And Now, the Rest of the CAP Grants...

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has announced the final awards in the Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP) grant series for 2009. The FGDC had earlier announced grant awards in most of the 2009 CAP grants categories.

Today's announcement was for grants in Categories 2 and 4, which both focus on improving the use and function of local, state and federal data-sharing tools.

Category 2: Behind the Portal - Use of GOS Map and Data Services

• The Carbon Project was awarded a grant for An Enterprise GIS Desktop Dashboard for the GOS Portal.
• The Center for Intelligent Spatial Computing (CISC) at George Mason University was awarded a grant to Utilize GOS Map and Data Services for Cross-Agency Earth Science and Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure Communities.
• Innovate! Inc. was awarded a grant to develop a suite of reusable components to enable The Coeur d'Alene Tribe, The North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and US Environmental Protection Agency to integrate Geospatial OneStop search capabilities into their websites and other tools.
• MobiMaps LLC was awarded a grant to integrate access to Geospatial OneStop catalog and data services into NASA WorldWind.

Category 4: Enabling Use of Government Tabular Data in a Geographic Context

• Fortius One was awarded a grant to extend the GeoCommons platform to create geospatial data sets automatically from tabular data.

Today's announcement brings to a close the "announcement" portion of the 2009 grant series. Work is already started on many of the grants already announced.

Many of us working on state GIS strategic plans will watch the grant projects announced today with great interest. Tools developed under these grants could be greatly useful in state and local geospatial data coordination.

FGDC Publishes 2008 Annual Report

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) has published its 2008 Annual Report. The document is available as both a web page and a PDF document.

The Annual Report includes highlights of 2008 and goals for 2009.

The highlights for the last year include:

• The Geospatial Line of Business,
• Formation of the National Geospatial Advisory Committee,
• The third year of the 50 States Initiative,
  
• Growth in the Geospatial OneStop,
  
• Progress on Imagery for the Nation, and
  
• Several success stories.

Goals for 2009 include continuing to work in these areas and:

• Developing a national strategy for geospatial information,
• Improving national land parcel data, and
  
• Support for homeland security and emergency management.

Among several appendices are an update on the status of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Framework Themes.

RAMONA 2.0 Released!

As we noted in January, the new and improved Version 2 of RAMONA has been released.

The latest version of NSGIC's GIS inventory tool includes a few upgrades and improvements, including faster and more dependable web-hosting, enhanced tools for both the users and the state-level administrators, and improved integration with the federal government's Geospatial One-Stop (GOS).

State GIS Coordinators interested in adding their states to the Ramona network should contact Jill Saligoe-Simmel.