Geospatial One-Stop

Geospatial One-Stop

J. Milo Robinson
Federal Geographic Data Committee
590 National Center Reston, VA 20192

Abstract
Electronic government (e-government) is one of the five elements of the President’s Management Agenda and Performance Plan, because it’s critical to meeting today’s expectations for government. Geospatial Information One Stop is one of 24 Federal egovernment initiatives. The vision of Geospatial One-Stop is “To spatially enable the delivery of government services.” It builds upon the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). NSDI promotes sharing of geospatial data throughout all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and the academic community. Geospatial One-Stop is will accelerate the implementation of the NSDI. This paper will present an overview of the Geospatial One-Stop effort, a status report on the progress made to date and highlights ways in which Geospatial Information Technology Association members, as well as others, can participate in the initiative.

Introduction
As technology is increasingly becoming an important part of every day life, and as everything is somewhere, we turn to electronic maps to help us get to where we are going. If you are going to an unfamiliar location, do you use an Internet based map service like MapQuest to help you? The fuel behind these services is geospatial data. Unlike traditional fuel, geospatial data is not depleted when used in information engines, but can be reused countless times. The key to this reuse and sharing of geospatial data is standards. Like a log that doesn’t fit into a fireplace it must first be cut and split into the right size, geospatial data must packaged and delivered in a well-known-way, with useful well known content. The simple goal of Geospatial One-Stop is to establish a portal to deliver basic geospatial data, framework data, over the Internet in a well-known-way using a national framework data content standard.

This paper will describe the Geospatial Information One-Stop initiative and its current status. It will provide background on the development of the initiative, the organizational structure of the initiative, explain details on the five work modules, and lastly point out opportunities for participation.

Background
There is a long history of mapping activities within the United States. The Department of Interior has played a major role in the nation’s mapping. In particular, the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) has developed a topographic map series that covers the nation and which contain an estimated 5.5 trillion bits of information. As computer information technology has advanced, USGS has lead efforts to develop new concepts for mapping that lead to the emergence of the NSDI and the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).

Currently, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provides policy guidance and coordination for spatial data activities to Federal agencies through OMB Circular No. A- 16. Spatial data refers to information about places or geography, and has traditionally been shown on maps. The Circular was first issued in 1953 and the third revision was recently released in August 2002.

OMB Circular A-16 affirms and describes the NSDI as the technology, policies, standards, human resources, and related activities necessary to acquire, process, distribute, use, maintain, and preserve spatial data. The vision of NSDI is to assure that spatial data from multiple sources (federal, state, local, and tribal governments, academia, and the private sector) are available and easily integrated to enhance the understanding of our physical and cultural world. The Circular establishes the FGDC as the interagency coordinating body for NSDI-related activities. While much has been accomplished to implement the NSDI, there is still much to be done to have current and accurate geographic data readily available across the country.

Opportunities to advance NSDI through e-government are encouraged in Circular A-16. The President’s Management agenda, announced in the summer of 2001, included expanding e-government as one of the five government wide agenda items. Furthermore, expanding e-government is a key enabler for many of the other Presidential initiatives. Later that same summer, OMB created a task force to identify priorities for the egovernment initiative. The task force identified 24 high-payoff e-government projects as part of the action plan for e-government. The Geospatial Information One-Stop is one of these projects and is included in the Government-to-Government (G2G) portfolio. The Geospatial One-Stop will provide access to the Federal government’s spatial data at a single location while helping to make other government held spatial data more accessible.

Geospatial Information One-Stop
In general terms, Geospatial One-Stop builds upon and accelerates the implementation of the NSDI as expressed in OMB Circular A-16. More specifically the FGDC identified five Geospatial One-Stop work modules for completion in an 18-24 month time frame.

The work modules or tasks consist of:

Framework Standards Development
Inventory and Document Existing Data
Inventory and Document Planned Data Collection Activities
Interoperable Web Services & Portal Design
Portal Implementation

These modules build upon existing NSDI capabilities, while supporting one-stop access to the Federal government’s geospatial data assets. Geospatial One-Stop is designed to benefit all spatial data users including Federal, state, local, and other governments, as well as private citizens, by providing a common, consistent source of geospatial data.

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

Contact	Agency	Theme	email	phone
Robin Fegeas	US Geological Survey	Orthoimagery	rfegeas@usgs.gov	703-648-4511
John Crowe	USGS	Elevation	mailto:jcrowe@usgs.gov	703-648-5596
Bob Pierce	USGS	Hydrography	rrpierce@usgs.gov	770-903-9113
Ed McKay	National Geodetic Survey	Geodetic Control	ed.mckay@noaa.gov	301-713-3191
Carol Brandt	Dept.of Transportation	Transportation	carol.brandt@bts.gov	202-366-6662
Fred Broome	Census	Government Units	frederick.r.broome@census.gov	301-457-1056
Don Bulher	Burea of Land Management	Cadastral	dbuhler@sc.blm.gov	202-452-7781

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.

The Geospatial One-Stop portal will not store or maintain geospatial data; instead it will link users to the geospatial information that they are seeking using the available geospatial web services. Thus, spatial data and services are distributed among heterogeneous systems. Spatial data is maintained by the agency or organization that is responsible for the data or the service they provide.

The portal will build upon the NSDI Clearinghouse Network. While the Clearinghouse allows users to discover what data is available, the portal will go a step further and allow users to link to the data that is available through standards based web services. It is envisioned that users will be able visually see the spatial data through WMS and access the data through WFS and WCS. Users will be able to know the source of the spatial data through the metadata associated with it. This concept for the portal is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Geospatial One-Stop Portal Concept Diagram
Using the WMS, a portal user is given a visual image or map of the spatial data. This map can be combined simultaneously with additional themes using WMS to display and superimpose various sources of spatial data. Users will then have access to spatial data through WFS that facilitates access to vector data and through WCS that facilitates access to raster data.

If each agency or organization has a different way of describing their spatial data with different access methods, then it’s complex and costly to build a portal to all the potential sources of spatial data. Instead Geospatial One-Stop focuses upon open standards and specifications to build a cost effective portal that will provide one-stop access to Federal data assets as well as other standardized data assets. Currently the initial portal development is planned as part of an OGC Technology Insertion Project. With an initial portal deployment scheduled for May 2003.

Opportunities for Participation
In general opportunities for participation abound. The framework standards will need review. If you are interested in standards, please contact the theme leads identified in Table 1. In regard to implementing Web Mapping Services there will be on going efforts through OGC. In particular, consider participating in the OGC Call for Communities (ip.opengis.org/cfc/). In addition, the FGDC Cooperative Agreements Program provides opportunities to engage in NSDI activities (www.fgdc.gov/funding/funding.html) including web mapping. Initial Geospatial One-Stop portal deployment is scheduled for May 2003. Once the initial portal is deployed comments and suggestion for its improvement will be needed. Lastly, keep abreast of Geospatial One-Stop activities and participation opportunities at the Geospatial One-Stop home page (www.geo-onestop. gov).

Futute Directions
Geospatial One-Stop has great potential to advance the NSDI. The initiative takes a major step in moving toward a standards based geospatial web services for the Internet. Its focus is on framework themes, but the method and approach is equally valid for other themes of spatial data. OMB Circular A-16 identifies 27 additional themes beside the seven framework themes. The initiative accelerates a trend away from past practices toward future practices that result in more effective, efficient sharing of spatial data, and this trend is. This trend, highlighted in Table 2,is built upon the ability to use a common set of standardized technology components.

Table 2 Past and Future Trends in Spatial Data

Past	Future
Human request handling	Automated ad-hoc requests in near real time
File Transfer	Data and mapping via web services
Disparate content	Common framework content and with extensions
Proprietary formats	Neutral encoding
Little adherence to standards	Standardized data
Data comes as is	Data comes as user wants

The future direction is to make spatial data more available for use in information engines, so that it can be reused countless times and for multiple applications. The key to this reuse and sharing of geospatial data is standards. The Geospatial One-Stop will package and deliver spatial data using open standards and specifications. It will begin the transition to spatially enabled e-government in a broader way–to make government more responsive and to better serve its citizens.

References

FGDC, 2002, “Geospatial One-Stop Portal Concept” gai.fgdc.gov/portal/concept.doc

FGDC, 1997, “Framework Introduction and Guide” www.fgdc.gov/framework/frameworkintroguide/

OMB Federal Enterprise Architecture Program Management Office (FEA-PMO), 2002, “Component Based Architecture (Guidance and Recommendations) White Paper Working Draft Version 1.3” www.feapmo.gov

OMB, 2002, “Circular No.A-16 Revised, Coordination of Geographic Information, and Related Spatial Data Activities” www.whitehouse.gov/omb/circulars/a016/a016_rev.html

OMB, 2002, “E-Government Strategy” www.feapmo.gov/resources/e-gov_strategy.pdf

OMB, 2001, “The President’s Management Agenda” www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2002/mgmt.pdf