GeoData Policy

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Federal Geographic Data Committee’s (FGDC) 2008 Annual Report is now available online.

The report includes remarks by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne at the ESRI User Conference in San Diego, Calif., on August 4, 2008:

… My vision for the future is that with the click of a mouse, decisionmakers and land managers…will have access to maps that Lewis and Clark could never have imagined-

• Maps that include up-to-date digital imagery of the landscape.
• Maps that overlay population data, land use, wildlife habitat, and other forms of geographic information, to paint a more complete picture of our planet.

Information is power, and this information will be a powerful tool in the hands of policy makers, land managers, and scientists in the United States and around the world.

Finally, the Department of the Interior will continue to partner with other countries, the importance of which I saw first-hand in December when I led the U.S. delegation to the World Summit of the Group on Earth Observations in South Africa. Seventy-three nations were there. The other leaders and I left that summit united in the belief that the world must embrace the idea of science without borders, achieve global data compatibility, and have full access to coordinated Earth observations. We agreed to focus on helping countries to better share data from their weather satellites, ocean monitoring buoys, earthquake sensors, and other geospatial technology. …

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The National Map 2.0 Tactical Plan – “Toward The (Integrated) National Map”  

The purpose of this document is to serve as a guide for the near-term implementation of The National Map.  While the Tactical Plan is primarily intended to serve as an internal U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) planning document, we are making it publicly available to the many partners contributing to implementation of the plan and to users of the information contained in The National Map. As plans, available resources, and technology change, this document will change through a formal change management process.  Internal and external comments and suggestions are welcome and instructions for providing comments are located at the url listed above.  Link: www.usgs.gov/ngpo/tnm_tacticalplan.html.

Mark Naftzger
Acting Director, National Geospatial Program Office  

SAN DIEGO, CA — Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced at the ongoing ESRI Conference that his direction to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to make its 35-year Landsat satellite image archive available over the Internet for free marks the commitment of the department to breaking down information barriers.

“With the click of a mouse, scientists, government officials and land managers will be able to see the changes in the earth’s landscape at any point in the past three and a half decades,” he told the conference on Saturday. Some 14,500 participants are gathered this week in San Diego for the ESRI conference.

“This is a great contribution,” said ESRI President Jack Dangermond. “It will open up new avenues for geographic understanding around the globe. It represents the democratization of digital data and empowers people everywhere with rich information.”

The USGS, an Interior agency, expects to have the full archive online by February 2009. The Department of the Interior has the responsibility for coordinating the geospatial activities of the entire federal government through the Federal Geographic Data Committee.

For full text of the press release, visit: http://www.doi.gov/news/08_News_Releases/080804.html

A technical announcement of the Landsat archive’s availability can be found at http://landsat.usgs.gov/images/squares/USGS_Landsat_Imagery_Release.pdf

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior News, August 4, 2008

  

…Professor Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, and Dr. Mark Myers, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), today signed an agreement creating a cooperative framework for how the two Federal agencies will together ensure the preservation and access of the massive earth imagery and geospatial data resources currently archived by the USGS at its Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota….

Full news release, dated 6.13.2008, can be found at:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1960&from=rss_home