Florida GIS Coordination Effort Featured on govtech.com

Government Technology has a feature article this week on the GIS Strategic Plan effort in Florida.

The article, Come Together, Right Now, notes that the eight-storm strong hurricane seasons of 2005 and 2005 brought the need for GIS coordination to the fore among the state's emergency management community.

In Florida, post-storm data analysis illustrated how better statewide coordination of geospatial information during the hurricanes likely would have saved more lives and enhanced emergency managers' efforts to evacuate part of the state's 19,500 square miles of coastal zone. The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) initially took the lead in formulating a statewide GIS strategic plan.

'Our director, Craig Fugate, has a pretty simple charge: In the absence of leadership, become one,' said Richard Butgereit, GIS administrator of the FDEM."

The story is also noted in All Points Blog today. Adena highlights the role that the NSGIC Fifty States Coordination Criteria play in the discussion.

The fact that a sidebar highlights the rubrick shows what NSGIC is doing to push forward on its Fifty States Initiative, that is, to develop coordination and ideally a state coordinator in all 50 states. I'm not sure if NSGIC publishes rankings, but if you want to help push your state forward you might want to see how well it does meeting the listed requirements.

In fact, though NSGIC doesn't always highlight state-against-state competition, the results of the Fifty-States Survey are published in an annual State Summaries collection.

National Research Council Study on Land Parcel Data

The National Academies Press has announced a pre-publication release of a report on taking a national approach to creating and maintaining a parcel information.

A Committee on Land Parcel Databases was brought together. It included county, state and federal officials and representatives from academia and the private sector. The Committee reviewed previous studies and concluded that "complete national land parcel data is necessary, timely, technically feasible, and affordable."

The report includes nine recommendations to reach the goal of national land parcel data. What follows is my interpretation of these recommendations, based on a first reading of the report's executive summary. Further study may show that I have missed some nuances, but let this be a starting point.

1. There should be federal/national coordinators and further study should determine where best to place that responsibility in the federal government.
2. There needs to be a better understanding of the role of parcel data in the collection and maintenance of several related framework data sets.
3. The federal government should develop a "single, comprehensive, and authoritative" geospatial data set of federal lands.
4. A business plan for land parcel data should be created at a national level.
5. There should be a land parcel data coordinator for tribal trust lands.
6. There should be an effort to better integrate Census Bureau geospatial data, and potentially Title 13 data, into the national land parcel data effort.
7. There should be state-level land parcel data coordinators, integrated with the NSGIC Fifty States Initiative.
8. There should be a funding plan to assist local governments in data collection and maintenance and to make better use of existing federal funding.
9. Federal funding to state and local governments for geospatial projects should be dependent upon those governments making basic parcel data -- not detailed property ownership data -- available in the public domain.
   

The report -- "National Land Parcel Data: A Vision for the Future" -- is available for sale from the National Academies. A free PDF Executive Summary is available. The final published copy is expected later this summer.

I predict that this will be the subject of some continuing discussion.