Action 1: Please submit FGDC newsletter articles or suggestions for the FGDC newsletter to David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) by March 11.
Action 2: Bill Burgess will write a half paragraph on the NSGIC State summaries and submit to David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) for the FGDC newsletter.
Action 3: If you would like to receive or contribute to the NGPO monthly update - please send your email address to Denver Beaulieu-Hains (dbeaulieu-hains@usgs.gov). Please also let her know if you would like to participate in the Congressional Briefings on GIS - hazards, homeland security - that she is planning.
Action 4: Sharon Shin, the FGDC Metadata Trainer, will contact Monica (Monica.DeAngelo@ferc.gov) regarding metadata training.
Action 5: Please let Milo (mrobinson@fgdc.gov) know by noon Thursday 2/10 if you would like any changes made to the Future Directions Quarterly Report. This is an informational piece to update the Steering Committee on the Future Directions activities that have occurred over the past 3 months.
Action 6: Please contact Leslie Wollack (lwollack@usgs.gov) if you would like to get your agency involved in the FGDC Communications Plan activities.
Action 7: The Metadata Survey is due in from the Federal Agencies to Alison (adishman@fgdc.gov) by March 11. Please contact Lynda Wayne (Lwayne@geomaxim.com) with any questions.
Action 8: If you would like access to Quickplace to view the working documents for the Non Geospatial, Governance or Business Case Action Teams please request a password from Milo (mrobinson@fgdc.gov).
Action 9: DOD will provide a representative to the Governance Action Team.
Action 10: Please contact David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) with any suggestions regarding the FY06 CAP.
Action 11: Bill Burgess would like to participate on planning of the FY06 CAP.
Action 12: Kathy Covert will convene a group to plan the FY06 CAP.
Action 13: Please contact Nancy Doyle (nancy.doyle@noaa.gov) with any changes you believe should be made to the FGDC Geospatial Positioning Accuracy Standards, posted at http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/status/swgstat.html.
Action 14: The Transportation Security Administration wants 60-90 day details. Please contact Carol Brandt (carol.brandt@bts.gov) if you are interested in the detail.
Host: Monica DeAngelo, FERC
Leslie Armstrong, FGDC Deputy Staff Director
Alison Dishman, FGDC
Milo Robinson, FGDC
David Painter, FGDC
Doug Vandegraft, FWS
Myra Bambacus, NASA
Brett Abrams, NARA
Carol Brandt, USDOT
Richard A. Pearsall, USGS
Charles M. Croner, CDC/HHS
Jon Sperling, HUD
Brian Cullis, DOD
Rob Dollison, FGDC/GOS
Randy Fusaro, Census
Julie Binder Maitra, FGDC
Anne O'Connor, Census
Alan Voss, TVA
Alan Stevens, FGDC
Lisbeth Chandler, USGS/National Atlas
Sam Bacharach, OGC
Bob Harding, GSA
Nancy Doyle, NOAA
Kim Owens, NOAA
Lee R. Warren, NGA
Denver Beaulieu-Hains, NGPO/USGS
Elizabeth Jones, FERC
Tricia Gibbons, LEAD Alliance
Welcome and Introductions - Lonnie Lister, FERC
Lonnie Lister, branch chief of the Office of Energy Projects welcomed the group to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). He explained that FERC is a regulatory agency that oversees energy industries in the economic and environmental interest of the American public. Both Monica DeAngelo and Lonnie work on gas issues at FERC. Monica is tasked with getting FERC involved with GIS to map the 300,000 mi of jurisdictional gas pipeline in this country. Every project that FERC undertakes requires an environmental review - requiring lots of environmental information and maps. FERC dealt with paper maps in the past but is moving in the direction of digital maps.
Action Items and Business from Last Month - Alison Dishman, FGDC
Alison went over last month's action items and noted that she is still missing annual reports from several agencies. Alison passed out a list of the Coordination Group representatives from each agency. It was suggested that FGDC send out a letter to Federal CIOs regarding their agency Coordination Group representative, detailing the expected level of authority that the representative should have (to help the agencies choose the right person for the role of FGDC Coordination Group representative).
Comments: Do we need to have the agency's CIOS involved in the FGDC activities as well? Should we send a memo to the CIOs and have it trickle down? A lot of the reps are from huge agencies - maybe could match the CIO with the Steering Committee members - get dialogue between the two groups. We will have more discussion and try to draft a letter to go to the agencies regarding their FGDC Coordination Group representative.
Comment: It might be nice to have weblinks from the FGDC homepage to all of our member agencies. (Right now there is a link from the Steering Committee webpage that goes to each of the member agency webpages). CDC has its own GIS newsletter but FGDC doesn't directly link to it - we should have a page with our member agencies' latest news and newsletters. We could include the request for relevant links in the letter to the agencies regarding reps.
Newsletter - David Painter, FGDC
If you have any NSDI related activities - please let David Painter know we can feature you in the FGDC Newsletter which is mailing out and handed out at conferences.
Action 1: Please submit FGDC newsletter articles or suggestions for the FGDC newsletter to David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) by March 11.
Comment: NSGIC has a listing of GIS activities that are taking place in each state - could have a little writeup and a link to the State summaries. Bill Burgess will run this idea by the NSGIC Board.
Action 2: Bill Burgess will write a half paragraph on the NSGIC State summaries and submit to David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) for the FGDC newsletter.
Comment: GSA has a newsletter on GIS systems that goes to Federal, State and International CIOS that will be published in April. GSA is still collecting articles and they can reference the FGDC newsletter and vice versa.
Denver Beaulieu-Hains coordinates outreach for the National Geospatial Programs Offices at USGS and is creating an internal publication that will go out monthly to a mailing list.
Action 3: If you would like to receive or contribute to the NGPO monthly update - please send your email address to Denver Beaulieu-Hains (dbeaulieu-hains@usgs.gov). Please also let her know if you would like to participate in the Congressional Briefings on GIS - hazards, homeland security - that she is planning.
Request: A Coordination Group member requested that the contact database for the FGDC mailing list for the FGDC Newsletter mailing list be made available to Coordination Group members.
Response: David Painter said that personal contact information is sensitive - we could maybe just link to organization websites and then you could search for addresses and emails from there. Privacy is a key concern and we should err on the side of privacy. We could create a form that people could sign allowing their contact information to be added to a public database. The newsletter goes out by mail now, but in the future we can just send an email linking to it on the website.
Upcoming Conference: The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Conference is being held February 17 - 21 in Washington, DC. Karen Siderelis will be participating on a panel. For more information please visit http://www.aaas.org/meetings/Annual_Meeting/
FERC Moving Forward with GIS - Monica DeAngelo, FERC
Monica DeAngelo works as an Environmental Engineer at FERC and is tasked with getting FERC up to speed on GIS. FERC is an independent government agency that regulates the interstate transmission of natural gas, oil and electricity. Besides headquarters in DC, there are 5 regional offices that license and inspect hydroelectric projects on a regional basis. FERC approves the construction of interstate natural gas pipelines, storage facilities, liquefied natural gas (LNG) Terminals. Monica, through the Office of Energy Projects, is trying to get the word out about GIS and show the lawyers and economists how they can use it. Any digital data that FERC receives is not available to the public because it is considered "Critical Energy Infrastructure Information".
While trying to establish hydropower project boundaries on topographic maps it was recognized that there were inconsistencies in boundaries. FERC turned to GIS maintain higher accuracy. Beginning in November 2003, all licensees had to submit digital data regarding hydropower. FERC now analyzes dam breeches and 100 year flood events using GIS.
Monica developed an infrastructure of natural gas and hydropower so that nonGIS users could use the data to do analysis (lawyers, engineers, economists will be trained to use this system). Monica requests data from applicants (on a voluntary basis, it is not yet required) and provides applicants with guidelines on projection, coordinate system, datum, units of measurement, raster and vector file types. Metadata is required. Monica then catalogues the files and puts them in a geo database. In 1 to 2 years it will be mandatory for any applicant to FERC to submit digital data.
Monica is able to maintain higher levels of accuracy using GIS to create buffer zones around liquefied natural gas terminal and storage units with a possibility of explosion.
Monica has created an Internal WebViewer Application - Arc IMS webviewer. The 3 terrabyte database will grow once the request for GIS database is required. FERC bought seamless topographic imagery for the entire US and there are lots of meetings on the backup structure - how to backup and maintain the large amount of data. Training on the system will begin this summer - starting with 200 users in headquarters and then 150 people in the regional offices.
Action 4: Sharon Shin, the FGDC Metadata Trainer, will contact Monica (Monica.DeAngelo@ferc.gov) regarding metadata training.
All of this information will be behind FERC's firewall. But the public may have access to the metadata and the analysis produced by the system.
Q: What are your plans for linking to the outside? The FGDC member agencies have webmap data services that you could connect to.
A: Monica would like to be able to capture data outside their firewall and would welcome any suggestions on how to accomplish this.
Comment: DOT is using environmental data for pipeline safety. Maybe you could share your improved data with DOT.
[PowerPoint] (48 MB)
Version 2 of the Portal - Rob Dollison, FGDC/GOS
The contract for Version 2 of the Portal was awarded on Jan 31. Special thanks to NASA and NGA for their help in getting the funds to award the contract. The contract for the portal involves working to develop and integrate; deploy, operate and maintain; develop and enhance; and then host the portal on the web.
ESRI will do spatial; Google will provide the search engine; IBM will provide the portal.
New features of the portal include: Google search paradigm; True JSR portal user interface using IBM WebSphere; greater OGC interoperability; 5-second or faster response to queries; Web-based channel management tool; extensive performance statistics. The portal will have a more intuitive interface; faster search results; 2 clicks to content; and mapviewer with enhanced OGC specifications. The channel concept will be expanded to include more community information.
90 Day Deployment - Core development team will work with ESRI to review and accept the requirements.
90 Day Partner Activity. Signed Interagency Agreements are due on February 21.
We need to get our channels matured - improve the content we have in there. Rob would be glad to help you work with your tool. Please get the content in your channels during the next couple months.
Comment: There is a desire for more openness to the OGC standards.
Future Directions Quarterly Report - Milo Robinson, FGDC
The quarterly report has been compiled and the draft has been transmitted to the Coordination Group - it includes an executive summary and a 22 page report compiled from the information provided to Milo by the team leads. All the team leads were responsible for turning in a quarterly report. Each of the team leads has had a copy of the quarterly report since last week. We have only altered their reports by reformatting some things so the report has a consistent look.
Ivan would like to give the Coordination Group a short window to look at the quarterly report before it is sent on to the Steering Committee. He is looking for showstoppers.
Action 5: Please let Milo (mrobinson@fgdc.gov) know by noon Thursday 2/10 if you would like any changes made to the Future Directions Quarterly Report. This is an informational piece to update the Steering Committee on the Future Directions activities that have occurred over the past 3 months.
Comment: The Coordination Group members would like to have 2 week deadlines to review documents from now on.
Approval Process for Action Plans:
Staff Director reviews the plans
Two weeks notice to the CWG
Review and acceptance by the CWG
Endorsement from the Steering Committee
The 50 States Action Plans and the Communications Action Plans were presented at the January Coordination Group meeting. The 50 States Plan and the Communications Plan have been reviewed and accepted by the Coordination Group - the two groups should continue the course they have laid out in their action plans until we present the series of final plans to the Steering Committee in June.
Concern: We would like to move forward on 50 States Plan - would like to say its an approved FGDC activity and get moving on it. We want to discuss the plan at the NSGIC meetings in March.
Response: We can explore interim approval - these plans are going to be dynamic and will change over time.
Action 6: Please contact Leslie Wollack (lwollack@usgs.gov) if you would like to get your agency involved in the FGDC Communications Plan activities.
Action 7: The Metadata Survey is due in from the Federal Agencies to Alison (adishman@fgdc.gov) by March 11. Please contact Lynda Wayne (Lwayne@geomaxim.com) with any questions.
The Future Directions Team lead Telecon will take place on the week of Feb 14th - Milo will send out the details. The next Team Lead monthly report is due Feb 25.
Future Directions Non Geospatial Organizations Action Plan - John Clark, GSA
Action Plan defines non geospatial organizations as organizations whose members are primarily users of spatial information and technology, not builders or producers of spatial information and systems. The team would like to get the heavy producers of geospatial data around the table to demonstrate its benefits to those non geospatial organizations.
Non Geospatial Organizations Action Plan has been revised and will be sent to the Coordination Group members sometime in the next week by Milo.
Action 8: If you would like access to Quickplace to view the working documents for the Non Geospatial, Governance or Business Case Action Teams please request a password from Milo (mrobinson@fgdc.gov).
Next steps: Identify a multi-jurisdictional outreach team to showcase the utility of Geospatial data for everyday problems/challenges that government and private sector managers face.
Comment: GAO report criticized FGDC for not getting all GIS users to the table. We need to get more groups involved with our activities.
Comment: We need to go to the National Association of Realtors etc and let them know the geospatial information that is available to them.
An example of a success story: NOAA put GPS receivers on trucks to depict traffic flow.
Future Directions Governance Models - Alan Voss, TVA
Governance Team is a joint team between the NGPO restructuring activity and FGDC to examine the governance model of the NSDI.
Accomplishments:
Charter completed
29 member team
6 working groups established
bi-weekly teleconferences
bi-monthly face to face meetings - Nov, Dec, Feb, April, June
The Governance Team has presented models to meetings hosted at OGC, USGIF, MAPPS, and will be attending upcoming meetings at GITA, GITA, ACSM, NSGIC, and UCGIS. The team has also conducted interviews, reviewed pertinent documents and existing governance models, and is examining options such as FACA. Several years ago Carl Zulick researched FACA while revising OMB Circular A-16. Although FACA wasn't addressed in the revised A-16 we might want to look at his documentation. Monica DeAngelo will meet with the USGS FACA contact regarding our options.
Q: Did you get into joint funding proposals across all sectors?
A: We haven't gotten that far yet, but there have been ideas proposed during interviews. We don't have an answer to that question yet.
OMB has asked us to come up with new performance measures. (Leslie Armstrong)
Action 9: DOD will provide a representative to the Governance Action Team.
We hope to have an initial draft of the Governance report in February.
Funding CAP in the Future - David Painter, FGDC
FGDC hoped the agencies would participate in the Framework category of the CAP program this year but provided too short a timeframe.
For FY06 we request your input in the CAP process. How can we use the CAP to not only implement the NSDI but also to serve your agencies goals and outcomes? Who should the FGDC talk to in your agency regarding funding for the CAP? Should we align the CAP with specific grant activities in the Federal sector? Should we set up a working group for the CAP?
Action 10: Please contact David Painter (dpainter@fgdc.gov) with any suggestions regarding the FY06 CAP.
If you are aware of grant programs in your agencies that provide funding for GIS projects, please let David Painter know about them - we can try to leverage them.
Action 11: Bill Burgess would like to participate on planning of the FY06 CAP.
Action 12: Kathy Covert will convene a group to plan the FY06 CAP.
Comment: Grants.gov was funded by HHS and then took the entire fiscal year to accept funds from other Federal agencies b/c they had an MOU with GSA - were able to turn it into multi-year money. MMS also has that ability like GSA to carry money over to the next fiscal year.
Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee - Nancy Doyle, NGS
Charlie Challstrom, Chair of the Federal Geodetic Control Subcommittee (FGCS) of the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) requests your help in completing the routine quinquennial maintenance review of the following FGDC Geospatial Positioning Accuracy Standards, posted at http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/status/swgstat.html:
Part 1: Reporting Methodology, FGDC-STD-007.1-1998
Part 2: Standards for Geodetic Networks, FGDC-STD-007.2-1998
Spatial Data Transfer Standard (SDTS) Part 6: Point Profile, FGDC-STD-002.6
If you note any problems with the above documents, please reply by February 20, 2005 to Nancy Doyle (nancy.doyle@noaa.gov), with "FCGS Review" in the Subject line, and include the following information:
- Your Organization
- Paragraph/ subpara/PG#
- Figure/ Table/ line #
- Type of comment
- Comment
- Proposed change (examples at http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/directives/dir2d.html)
Barring any substantive feedback, these standards will be re-released without change for another five years.
Action 13: Please contact Nancy Doyle (nancy.doyle@noaa.gov ) with any changes you believe should be made to the FGDC Geospatial Positioning Accuracy Standards, posted at http://www.fgdc.gov/standards/status/swgstat.html.
Headlines
The Coordination Group members agreed that the most important items to come out of today's meeting involved:
FERC
GOS Portal Procurement
Future Directions
Randy Fusaro announced that TIGER Line Files were posted free on the web last week.
Action 14: The Transportation Security Administration wants 60-90 day details. Please contact Carol Brandt (carol.brandt@bts.gov) if you are interested in the detail.
Next Coordination Group meeting:
March 1, 2005
Hosted by: Nancy Doyle, NOAA in Silver Spring, MD.