NSGIC: National Geospatial Programs Office (NGPO) Update

The “one month old director” of NGPO is Bill Carswell. He reports to Karen Siderelis. NGPO includes FGDC, TMN, GOS, NGTOC, and other things.

Ivan De Loatch, Staff Director at FGDC attempted to explain the Geospatial Line of Business. He noted his information was pre-approval and could change. I confess not to following much of it. But here’s what I did get:

This is an Ofice of Management and Budget (OMB) effort to try to consolidate business/technology efforts to save time/‘money. Others (since 04) financial management, grants management, human resources, etc. Geospatial is really horizontal.

Key Recommendations
- Enhance FGDC roles and function
- Establish National Geospatial Coordination Council (get non-fed partners in NSDI)
- Improve management of Federal Geospatial Programs

According to DeLoatch, once recommendations are made later this month, OMB can:

accept all of the recommendations
accept some of them
forget the whole thing

The sense I get from speaking with folks here is that they will accept at least some of the recommendations.