OMB: Major Fed Agencies Must Name Senior Geo Official

The Office of Management and Budget in a memo dated March 3 (last Friday) will require major federal agencies to designate a senior official to oversee geospatail activities. (The memo was provided to GCN, which broke the story.) The hope is that having such individuals will help agencies take better advantage of geospatial investments and reduce costs.

The individuals may be CIOs and must be at least at the assistant secretary level. Further, the appointments must be made within 45 days. A similar position was required to oversee privacy issues.

Two things strike me about this move:

(1) What prompted it? Perhaps the situation at USGS? Perhaps the added funding for geospatial in the new budget? Maybe the framework recently designated for DHS?

(2) These individuals could be key in getting many of the federal programs to “work for them.” I say this considering how NSGIC (essentially a group of individuals doing this sort of work for their states) offers advice to its members and to the federal government. I’ll even go so far as to suggest NSGIC invite these individuals to see how it works.