Geospatial One-Stop
Project Governance and Organization
Mark Forman, Associate Director for Information Technology and E-Government, OMB,
is leading the e-government effort. Scott Cameron, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Performance and Management, Department of the Interior, is the Managing Partner for
Geospatial One-Stop. Tony Frater, OMB, is the G2G Portfolio Manger. As of November
2002, the Geospatial One-Stop effort is lead by Acting Executive Director Myra
Bambacus. Much of the initial staff work on the project has been performed by the
FGDC. In the fall of 2002 a project management office was established and a project
management team established as shown in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 Geospatial One Stop Management Chart
Scott Cameron established a Geospatial One-Stop Board of Directors to advise him on
managing the project. The Board consists of about one-third Federal agency
representatives and about two-thirds state, local and tribal government representatives.
This composition ensures strong state, local and tribal government voice in this G2G
initiative. State, local and Tribal governments currently include representatives from:
- National States Geographic Information Council
- National Association of State CIOs
- Western Governors’ Association
- National Association of Counties
- National League of Cities
- International City/County Managers Association
- Intertribal GIS Council
Federal partners in the initiative:
- Department of the Interior
- Department of Commerce
- Department of Transportation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
- Federal Emergency Management Agency
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of Defense
Of these Federal partners only four are on the Geospatial One-Stop Board of Directors:
Interior, Commerce, Transportation, and NASA.
The project management structure consists of an outreach coordinator, a project
management staff, task leaders, and a Deputy Director. The FGDC provides critical
support to the initiative by supporting the tasks and project management office.
Framework Standards Development
One of the important tasks identified in Geospatial One-Stop is the development of
framework data content standards. The FGDC has identified seven themes of geospatial
data as being widely used and branded these as framework. These seven themes are
Geodetic Control, Elevation, Orthoimagery, Transportation, Hydrography, Cadastral and
Government Units. Framework is common-use data with a minimal level of attribution to
promote re-use, exchange, and linkage with ancillary attribute data. It represents the
intersection of requirements or the common requirements. Theme leads have been
identified to facilitate the development of each standard and they are shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Framework Standard Theme Leads
To have a national standard, as opposed to a Federal standard, the standards process was
convened under the American National Standards Institute accredited InterNational
Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS). The INCITS L1 Technical
Committee L1, the Geographic Information Systems Subcommittee, is the venue for
developing these standards. By using the L1 Technical Committee, all sectors can
participate in the standards development process, because L1 membership is open to all
not just Federal agencies. The standards process benefits from having the standards
expertise of the L1 Technical Committee. It also benefits from having a strong synergy
with international standards activities through the L1 committee.
Each framework data content standard will include a data model developed in Unified
Modeling Language (UML), and an encoding in eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
using Geography Markup language (GML) a dialect of XML. The Geospatial One-Stop
project is working closely with the Open GIS Consortium (OGC). Plans are to prototype
the transportation standard in the up coming OGC Critical Infrastructure Protection
Initiative. This is an important step in validating, testing and improving the standard.
It is anticipated that additional themes will also be prototyped through a test implementation
of the standard using OGC interface specifications.
A call for participation in the Geospatial One-Stop standards effort was released in
summer of 2002. Standards teams have formed for each of the themes and standards
development activities are underway. The target date for completion of the standards is
September 2003.
Inventory and Document Existing and Planned Framework Data
Geospatial One-Stop will inventory existing Federal framework data using FGDC
metadata and place it in a registered FGDC Clearinghouse Node. Metadata is information
about data, such as content, source, vintage, accuracy, condition, projection, responsible
party, contact telephone number, method of collection, and other characteristics or
descriptions. Geospatial One-Stop will also promote similar inventories in the non-
Federal sectors. These metadata records will be available through the NSDI
Clearinghouse network providing a one-stop access to data held by Federal and non-
Federal agencies.
In addition, Geospatial One-Stop will inventory planned Federal framework data
collection efforts. This effort will allow state and local governments, who are
aggressively using the NSDI Clearinghouse network, to better coordinate data acquisition
strategies with the Federal government. The initiative will also encourage state and local
governments to identify their data collection plans.
These inventory activities are individual agency responsibilities. The target date for
completion is February 2003
Interoperable Web Services and Portal Development
In Geospatial One-Stop, web services form the modular infrastructure that enables the
development of a portal for one-stop access to federal framework data. Each of the
Federal agencies responsible for a framework theme needs to implement a web service
for their theme of responsibility. Technology specifications from OGC like Web Map
Server (WMS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Web Coverage Service (WCS) form the
basis for developing geospatial web services. These web services, using XML, provide a
flexible, yet standards based approach for providing spatial data over the Internet. Most
importantly, these spatial data services facilitate the sharing of geographic information
between different agencies and between disparate information systems. This improved
sharing is predicated upon using open standards and specifications. When the framework
standards from task one are complete, the content of these spatial web services will
conform to the content specified in the standard.
