The Facilities Working Group (FWG) was formed in January 1995 and meets bi-monthly.
Active participation in the Facilities Working Group has grown as a result of its standards development and outreach activities to include the following agencies/organizations: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Tri-Service CADD/GIS Technology Center, Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Environmental Security), Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Environmental Protection Agency, General Services Administration, Bureau of Transportation and Statistics, Federal Aviation Administration, Bureau of the Census, Department of Energy, New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, American Public Works Association, American Society of Civil Engineers, Adams County Hwy Department, and Applied Geographics, Inc.
This report identifies the accomplishments of the group during 1998 as they relate to the Goals and Objectives outlined in A Strategy for the National Spatial Data Infrastructure.
Goal 1 - Increase the awareness and understanding of the vision, concepts, and benefits of the NSDI through outreach and education.
Objective: Continued to hold bi-monthly Facility Working Group meetings that were open to all members of the geospatial community
- Action: Held 5 meetings to update members on standards development activities and inform members of FGDC activities. Meetings were open and announced on the FGDC Calendar of events.
- Barriers: Participants vary from meeting to meeting and there was not enough participation from actual GIS users.
Next Steps: Continue to hold meetings.
Objective: Continued to increase awareness of FWG activities by updating FWG Web pages and Electronic mail reflector
- Action: The FWG serves minutes, announcements of upcoming meetings, membership list, and standards development activities on the World Wide Web. This may be accessed from the FGDC list of subcommittee and working group servers at http://www.fgdc.gov/fgdc/fgdc.html. It has proven to be an efficient tool for disseminating information.
- Status: Web page is up to date.
Barriers: Getting people to access the web site and getting pertinent information to post on the web site.
Next Steps: Continue to maintain web page.
Goal 2 - Develop common solutions for discovery, access, and use of geospatial data in response to the needs of diverse communities.
- No Objectives or Actions Identified
Goal 3 - Use community-based approaches to develop and maintain common collections of geospatial data for sound decision-making.
Objective: The FWG continued to develop the following standards.
- Action: Facility ID Code Standard - In June 1996, the FGDC Standards Working Group approved development of a Facility ID Code Standard by the Facilities Working Group. This standard will consist of a set of standardized data elements which identify and locate place-based facilities such as a standard identifier, latitude longitude, name, and facility type. These unique, non-intelligent identifiers will coexist with agencies internal codes and will initially be applied to Federal buildings.
POC: Bruce Bargmeyer
- Status: Standard has completed public review and comments have been adjudicated.
Barriers: Representatives of GSA and DoD(Environment) voiced concerns and requested additional review subsequent to the public review. Their comments are now being adjudicated. Of major concern to some is that there are no plans for a central, national facility registration system, so that all unique facility identification numbers would be issued from one source.
Next Steps: Prepare a final draft for approval by the FWG and presentation to the Standards Working Group.
POC: Bill Blake
- Status: Adjudicating public comments
Barriers: Comments received were actually other standards. Need to determine whether to incorporate new information from those standards.
Next Steps: Prepare a final draft for approval by the FWG and presentation to the Standards Development Group in Early 1999.
POC: David Horner
- Status: The standard has completed public review with no comments.
Next Steps: Standard should be forwarded to the Coordination Group and Steering Committee in early 1999.
POC: Bruce Bargmeyer
- Status: The project team has developed a draft standard.
Barriers: The scope of the standard was defined very broadly and it has become difficult to manage expeditiously. The project team also felt it did not have many GIS users represented.
Next Steps: Standard should be forwarded to the Coordination Group and Steering Committee in 1999.
POC: Bill Bergen
- Status: Currently out for public review and expected to be completed in March 2000.
- Status: Proposal has gone out for public review.
Barriers: No one has volunteered to lead the development effort.
Goal 4 - Build relationships among organizations to support the continuing development of the NSDI.
Objective: Continue to build relationships that will broaden the participation and scope of FGDC standards and, ultimately, the NSDI.
- Action: None identified
Objective: Expand our membership list to include state and local governments.
- Action: Participation in regional conferences.
Barriers: Did not follow through with this action.
Objective: Expand liaison and outreach activities to State and local governments and the private sector.
- Action: Request Participation from NACo Members. The FWG formally requested technical members from NACo to develop and review the Utilities and Environmental Hazards Standard.
- Results: Mr. Dick Klusmeyer from Adams County Hwy. Dept has become a member of the FWG.
Status: NACo representative has attended one meeting.
Barriers: The distance from Adams County to Washington, DC.
Next Steps: Continue to seek members from outside the federal government.