Issue Brief: Technology for the 21st Century

At a New Years Eve dinner with family and friends, we all were struck by the advances in technology since New Years day in 2000. Wasn’t it just nine short years ago, at the same dinner party, that we wondered if financial systems, street lights, elevators and all else computer-controlled would fail at the stroke of midnight?

We live in a different world now. A world where my sons know what Google Earth is before they learn to ride a bicycle without training wheels. A world where a smartphone lets us know if any friends are close by. A world where we publish maps for anyone to consume via the Internet. A world in which we pretty much must be connected to the rest of the world and in which business requires electrons.

Except, some of the world isn’t as connected as the rest. Many communities, urban and rural, are still dial-up environments. Many communities do not have the telecommunications infrastructure to substantially access the financial, education, health, safety and environmental applications that government and others provide.

This is why NSGIC, as part of its advocacy agenda series, has published a paper outlining why we need to advocate for alignment of 21st Century Technologies. The paper identifies two key issues for this year:

• First, a core commitment to mapping broadband availability as outlined in new Federal Communications Commissions guidelines.
• Second, the implementation of the eGovernment Act principles.

Ensuring the success of these initiatives is key to a successful implementation of the Spatial Data Infrastructure as the state GIS Coordinators of NSGIC see it. Without a strong backbone and commitment to advances in next generation technology we cannot move beyond simple advocacy for spatial data and toward the real policy problem solving that we know spatial technologies can open.