Former NSGIC Keynote Speaker Matt Miszewski to Step Down

Wisconsin CIO Matt Miszewski has announced that he will leave his post after February, according to a story on governing.com (Wisconsin CIO Stepping Down).

Mr. Miszewski was a keynote speaker at the 2006 NSGIC Annual Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas. He told state GIS Coordinators there to "blow-up, rather than to think outside of, the box." he added that the goal should be a focus on the needs of the citizens.

Matt Miszewski is also a former president of the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO). The Governing story includes praise for his work from the Wisconsin secretary of the Department of Administration and a note that Mr. Miszewski is ready for new challenges in the private sector.

Photos from the 2006 NSGIC Conference

A handful of photos from the 2006 NSGIC Conference are posted to flickr in two photo sets.

One is focused entirely on the NSGIC Conference itself. The other is the result of a few short walks around downtown Little Rock, during breaks.

The former includes a few shots of the Peabody Ducks.

2006 NSGIC Conference: Day Five, Thursday, October 5

The fifth (and final) full day of a NSGIC conference is when you start to see who the most dedicated members are. After four long days of presentations and meetings, we are all tired, but we carry on because there are issues to discuss.

The morning started with a discussion of the FEMA Flood Map Modernization program and continued with an issues briefing by representatives of the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors (MAPPS).

After a break, I had the honor of making a scattershot, chaotic presentation on the many avenues of communication opened by blogging software, wikis, tags and other social networking tools. I demonstrated blogging by posting the Day Four report live form the podium. I have created a tag-list of sites I used as resources in putting that presentation together.

We finished the morning with the second part of the NSGIC business meeting. There were Achievement Awards given to Stu Kirkpatrick, of Montana, Milo Robinson, of the FGDC, Jill Saligoe-Simmel, of Indiana, Nathan Bentley, of Idaho, and Shelby Johnson, of Arkansas.

This meeting is also the point at which the outgoing NSGIC President hands-off to the incoming President. Missouri's Tony Spicci handed the ceremonial NSGIC President's Mug to Ohio's Stu Davis.

After lunch, we had a panel discussion on using GIS and spatial data to more effectively manage sales tax programs.

We finished the day, and the conference, with a state-member caucus at which we discussed several major issues that the group will work on for the coming year:

• Next steps in pursuing the National Spatial Data Infrastructure
• The need to have more state representation on the various committees of NSGIC
• The GIS Certification program
• The governance model for the NSDI
• The DHS Data Model
• Ways to effectively share data among different levels of government

It was a long, tough conference, but it has been another very successful conference. Thanks go out to our hosts in Little Rock, to the Conference Committee, and to all the folks from state, local and federal government, and our private sector partners, particularly our sponsors.

Next? Travel home.

2006 NSGIC Conference: Day Four, October 4

This is our report from day 4. To be honest you will find more complete analysis of the sessions on Adena Schutzberg's All Points Blog. She's probably the best note-taker, and certainly the best reporter, in the hall.

The keynote speaker for the fourth day of the 2006 NSGIC Conference was Shane Broadway, a State Senator here in Arkansas. Senator Broadway is a supporter of the use of geospatial data; he knows how useful good geospatial data can be. He urged us, though, to focus on the information our audience needs.

Senator Broadway reminded us that "legislators are visual learners." He suggested that we reach out to our legislators by developing geospatial information for them focused on issues that are important to them.

But he urged us to keep it simple: "Show us a map. Don’t show us how you made the map." I think that's good advice for any audience.

We had a short presentation from the Census Bureau about activities now starting to help get our states ready for the 2010 Census.

During our morning sessions, we discussed approaches to enterprise data sharing and heard examples from Ohio, Arkansas and Kentucky. We also saw a panel discussion on the notion of developing a "Transportation for the Nation" initiative to try for a national, integrated, transportation data collection.

After lunch, we heard detailed presentations from some of our major sponsors, including ESRI, Michael Baker, Jr., NASA, Woolpert, Places2Protect, and Digital Data Technologies.

We also focused on working with our Homeland Security and Public Safety Officials. We know that effective Homeland Safety efforts will depend on accurate and comprehensive geospatial data. To make that possible, GIS coordinators need to learn how to effectively work with these agencies. We discussed this in general and focused on the development of new "fusion centers" that serve as information integration and intelligence centers.

Finally, as is traditional, we had a short session on the importance of metadata.

2006 NSGIC Conference: Day Three, Tuesday, October 3

We started the third day of the NSGIC Conference with a keynote address by the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the state of Wisconsin, Matt Miszewski. Mr. Miszewski is the president of NASCIO --– the National Association of Chief Information Officers.

He spoke about the need to change the way we do things in information technology in government. He called for us to blow-up, rather than to think outside of, the box. Our goal, Mr. Miszewski argued, should be to focus on the needs of the citizens, rather than on the organizational structure, and strictures, of government. Adena Schutzberg also has a report on her All Points blog.

That was followed by a panel discussion focused on how to recruit a GIO -- Geographic Information Officer -- for a state. This focused on what the characteristics of an effective GIO are and included a discussion about where a GIO might best fit in a state government. Adena has a more in-depth report.

The balance of the morning was devoted to part one of the annual NSGIC business meeting. This included reports from the president and several of the standing committees. More reports and issue discussion will take place in the second part of the business meeting, on Thursday.

After lunch, there were sessions on unique state activities including GIS help desks, transportation data and high-resolution elevation data.

To end the day, we focused on the effort to get all fifty states up to a basic level of GIS Coordination: The Fifty States Initiative. All states were invited to take part in a survey looking at the extent to which they met several criteria considered to be key to statewide coordination. As Adena notes, the results of that survey suggest that we have some way to go, but we are making progress.

We also got updates from the federal government on changes to the USGS National Geospatial Programs Office and on the effort to create a federal Line of Business. I'll defer to Adena's take on these issues; she followed this more closely than I.

We finished with a dinner at the Clinton Presidential Library.

2006 NSGIC Conference: Day Two, Monday, October 2

Monday, October 2, was the first full-on day of the 2006 NSGIC Conference.

Never mind that our Sunday activities took all daylight hours, and more; the conference officially started with the Monday morning Keynote address. The speaker was Danny Sullivan, a local Little Rock minister and high school teacher and coach. He spoke, and spoke effectively, on leadership and teamwork.

Following that was the traditional roll call of the states, in which the lead delegates of each of the states presents the state's delegation and gives an overview, very briefly, of the major issues they face.

Don Cook, the founder of GDT (now part of TeleAtlas North America), has been a fixture at NSGIC Conferences for many years. He is a valuable corporate partner, and an active member. He has a habit of sitting right up front and taking a picture of every speaker. Toward the end of the parade of states, it became clear that one of us had to strike back. So I brought my camera up to the microphone with me.

After lunch, we heard a presentation on work at the federal level to create a Geospatial Support Task Force. This is an idea that has grown up in the wake of efforts to bring geospatial data to bear in emergency response efforts such as 9/11, the Challenger disaster, and the hurricanes of 2005.

The idea is to model the GIS task force on the other emergency response task forces that already exist. That is, to have the people needed to get the job done identified and trained, the equipment they need ready, and an approach in hand to handle any logistical problems. So that when a task force is needed, it can quickly get on scene and get to work.

One Task Force is now being built. Eventually there will be at least three, organized regionally.

Monday afternoon was also devoted to speeches by candidates for the NSGIC board of directors. And the whole group gathered on a stairway in the convention center to take a group portrait. There were also small group photos of the present board of directors, past presidents, and others who have been involved in NSGIC since its inception.

After a break, there was an in-depth discussion of work to create a national, and regular, program to collect aerial photography: known as Imagery for the Nation. This was followed by a panel discussion on how to provide quality assurance for large orthophoto and other data projects.

Following dinner, NSGIC leadership gathered with the leaders of some of the group's major sponsors to start a Corporate Leadership Council to help guide joint efforts to improve the use and sharing of geospatial data.

2006 NSGIC Conference: Day One, Sunday, October 1

My '"live-blogging" of the NSGIC conference won't be as immediate and impressive as I had hoped. Little Rock's Capitol Conference Center does not have public wifi. We checked on the availability of for-pay wifi, but no one wants to spend the more than $100 per day that that would cost.

As a result, I will take notes during the day and try to post updates to the NSGIC blog when I can get back to the hotel and its wifi system.

Day one, yesterday, was active. Meetings started at 8:30 a.m.. My first meeting -- on Ramona -- – was in the hotel, so I was able to post a report from that meeting. After that, the NSGIC board met for several hours before lunch.

In the afternoon, the state members of NSGIC met in caucus to discuss issues from the state perspective then joined with staff from USGS for a joint meeting. Partnerships between the states and USGS are key to meeting the objective of creating a National Spatial Data Infrastructure.

After dinner, there was a meeting of states that have received, and states hoping to apply for, a “Fifty States” grant from the federal government to support the development of effective statewide geospatial coordination programs. This meeting was packed; whether states get grants to support their efforts or not, all are interested in discussing the challenges of statewide coordination and sharing ideas and solutions.

That meeting, and Day One of the NSGIC Conference, ended at 9:00 p.m.

2006 NSGIC Conference: Ramona Steering Workgroup

Ramona is an on-line GIS data inventory tool established by NSGIC to provide way for States to take a standardized inventory of the GIS data holdings of state agencies, local governments and other partners.

A Ramona Steering Workgroup is being established as part of the Technical Issues Committee to oversee the operation of Ramona. The idea is to keep the system simple and useful and moving forward. The first meeting of the NSGIC Conference is intended to be a kick-off of the Ramona oversight group.

It will be important to make sure that the needs of federal agencies -- to discover data, and work more closely with state and local governments -- are met. There was a discussion of whether the committee should include a federal representative or if their contact should be through the federal liaison that works for NSGIC.

There was discussion of how to make sure that the system interacts well with state geospatial data clearinghouse systems. There are ways, and will be more in the future, to allow state Ramona administrators to customize parts of the system to meet their own needs.

There was a discussion of the need to increase training among state members to increase usage of the Ramona system. Bill Burgess was asked to create a standard training presentation for Ramona that state coordinators can use locally.

There was a suggestion for a one-page handout on Ramona designed to present Ramona from the perspective of local government, rather than from the state or federal level.

There was discussion of starting to push Ramona through URISA and other organizations that speak to local and county governments.

Zsolt Nagy noted that the Ramona system has helped in North Carolina in identifying local government GIS users to reach out to. Jill Saligoe-Simmel, of Indiana, has found that the Ramona system has been of great value to many private sector people.

Learon Dalby, of Arkansas, will be the chair of the new Ramona Steering Workgroup. Membership will be filled out during the conference.

Getting Ready for the 2006 NSGIC Conference

It's late Saturday night, in the Peabody Hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. Many NSGIC members are now getting ready for rest, gathering their strength for the start of the Annual NSGIC Conference tomorrow morning.

Well more than 200 are expected: state GIS coordinators, federal staff from USGS, Census and Homeland Security, academics, and private sector folks will spend the week discussing ways to improve the use and sharing of geospatial data.

We're not the only ones gathered at the Peabody this week. The Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) will also start a national meeting tomorrow. There's irony here; both organizations are involved in similar pursuits.

I hope to live-blog the NSGIC Conference. That will depend on wireless access in the State Conference Center, but I will try. I'll also use the week to try to turn this into more of a group-blog.

Do stay tuned.

Program for 2006 NSGIC Conference Now Available

The final on-site program for the 2006 NSGIC Conference (Fifty States for the Nation) is now available in PDF format.

NSGIC member states, federal partners, private sector partners, and others, will gather in Little Rock, Arkansas, from October 1 through 5 to discuss coordinating the use and sharing of spatial data on a national scale.