funding allowed HIGICC to bring the geospatial community together for this special project at the Council’s 10th anniversary.
• The Fifty States Initiative project made a difference and influenced statewide coordination in Maine.
• The program has been invaluable to the State of New Jersey and OGIS in particular. The revision to the strategic business plan will help us to efficiently organize and prioritize our activities so they can be carried out in a reasoned and effective manner on behalf of the geospatial user community in New Jersey.
• The necessary resources to fulfill a comprehensive strategic planning effort could not have been accomplished without efforts of the CAP through the partnership with FGDC and USGS.
• This project and the Business Plan that resulted from it would not likely have occurred if not for the CAP grant funding. Grant funding provided the impetus to move the effort of creating a statewide parcel data layer forward.
• The CAP project allowed for the completion of the Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard.
• The CAP Program plays a vital role in disseminating requisite information to the wetlands mapping standards user community.
• Exposure and utilization of Utah’s road centerline dataset have been greatly enhanced as a result of the project.
• The CAP program provides a point around which often disparate organizations or interests can come together for an explicit purpose over a well-defined period of time.
• The strength of the program comes from the varied types of grants that are available in order to assist with advancement of GIS initiatives and programs.
• One of the most productive results of developing these plans is often coalescing a community around GIS coordination within States, regardless of what the plans say. Of course, the next question is what concrete changes do these planning efforts bring.
• The greatest strength of the program is that it exists and consistently helps move different groups and States in the right general direction.
• NSDI CAP program is one of the few sources that provide funds for education, collaboration, and technical expertise transfer activities.
• Helped awardee leverage additional funding. A federal grant helps provide moral authority.
• The program serves as a catalyst to get necessary work accomplished.
• The program provided a forum in which our workshop could be advertised to a larger community than what we could reach.
• We feel this program makes a difference because most of the money in this program goes to grass-roots efforts to improve GIS work in our State. This work provides tangible results, as evidenced by the 36 people who received GIS training, the couple dozen data layers that we checked out for metadata integrity, in addition to the countless GIS data layers in the future that will be better as a result of our workshop. Most of the attendees worked for local cities, counties and organizations. The knowledge and skills learned in these workshops and through the CAP programs directly affect GIS professionals everywhere and in turn the people they serve on an everyday basis.
• The FGDC category lead’s format for meetings and communications facilitated collaborations.
• The Fifty States Initiative web site and resources from other states helped this team achieving the vision set out in this plan.
• NSDI CAP is one of the best-managed federal programs the team has participated in. CAP award decisions are made quickly.
• The assistance of the USGS and FGDC was extremely helpful and timely.
• Support from FGDC staff has always been excellent.