#NSGICMidyear: Congressional Research Service Briefing
Paul Schirle and Jan Johansson of Congressional Research Service (arm of the Library of Congress) spoke to us about that organization. It was founded in 1914 and has about 700 people who offer nonpartisan info in timely fashion. (Sometimes read live on TV via Blackberry!) We support Congress throughout a bill’s life cycle. Sometimes we can’t be authoritative so we don’t provide an answer.
CRS launched a GIS in 2009 to do spatial analysis for Congress (from simple to complex). Congress likes geospatial analysis because it helps them understand, reveals consequences/impacts that might be otherwise concealed, helps them relate their work back to their constituencies.
Some examples of what CRS does (faked up to maintain confidentiality): A bill has geography but no map. We can overlay data on a map to find out what counties are impacted. We can bring in data from databases. Ranking, then mapping geographies.
Challenges CRS faces: hundreds of requests, tight deadlines, unfamiliar datasets, unique questions, deal with all levels of geography, comparing domestic and international data.
Advantages of state and local data to Congress:
- Get best, most up do date data, details of creations, etc.
- Statewide clearninghouses with standardized data is immediately useful
- State Clearinghouses can help us: help us find it, assure authoritativeness, make it easier to do nationwide analysis, preservation and maintenance of data
Conclusions:
- Congress doesn’t know to ask about parcel level data, but there are issues of privacy
- Clearinghouses are important to us and thus to you since they enable better decisions
- We want to connect to your authoritative data for redoing analyses over time
Q&A (paraphrased)
Q: How can you help us advocate to Congress.
A: Not really our role; we respond to Congresses requests. But recent reports (GIS Issues and Challenges (pdf, Issues Regarding a National Land Parcel Database (pdf) are helping them realize the value. (Szolt Nagy: with this info you can tell your Congresspeople the value of data to his or her work!)
Q: How do you know when data is authoritative? How do you/we archive for 15 years when technology changes?
A: Authoritativeness is really hard - we look at: methodology to create it, “test the data against itself,” have our specialists have a look. Also look to metadata, back to the source person - though this is time consuming. Try to avoid aggregators (sorry Geocommons!) Archiving is a challenge - we hope to find solutions so we can make a case that Fed should archive it when states can’t anymore. See also: GeoMapp archiving project.
