Thursday, August 6. 2009

Oregon Chooses Consortium including NAVTEQ for Broadband Mapping

There have been a few press releases about Connected Nation and ESRI winning broadband mapping contracts in Texas and Nevada. Yesterday Oregon chose a consortium headed by One Economy, including New America Foundation, BroadMap, NAVTEQ, and BCT Partners to do the work in that state. The same consortium has won bids in Hawaii, Guam and Samoa and includes use of crowdsourcing for the projects.

- Public Knowledge

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Stimulus at 08:47 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, August 3. 2009

USACE Contract Means $420K Stimulus Money to GIS Firm

This is one of the first, if not the first, GIS contract I've heard of resulting from the stimulus. Applied Data Consultants of Eau Claire WI will perform two projects for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: creating a GIS for parcels owned by the Omaha District COE near Glasgow, Montana and building a Web portal for the district's Natural Resource Division.

- Leader-Telegram

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Stimulus at 06:43 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, July 30. 2009

Report: State Stimulus Tracker Websites are Mediocre

Good Jobs First, a Washington research center released a report (pdf) on Wednesday that give mediocre grades to state efforts to be transparent about the flow and impact of federal stimulus dollars. The report found particular issues with coverage of job creation, contract awards and geographic location of projects. The average grade was 28 out of 100.

Among the findings: "states failed to use widely available Web tools, such as geographic information systems software." One suggested reason? Philip Mattera, the center's research director and the principal author of the study suggests site developers may not be aware of states' GIS capacity.

A statement from Deseret News notes that all states have access to a GIS template for mapping: "The most transparent state is Maryland, which uses software created by ESRI, a company specializing in geographical information systems that has contracts with all 50 states and provides a template to each state for free."

Some states did well: "Among the handful of exceptional states that scored 50 or higher were Maryland, which scored 80, and West Virginia, which earned a 60." Others, not so well: Illinois and Utah received "0." Maryland and California were noted using GIS to juxtapose "the geographic disbursement of funds with patterns of economic distress, such as county unemployment rates or foreclosure levels."

- NextGov

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Stimulus at 06:33 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, July 22. 2009

Does Every Rep Need to Provide a Map of Recovery Money in their District?

Monday Congressman Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., launched one, based on Google Maps My Map, that coveras New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. Uh, should this not be done at the state level or above? Just asking about duplicate efforts, something I thought we were trying to avoid in geospatial...

I'd also like to see the map note its data source and a link to a feed of that data. (Hopefully that's how this map is made, from authoritative data from the federal government?)

- New Mexico Independent
- Press release

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Stimulus at 07:21 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, July 17. 2009

Recovery.gov Updated: OpenLayers, OSM...

Recovery.gov's maps got an update on Thursday. There are still glitches (like overposting noted by the Philadelphia Business Journal) but it's a step. Per recovery.gov:

The Recovery Board is introducing a new mapping capacity that will give the American people a road map on stimulus spending. For users' convenience, we have placed our maps on a single landing page.

In the coming months, you will see state-of-the art mapping technologies allowing for even better tracking of spending. For now, use our enhanced State Map to track how much your state is receiving in stimulus funds. And take a look at our new Recipient Map detailing major awards to companies in your communities.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, Stimulus at 09:19 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, July 10. 2009

New York State Recovery Map

The map's here. Google Maps and Google Earth and Excel. Far different than that from other states.

Per a press release:

The map uses the State’s Critical Infrastructure Information System, a state-of-the-art geographic information system that utilizes hundreds of mapped data layers, in combination with Google Maps for map display and searches, as well as integration with Google Earth for more advanced searching and display. An easy-to-use Excel spreadsheet export function allows users to download the underlying data, enabling unlimited ways to examine, analyze and make use of project-specific information.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, Stimulus, Google Earth at 09:16 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |