Goal One: Increase the awareness and understanding of the vision, concepts, and benefits of the NSDI through outreach and education.
Barrier: The lack of a comprehensive educational package for NSDI, and uniform criteria to measure compliance, coupled with the lack of guidance on how standards will be used to support NSDI's vision make educating resource managers difficult. Without these, we are faced with voicing various opinions about these topics, which more often than not results in confusion. Frequently asked questions include (1) how can NSDI help with the day-to-day tasks at hand and decisions that need to be made, and (2) what specifically do we need to do in order to use and contribute to the NSDI (Note: the clearinghouse is currently a source of information for those building data bases but it is not the answer for end users or decision makers).
Barrier: The lack of incentives to comply with the FGDC data standards for those who already have digital data has been raised at every Framework meeting that we have attended. Yet adequate explanations have not been provided in turns of the benefits and returns for the investment. Without this issue being adequately addressed, outreach and partnerships to market NSDI are often difficult and tenuous and often not possible unless funding is provided.
Objective 1: Provide opportunities for education about the Cadastral Data Content Standard
Action 1.1: Complete Development of Educational Materials for the Cadastral Data Content Standard
Results: Availability of Educational Materials and Standard in HTML form are available on the Internet, CD ROM, Hardcopy and Management Briefings. These materials were developed based upon the need for distance learning initiatives that will allow a large number of people to be reached at minimal cost.
Status: Completed
Next Steps: N/A
Action 1.2: Deliver Distance Educational Materials to FGDC Secretariat
Results: FGDC has access to materials and updates
Status: Completed
Next Steps: N/A
Action 1.3: Distribute Educational Materials according to distribution list and link these materials to the host Internet site for these materials from FGDC.
Results: Educational materials were distributed according to the distribution list in hardcopy and CD ROM formats and a link was established to provide access on the Internet. A link was established to the FGDC homepage as well as others. The availability of these materials was not formally announced by the FGDC, however, the Cadastral Subcommittee has posted notices to several organizations and has made the availability of the materials known to those on the mailing list. Monthly statistics on all homepage visits are being tracked.
Status: Completed
Barriers: Slow response times for Internet support.
Next Steps: N/A
Action 1.4: Maintain Educational Materials
Results: Materials have been revised and are available on the Internet
Status: Initial revisions have been completed, however, this is an ongoing effort.
Barriers: Lack of an Operational budget for FGDC and Standards.
Next Steps: Justify Budget additions to cover Operations and Maintenance Workloads
Action 1.5: Give presentations at workshops, conferences and by request
Results: A number of presentations were made at professional conferences and workshops. In addition, briefings were provided to BLM Cadastral Managers, BLM and USFS Washington Office, the Interagency Cadastral Coordinating Committee, and numerous state and county organizations in Montana, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Have also worked with Kansas (who has adopted the Cadastral Standard) and Ohio for possible adoption of the standard. Reviewed documents for parcel standards and mapping in Wisconsin and New Jersey and participated in the Shoreline Subcommittee's meeting (Charleston, SC). Gave presentations at ASCM, URISA, and GIS/LIS, and held two Cadastral Subcommittee meetings (local government representatives were invited and participated in both of these meetings).
Status: Ongoing
Barriers: Complexity of Cadastral Data is a barrier. This is especially true since most of the organizations such as NSGIC are made up of GIS specialists who are not familiar with the business and/or legal aspects of cadastral work/data. In addition, the absence of an overall training package has placed more burden on individuals to supply existing materials.
Next Steps: Continue
Action 1.6: Improve Communication Mechanisms to Share Information and Form Partnerships
Reference: See Goal # 2 Objective # 2.
Goal 2: Develop common solutions for discovery and access of geospatial data in response to the needs of diverse communities of users.
Metadata
Objective 1: Provide a standard format to exchange cadastral data through Clearinghouse
Action 1.1: Complete Module One of the Cadastral Data Transfer Profile
Results: Completed module one of the cadastral data transfer profile for Arc/Info data sets, populated the transfer profile and demonstrated its applicability with data sets from the BLM, the USFS and Oakland County Michigan. This information has been posted to the Cadastral homepage along with abbreviations for all data elements. Other data sets will follow as funding becomes available.
Status: Module One Completed - Module Two is in Progress.
Barriers: Lack of flexibility in the metadata standard to accommodate feature level metadata and the inconsistency of how metadata is handled in the Meta data Standard and SDTS.
Next Steps: Gather information from states and counties related to cadastral specific metadata content needs. This content is to be defined by FGDC Pilot efforts. Complete Modules Two and Three.
Clearinghouse
Objective 2: Improve Communication Mechanisms to Share Information and Form Partnerships
Action 2.1: Develop compliance measures for the Cadastral Data Content Standard
Results: Compliance definitions and measures that can be used to specify what needs to be done to support the vision of an NSDI.. The Subcommittee developed and defined levels of compliance. This information is available on the Cadastral web site and is included in the cadastral data standard maintenance plan. The Subcommittee continues to work with the definition of compliance and will be developing further guidelines for people to describe their data sets in terms of level of compliance.
Status: Completed
Barriers: Clearinghouse lacks a common structure to reference cadastral information and does not include information needed to coordinate future data collection. It only addresses what data is available.
Next Steps: Develop further guidelines for people to describe their data sets in terms of level of compliance.
Action 2.2: Provide a common geographic reference for coordinating cadastral information activities for seven western states.
Results: Draft digital data files were created for 11 western states. Five of these have been completed. These will serve as a common reference to communicate the availability of cadastral information and the status of activities via the GEOCOM (see action 2.3).
Status: In Progress - BLM Completed Drafts data sets for 11 western states
Barriers: Inconsistency in sources of data as well as historical vs. current information.
Next Steps: Complete reference data for all western states and define initial communication requirements.
Action 2.3: Present and Initiate Pilot Efforts for the Geocommunicator (GEOCOM)
Results: Presented the GEOCOM concept at FGDC/NSGIC meeting, GIS/LIS, ICCC, and BLM Cadastral Branch Chief Meeting. Supported and agreed upon pilot initiatives in Oregon/Washington, Arizona, and Colorado in partnership private industry to test the concept. Pilot will commence in 1999.
Status: In progress
Barriers: Funding
Next Steps: Evaluate proposal and initiate pilot efforts.
Goal 3: Use community-based approaches to develop and maintain common collections of geospatial data for sound decision-making.
Standards
Objective 1: Validate and Maintain the Cadastral Data Content Standard
Action 1.1: Provide examples of use and other validation materials to the FGDC Standards Working Group to demonstrate that the Cadastral Data Content Standard is acceptable as an FGDC data standard (per requirements for conditional approval of the standard by the Standards Working Group).
Results: Evidence to validate the standard for final approval by FGDC.
Status: Completed
Next Steps: N/A
Action 1.2: Receive and review recommendations and decide upon changes to the Cadastral Data Content Standard in accordance with established maintenance procedures outlined in the Cadastral Data Content Standard Maintenance Plan.
Results: Received proposed changes/additions to the Cadastral Data Content Standard
Status: Ongoing - The first comments have been catalogued and reviewed by the maintenance subgroup.
Barriers: Travel funding for state and county representatives.
Next Steps: Comments and recommendations will be addressed at the February 1999 meeting of the cadastral subcommittee.
Objective 2: Provide a physical implementation of the Cadastral Data Content
Standard to support the exchange and sharing of data
Action 2.1: Develop module 1 of the Cadastral Data Transfer Profile and begin testing in Pilot Projects.
Results: Draft Implementation (physical model and structure) of Module 1 of the Cadastral Data Transfer Profile. In addition significant progress was made on developing a CAD type profile for the standard.
Status: In progress - 75% Complete
Barriers:
Next Steps:
Thematic Data Collection
Barrier: One of the largest problems is an over abundance of sources for PLSS data at the section level and higher. Data from these sources often differ in their content as well as positional information. The need is for the integration of this data to arrive at a common data solution that can be collectively maintained. This integration has been ongoing in the BLM and USFS in specific locals. However, in 1998 a national effort was initiated to support a common data solution and both agencies. Additional funds have been requested through the FGDC to support data integration tasks in FY2000. This has also expanded to many of the Western state and county government. It should be noted that data integration tasks represent major workloads.
Barrier: The second major barrier is the lack of data at the parcel level which is the level required to support decision making at the community or local level, regardless of government affiliation or level (e.g., county or federal). Until NSDI can provide data that can be used to support decision making, its use will be limited. The issue with cadastral data is the complexity and cost of building digital data bases at a decision support level. Data at the parcel level can be assembled over a number of years, the key for supporting the vision of NSDI will be to ensure that data comply with standards and are integrated with data across government agencies and private industry to provide a comprehensive cadastral picture rather than an agency specific view.
Barrier: A potential barrier is the lack of incentives to integrate existing data sets across government agencies. Some agencies are reluctant to participate in these efforts because data integration represents an unplanned and is often viewed as unnecessary workload (unnecessary in consideration of agency specific mission requirements).
The Cadastral Subcommittee can only facilitate and encourage partnerships for data collection and integration. BLM has requested additional funding to address data integration issues at the local level.
Objective 3: Facilitate Partnerships for data collection and maintenance and data integration
Action 3.1: Improve Communication Mechanisms to Share Information to Facilitate Partnerships
Reference: See Goal # 2 Objective # 2
Action 3.2: Define Community Based Cadastral Framework data needs.
Results: The Cadastral Subcommittee is assisting with and monitoring FGDC pilot projects to define data needs. In addition, coordination is in place with New Jersey's parcel mapping efforts. Workshops and training have been provided for many organizations (See Goal 1, Objective1, Action 1.5)
Status: In progress.
Barriers: Funding for travel and contracting
Next Steps:
Goal 4: Build relationships among organizations to support the continuing development of NSDI
Objective 1: Expand representation on the Subcommittee for Cadastral Data to include more representatives from NACo, NSGIG, and other federal agencies such as the National Park Service (NPS).
Action 1.1: Identify NACo (2 in addition to Gary Caswell) and NSGIC (2) representatives and one NPS representative for the Subcommittee and support their participation in at least one Subcommittee Meeting.
Results: Two additional participating members have been assigned to the FGDC Subcommittee for Cadastral Data. Sallie Rogers and Randall Covington have been added for NaCO. NSGIC has added Dennis Goreham, however, has not designated a second representative.
Status: Completed
Barriers: Both NaCo and NSGIC have identified that funding for travel "out of State" is a problem and a barrier to participation. If this is true for the Cadastral Subcommittee, it should also apply to other FGDC initiatives that depend upon their input. The FGDC Secretariat should reserve funding to pay for NaCo and NSGIC travel for participation on the various Subcommittees. Lack of incentives for relatively independent federal agencies such as the NPS. In FY 98 the Cadastral Subcommittee was not notified about the availability of funds. In FY99, funding is not anticipated to be made available until late Spring. This is too late to support particpation in the first half of FY99. This late schedule jeopardizes the participation by county and states representatives at the next Cadastral Subcommittee meeting scheduled for February 1999.
Next Steps: None
Objective 2: Expanded membership on the Interagency Agreement to Share Cadastral Data and support NSDI.
Action 2.1: Solicit input from all participating agencies/organizations on the Cadastral Subcommittee and approve at least 2 new narratives for participation.
Results: The current agreement was distributed to all Subcommittee members. Although a few agencies expressed interest, most agencies already have interagency agreements to cover mission requirements. Other agencies have not yet adequately defined their role in using and/or providing cadastral services and information. For example, USGS's representative developed a draft document for participation and responded favorably to BLM's comments (USGS requested that the submission not be reviewed by the entire subcommittee at the time). Upon further internal review, however, USGS withdrew from participating for the second time in as many years.
Status: Ongoing
Barriers. Lack of incentives to participate, especially for those who already have digital data
Next Step: Proceed with data integration in BLM, USFS, MMS and State and County government organizations