NGAC Looking To Many Sources for Input…Including the Consumer

I had a chance to hear Ann Hale Miglarese, the newly minted chairperson of the National Geospatial Advisory Comittee (NGAC). She provided the nominal mission of NGAC as follows: The committee will provide advice and provide recommendations on federal geospatial policy and management issues and provide a forum to convey views representative of partners in the geospatial community. This committee will help provide advice and perspectives from a broad range of our partner orgs as we continue to develop new ways to utilize geospatial information for the benefit of the public.

But Ms. Miglarese had a very interesting observation: "In the future, we need to find a way to partner with companies that are spending $400 or $500 million dollars a year," referring to Microsoft, Google, and NAVTEQ. "What we have done for years and years are now coming down to the consumer. That casual consumer will drive many of our policies. The National Geospatial Advisory Committee is a place where that dialog can occur and about what we should be debating and how to grow the NSDI."

Homeland Security Data Model and GDM-O-Matic

At the ESRI FedUC, it was discussed that version 2.0 of the Department of Homeland Security’s geospatial data model (GDM) is a major rework of the model. It eliminates overlaps of the re-cast model into flattened more approachable form and incorporates hundreds of comments from users across the modeling community. Also ongoing is the development of version 2 of an Oracle 10g Spatial implementation model with an expected release in March 2008. More information can be found at the FGDC website.

In addition, DHS is developing an implementation model translation tool with the unusual name of GDM-O-Matic. GDM-O-Matic is a simple tool to construct format-compliant XML files and a standardized way to look at geospatial data to compel geospatial data sharing. It was designed to be a transformation tool that would understand intricacies of the DHS GDM. It also enables NGA-authorized users to load Homeland Security Infrastructure Program (HSIP) data directly into a GDM-compliant geodatabase.