Oregon Framework Coordinator Position

The State of Oregon has posted the job announcement for its Framework Coordinator position (reports directly to the Statewide GIS Coordinator). Salary and qualification information is contained in the job announcement. Complete applications must be received by 5:00pm (Pacific Daylight Time) on Feb. 14, 2008, and application materials can be found here.

NOTE: The Oregon Department of Administrative Services does not offer visa sponsorships. Within three days of hire, all applicants will be required to complete the US Department of Justice form I-9, confirming authorization to work in the United States.

A New Census Atlas

The US Census Bureau has published what it is calling its "first comprehensive atlas in more than 80 years."

The new Census Atlas of the United States includes map presentations of a variety of demographic factors from the 2000 Census. And there are comparisons with earlier data. The image at used here, for example, is a reproduction from Scribner's Statistical Atlas of the United States (1883).

Most of the maps are at the national level, with some detailed maps for metropolitan areas and major cities.

This is a coffee-table style of book -- large format, with 300 pages and almost 800 maps. The Atlas is available on-line in PDF format and can be purchased on-line (for your favorite state GIS Coordinator, perhaps?) for $165.

Winter 2008 NSGIC Newsletter Now Available

The Winter 2008 Edition of NSGIC News (PDF) is now available.

This edition of the (usually) quarterly NSGIC newsletter includes, among other things, a recap of the 2007 NSGIC Outstanding Service Awards, a preview of the 2008 NSGIC Midyear meeting, details about an effort to preserve our digital data heritage and an introduction to the idea of "Pecha Kucha."

This NSGIC News newsletter, and past editions, is available from the Newsletters page of the NSGIC web site. Feel free to share these with your own local GIS communities.

By the way, have you any items that you think should go in the NSGIC newsletter or on this blog? Drop a comment below and we'll talk.

The Roster for the NGAC Has Been Officially Released

A number of NSGIC members, and many NSGIC Friends, are among 28 individuals named today to serve on the new National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC). The NGAC membership was announced (PDF) by Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today.

Fourteen members represent the private sector, nonprofits, or Academia:

• Sean Ahearn, Hunter College, City University of New York;
• Allen Carroll, National Geographic Society;
• David Cowen, University of South Carolina;
• Jack Dangermond, Environmental Systems Research Institute;
• Kass Green, The Alta Vista Company;
• David Maune, Dewberry;
• Anne Hale Miglarese, Fugro EarthData, Inc.;
• Charles Mondello, Pictometry International;
• Kim Nelson, Microsoft Corporation;
• Matthew O’Connell, GeoEye;
• John Palatiello; Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors;
• G. Michael Ritchie, Photo Science;
• David Schell, Open Geospatial Consortium; and
• Christopher Tucker, IONIC Enterprise

Another 14 members represent government agencies:

• Rizwan Ahmed, State of Louisiana;
• Timothy M. Bennett, NativeView;
• Michael Byrne, State of California;
• Donald Dittmar, Waukesha County, WI;
• Dennis Goreham, State of Utah;
• Randall L. Johnson, Metropolitan Council, St. Paul, MN;
• Randy Johnson, Hennepin County, MN;
• Jerry Johnston, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency;
• Barney Krucoff, District of Columbia;
• Timothy Loewenstein, Buffalo County, NE;
• Zsolt Nagy, State of North Carolina;
• Jay Parrish; State of Pennsylvania;
• Gene Schiller, Southwest Florida Water Management District; and
• Steven Wallach, U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

According to Secretary Kempthorne, the committee "will help provide advice and perspectives from a broad range of our partner organizations as we continue to develop new ways to utilize geospatial information for the benefit of the public."

The NGAC is an advisory committee, formed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and is charged with "providing recommendations on effective management of Federal geospatial programs." In particular, development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).

NSGIC took a closer look at the NGAC in the Summer/Fall 2007 issue of NSGIC News (PDF).

Latest FGDC Newsletter Released

The Federal Geographic Data Committee has released its Winter 2007/2008 Newsletter (PDF).

The newsletter includes a detailed article about the late Carol Brandt, who was awarded the first-ever NSGIC Dedicated Service Award in 2007.

There are also articles on using Web Services to deliver framework data, the 10th Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference, the Fifty States Initiative, Geospatial One-Stop, the buzz about metadata in Virginia, and several Tribal Government GIS success stories.

Update on the Scribbled ZIP Map

We noted with some aesthetic pleasure last year the "ZIPScribble" map created by Robert Kosara. Now we find further joy in a Google Earth visualization of that scribble that an enterprising KMLer has created. In fact, said KML jockey -- James of barnabu.co in the UK -- has made an animated KML ZIPScribble that, well, scribbles the ZIPs!

I'm not sure what this means for the NSDI, but it is fun. (And found via Google Earth Blog)

GIS 2.0?

What should we call it when we are seeing crowd-sourcing and Creative Commons licensing in geospatial data distribution?

Case in point: the folks at Zillow have released shapefile versions of the neighborhood boundaries that they use in their geo-enabled online real estate service. Why? They say it is "to allow people to use and contribute to our growing database." In fact, they explicitly invite users to add to the collection and post those additions for eventual integration into Zillow's on-line offerings.

Zillow's Drew Myers made the announcement on the Zillow Blog. He noted the large challenge of creating boundaries for more than 7,000 neighborhoods, but made clear that Zillow hopes to gain even more knowledge from this release.

So, after all this work, why are we giving this data away for free? Here at Zillow, we’re all about transparency — we think a freely available and totally transparent nationwide data-set of neighborhoods will result in some great innovation that we’re excited to check out. Real estate is local — and neighborhoods are a great way to look at real estate on a local level. We’re particularly excited to see what companies and individual techies can come up with, who may not have the budget to license this data from other data providers.

The data are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license, meaning that users are free to use and share the data, as long as Zillow is credited. And users are free to "remix" the data, provided that they publish it using the same or a compatible license.

Before you get too excited, be aware that the data is limited to major cities and is not available for all states. (why is no city in Delaware sufficiently important?!?) The data for Washington DC, for example, does not extend to the suburban neighborhoods outside of the District lines.

But that's why Zillow has made this release. They want to see this data extend and they are setting it free (with appropriate metadata, I see) to see how it grows.

(Via James Fee GIS Blog)

2007 on the NSGIC Blog

The NSGIC Blog received 5,401 visits during 2007, with 8,107 different "page views" according to data collected via Google Analytics. There were 75 different posts covering topics ranging from NSGIC meetings and business to the latest on-line map mash-ups.

The large majority of visitors came from within the United States, though there were a handful of visitors from Canada, the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Spain and a few other nations. There were visits from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, but the largest number of visits was from Pennsylvania, followed by Ohio, Delaware, Wisconsin, and California.

More than half of the page views were of the NSGIC Blog main page, suggesting that most visitors read the top few blog posts that were available at the time of their visit. Among individual blog posts that were viewed directly, some the most visited were:

• Former NSGIC Keynote Speaker Matt Miszewski to Step Down, a post about the resignation of the Wisconsin CIO who had been a keynote speaker at the 2006 NSGIC Annual Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.
• How Remote is Your Sensed Data?, a post about geospatial analysis using "found" geodata.
• "Part of our Ecosystem", a post about recent discussions of the growth of Google and other data visualization tools.
• Transportation for the Nation, an overview of the NSGIC effort to craft a national transportation data approach.
  

The NSGIC Blog has been active since early in 2006. NSGIC leadership placed a focus on the blog starting in 2007 and various members of the NSGIC Communications Committee have started trying to add posts on a more regular basis.

There are several different ways to take advantage of the NSGIC Blog. Readers can subscribe via an RSS feed of posts and/or via an e-mail subscription service that provides a daily digest of any new posts.

It is Time to Register for the 2008 NSGIC Midyear Conference

Registration is now open for NSGIC's 2008 Midyear Conference: RIGGING FOR ACTION.

National States Geographic Information Council members will gather at the The Doubletree Annapolis Hotel from March 9 to 12 with partners from the private sector and from federal and local government agencies. They will discuss a wide range of topics including state GIS Coordination efforts and national initiatives to create and maintain a National Spatial Data Infrastructure.

Registration is available on-line or via download of the official registration brochure. Sponsorship opportunities are still available.