Geospatial Platform | Governance
The Geospatial Platform’s governance framework outlines the roles and responsibilities of the associated governing bodies, and their decision-making authorities relative to the Geospatial Platform Program and GeoPlatform.gov operations. Key functions related to the Geospatial Platform program is Geospatial Portfolio Management and the delivery of the GeoPlatform.gov capabilities include: management of business and information requirements from Federal and non‐Federal governmental agencies; management of data and interoperability standards, design and implementation of the Geospatial Platform interface and services, measurement and management of performance, and the establishment of operational business rules.
The governance structure for the Geospatial Platform is the process by which Geospatial Platform stakeholders, including customers, are afforded an opportunity to shape its structure, functions and capabilities. This governance structure includes people, policies and operational processes.
Objective/Purpose
The goal of creating a defined governance structure is to provide a standardized means to increase value to the national geospatial community, the programs across all levels of government and ultimately the American citizens who are customers. The governance structure will involve a phased implementation approach, which will parallel phased implementation of the Geospatial Platform itself, designed to eventually engage all stakeholders and fulfill the overarching vision of the Platform. Over time, the number and variety of stakeholders involved in governance will grow as new phases are pursued. Each phase will address a specific capability with a unique set of challenges and may have Business Models that vary across phases. Over time, the phases will lead to a modular approach to fully building out the overall vision for the Geospatial Platform, which will have the broadest practical governance structure.
There are two primary objectives in creating the Platform governance structure. The first objective is to outline the requirements to successfully implement the governance of the Geospatial Platform in a coherent and sustainable way. After the requirements for successful governance are identified, the primary objective will shift to operationalizing the approach by engaging Federal, State, regional, local and Tribal government stakeholders. To satisfy these objectives, a clearly defined governance approach and roles for implementation must be developed so that stakeholder groups understand the governance structure and their roles and responsibilities within the structure at each phase of its development.
The governance structure includes drivers that are crucial to developing the Geospatial Platform:
- Improving the framework to address the requirements of Federal, State, regional, local and Tribal agencies.
- Prioritizing investments based on the most widely shared and most significant business needs of government.
- Enhancing interagency cooperation.
- Enhancing intergovernmental cooperation.
- Saving taxpayers money through more effective leveraging of intergovernmental activity.
- Increasing transparency and accountability.
- Creating an integrated place-based framework for addressing public policy challenges.
- Acknowledging and aligning varying roles, capabilities and interests of parties with a stake in the Geospatial Platform.
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Building and maintaining credibility, trust and relevance amongst non-Federal stakeholders.
Approach/Strategies
Scope of Governance: Platform implementation and sustainment The first objective of the governance structure will be to outline the necessary governance requirements to successfully implement the Geospatial Platform. To that end, it will be important to identify and define components where governance applies. The governance structure will ensure that aspects of Geospatial Platform work requiring governance activities are clearly defined and that the proper governance structures are in place to ensure success.
One aspect of effective governance will be to define the ―rules of engagement‖ for the Geospatial Platform. As all participants and stakeholders may be both partners and customers, ensuring compliance is critical to Platform success. Topics requiring compliance assurance may include:
- Data Content Standards.
- Metadata Standard.
- OMB Circular A-16 and A-16 Supplemental Guidance (Federal agencies only).
- Expectations with respect to data sharing/reciprocity.
- Expectations with respect to donating expertise within the community to achieve common goals.
- Standards for cyber security/access protocols/credentialing of Platform users to protect legitimate users.
- Managing relations with other NSDIs.
- Division of labor with respect to managing operations and maintenance of the Geospatial Platform.
While disclosure of non-compliance may often be sufficient to induce the desired behavior, the governance structure will need to define the consequences of non-compliance and the means for ensuring commitments. As such, it will be necessary to develop mechanisms to ensure that partners adhere to the agreed upon standards and ―rules of engagement‖ included in negotiated contractual, license or service-level agreements.
To maximize effectiveness, the Geospatial Platform will leverage current interagency and intergovernmental initiatives such as Data.gov, the Geodata.gov portal and Geo LoB products and processes. Identifying and evaluating best practices and lessons learned from these initiatives will help to inform and strengthen governance of the Geospatial Platform.
After the initial governance requirements for implementing the Geospatial Platform are outlined, the primary focus will be to create a governance framework to effectively define and engage all members of the stakeholder community. This framework will help to foster more effective intergovernmental geospatial priority setting. The communities of interest to consider include:
- Federal agencies.
- State agencies.
- Regional government organizations.
- Local agencies.
- Tribal governments.
- Academia/Non-profit organizations.
- Private sector organizations.
- Establish an interim Intergovernmental Subcommittee with diverse participation/representation until a full intergovernmental governance approach is developed.
- For each phase, identify means to engage specific non-Federal communities of interest with a clear stake in the phase in question. For instance, the first phase is likely to involve the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill, so the Geospatial Platform could work to engage coastal states in the Gulf of Mexico, academics, etc.
- Create appropriate means to gather customer requirements for each phase that will include targeted non- Federal participation. This could potentially be coordinated through the National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC).
Outcomes include:
- Better public policy decisions.
- Faster public policy decisions.
- Better integrated public policy decisions.
- More efficient use of government funds.
Implementation of Governance: Implementation strategy
A phased governance approach will be developed and implemented to build toward the Geospatial Platform‘s
overarching vision. Each phase will contribute to reaching the overarching vision like independently created modules that nonetheless fit together because each was conceived with the broader vision in mind. Each phase may address a different problem with a unique set of challenges so that different Business Models could be developed and deployed to address the problem. Eventually, enough different problems will be identified and means to address those problems will be developed to lead toward a unified intergovernmental governance solution to manage the realized overarching vision. Generally, each phase should be progressively more ambitious so that lessons learned from previous phases can inform the risk management approaches in the next phase. The end goal is to incrementally develop a Platform capability that adds value in a wide variety of circumstances. Generally, each phase would:
- Define an offering that produces or delivers something to solve a specified business problem.
- Define the business institution that actually produces and manages the offering.
- Define the customers of the offering.
- Provide for internal management of the business institution to comply with applicable Federal IT, acquisition, performance, human resources and financial policies and reporting.
- Comply with the intent of the President‘s 2011 Budget language.
Outcomes include:
- Overarching vision for the creation of the Geospatial Platform.
- Phased approach to reach the vision for the Geospatial Platform.
Governance Approach: Governance strategy principles
Because the Geospatial Platform describes new processes for interactions within the community, a clearly defined a strategy for these interactions is an important component of success. This section discusses concepts that are important to follow in creating the Geospatial Platform governance structure, including specific roles and responsibilities.
First, the Geospatial Platform will operate under the federated approach. While this approach necessarily respects agency-specific statutory authorities, it nonetheless sets expectations that agencies will exercise their discretion within
statutory parameters consistent with the rules of engagement for the Platform, so as to increase the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Government. It also allows for joint funding to meet operational needs. An example of this approach is the Alaska Elevation data effort, which is a joint effort of the Department of the Interior (U.S. Geological Survey and Bureau of Land Management), Department of Defense (U.S. Northern Command and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency), U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the State of Alaska.
Second, the Geospatial Platform, initially, will capitalize on existing geospatial institutions and clearly define the future roles of existing governance bodies. The primary focus areas of Geospatial Platform governance will be to address geospatial policy, operation and coordination with Federal and non-Federal stakeholders. To those ends, the FGDC Steering Committee will serve as the primary policy body. The FGDC Executive Committee will serve as the senior management operational and coordination authority for that policy body. The Intergovernmental Body (Section 5) will serve as the primary external advisory body to establish a mechanism for non-Federal intergovernmental coordination.
Third, the governance strategy must be ―workable‖ and allow for performance-based evaluation (Section 5.6) of geospatial production against formal requirements. The Geospatial Platform will identify the criteria for performance-based evaluation. Having performance-based evaluation criteria compared to an established baseline allows for more informed identification of needs and performance for all managers within the community.
Outcomes include:
- Clear understanding of how each agency relates to the governance structure of the Geospatial Platform.
- Explicit expectations of each agency with respect to compliance with Platform rules of engagement.
- Federal, State, regional, local, and Tribal governments are identified and satisfied to the extent possible.
- Degree of compliance with intent of the President‘s 2011 Budget language to address the requirements of State, local, and Tribal governments.
Governance Roles: Entities
A key component of the Geospatial Platform governance structure will be clearly defined roles and responsibilities for
stakeholder groups. The Geospatial Platform represents a new business institution, which will require the dedication of full-time support staff, as well as other forms of contribution. This section identifies geospatial communities that will facilitate the updated Geospatial Platform governance structure approaches and strategies.
FGDC Steering Committee/Executive Committee
The FGDC Steering Committee will serve as the primary policy body. The FGDC Executive Committee will serve as the senior management operational and coordination authority for that policy body.
FGDC Coordination Group
The FGDC Coordination Group will help shape the requirements for the Geospatial Platform based on agency-specific needs and priorities and will assess technical feasibility of proposed offerings. The FGDC Coordination Group will be the primary operational representatives to ensure their agencies are fulfilling their roles.
Geospatial Platform Managing Partner
Because the Geospatial Platform represents a new business institution, new capabilities will be required to support the new institution. A new body, the Geospatial Platform Managing Partner, will implement direction, recommend and/or assign resources and create and track performance metrics for upward reporting for the Platform. The focus of the Geospatial Platform Managing Partner needs to be aligned with the mission and vision of the Geospatial Platform as described in the Roadmap and be answerable to the FGDC Steering Committee, its Executive Committee and ultimately OMB.
Intergovernmental Subcommittee
The to-be state of the Geospatial Platform is a national effort with participation from State, regional, local, Tribal and non-government stakeholders. Therefore, the Geospatial Platform will quickly establish an intergovernmental subcommittee with representation from all stakeholder groups. This is an interim solution, and will be replaced by an appropriate end-state entity as a framework for regular and ongoing coordination with these external partners and stakeholders is developed.
Outcomes include:
- Clear policy or charters for each entity involved in governance of the Platform.
- No ambiguity or misunderstanding of the roles and responsibilities for each stakeholder community.
Priorities
The first priority of the governance structure will be to establish the requirements to implement the Geospatial Platform. After the requirements for successful governance are outlined, the primary objective will shift to working to fully engage Federal, State, regional, local and Tribal agencies and with private and non-profit stakeholders as appropriate. The priorities for the governance structure are:
- Platform implementation and sustainment
The initial priority will be to establish the requirements necessary to implement the Geospatial Platform. In order to do this, the overall vision for the Platform needs to be developed. Once the overall vision for the Platform is developed, the phases that will build into that vision need to be developed. This will also entail defining in advance how the different phases will eventually integrate with one another before they are built.
After the development of the initial vision for the Geospatial Platform and implementation plan, the focus will shift to other necessary governance infrastructure for implementation such as identifying ―touch-points‖ with other Platform Pillars, defining the rules of engagement, identifying means for leveraging intergovernmental initiatives and defining a funding model for the Platform.
- Federal and non-Federal involvement in the Platform
Once relevant parties have defined initial requirements to implement the Geospatial Platform, the second priority will be to organize Federal partners (through the FGDC Steering Committee and Executive Committee) and non-Federal partners (which the FGDC Steering Committee would facilitate through NGAC, National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), National Association of Counties (NACO), etc.).
After organizing stakeholders, exploring options for an intergovernmental needs assessment will be the next priority. To carry out the needs assessment, the governance structure must establish common terms and definitions and enforce consistent adherence to those terms. Only with such intergovernmental consistency will a survey of the intergovernmental geospatial community be useful. A qualitative assessment in FY 2011 using focus groups or doing an analysis of the data available through the 50 States Initiative will provide some initial information. After the definitions of a more robust set of terms are established, a quantitative survey would be conducted in FY 2012 and regularly maintained thereafter. In order to define the Federal agency needs, it may be necessary to modify OMB Circular A-11 so that it is for the first time possible to track Federal geospatial financial obligations through the object class structure in Federal agency financial systems.
Outcomes include:
- Organization of Federal partners.
- Engagement of non-Federal partners.
- Integration of Geospatial Platform priorities into FY 2012 budget cycle.
- Improved understanding of intergovernmental needs.
The content provided on this page was approved by the FGDC in the Modernization Roadmap for the Geospatial Platform.
