Congressional Research Service Reports on Cadastral Data

The Congressional Research Services (CRS) which last month reported on GIS and geospatial data in general, has now released a report on "Issues Regarding a National Land Parcel Database." The report is posted as a PDF file on the web site of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), which often posts CRS reports.

According to the Summary section of the report, cadastre -- land parcel data -- is an important part of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure -- the NSDI (PDF).

Why a national land parcel database? The National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) observed that the federal government’s land parcel data is missing an arrangement for acquiring the detailed property-related data necessary to make decisions during times of emergency, such as a natural disaster. In addition to emergency response to disasters, other perceived needs for a national land parcel database include responding to the home mortgage foreclosure crisis, dealing with wildfires, managing energy resources on federal lands, dealing with the effects of climate change, and possibly more.

The report is by Peter Folger, a Specialist in Energy and Natural Resources Policy. It is dated July 22, 2009.

The Congressional Research Service serves Congress by providing research support to members of Congress and to congressional committees on issues they are considering. Given the two GIS-related reports released this summer, and the congressional oversight hearing on geospatial governance this week, it seems that those of us who follow GIS and spatial data issues are in for more interesting, and now high-level, discussions on how to create and maintain the NSDI.

Congressional Research Service Looks at GIS

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) has published a new report that looks at GIS, geospatial data, the NSDI, the FGDC, various geospatial coordination groups, and the challenges and opportunities that the geospatial community faces.

The report -- Geospatial Information and Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Current Issues and Future Challenges (PDF) -- includes a primer on GIS that would be useful in introducing GIS to new audiences, particularly among policy-level leaders. It also presents of examples of uses of geospatial information and explores the issues of geospatial data coordination, governance, and data sharing.

The report ends with a discussion subtitled "A National GIS?" which draws on the several proposals offered at the time of the presidential transition earlier this year. It concludes:

Congress may wish to consider how a national GIS or geospatial infrastructure would be conceived, perhaps drawing on proposals for these national efforts as described above, and how they would be similar to or differ from current efforts. Congress may also wish to examine its oversight role in the implementation of OMB Circular A-16, particularly in how federal agencies are coordinating their programs that have geospatial components. In 2004, GAO acknowledged that the federal government, through the FGDC and Geospatial One-Stop project, had taken actions to coordinate the government’s geospatial investments, but that those efforts had not been fully successful in eliminating redundancies between agencies. As a result, federal agencies were acquiring and maintaining potentially duplicative data sets and systems. Since then, it is not clear whether federal agencies are now successfully coordinating among themselves and measurably eliminating unnecessary duplication of effort. An additional challenge is how Congress oversees the federal geospatial enterprise when so much government information has a geospatial component, and many departments and agencies are actively involved in acquiring and using geospatial data for their own purposes.

The The Congressional Research Service provides research support to members of Congress and to congressional committees. It does not directly post its reports for the public, but other services, in this case the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), often post CRS reports.

The FAS web page that collects CRS reports includes this explanatory note:

The Congressional Research Service, a congressional support agency, does not make its publications directly available to the public online. The FAS collection of CRS reports indexed below primarily addresses national security, foreign policy and related topics. These reports are provided without CRS authorization as a public service.