An Interview With an NGAC Member

You might have caught this in the State GIS News portion of the NSGIC Blog sidebar, but I thought the recent interview with a member of National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) from the Wisconsin Mapping Bulletin interesting enough to call your attention to it here as well.

The NGAC membership includes Wisconsin's Don Dittmar, a county Land Information Manager, who was interviewed for the Bulletin by Ted Koch.

Mr. Dittmar explains some of the workings of the group and some of the dynamics that he has seen develop in the first few meetings. He adds a note about the NGAC's purpose:

I think now our most important mission is to refocus the FGDC on building the NSDI with particular attention paid to building on local data, the data that is, for the most part, created at the source.

This interview is worth a read; I don't want to dilute it by just extracting the quotes that resonate with me. Head on over to the Wisconsin Mapping Bulletin and see what you think.

More Mapped Election Finances

The Federal Elections Commission has announced a map-presentation of campaign finance data for House and Senate races in 2008. This is a companion to the Presidential campaign finance map we noted in June.

A mouse-over on the House and Senate version shows the number of Representative Districts in the state. Clicking on the map brings up a state-view showing all the Districts boundaries. Mousing-over on that map highlights the District and shows the folks running for that seat.


From there, one can drill down to see detailed financial and donor data for each candidate.

As map-presented data goes, this is a fairly simple-looking site. But it leads users to a wealth of data. And that's probably the point.

A Geospatial Presentation of Campaign Finance Information

The Federal Elections Commission has established a map-based interface with its campaign contributions data.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign Finance Map "summarizes financial information disclosed by each active 2008 Presidential candidate who has reported at least $10,000 in contributions from individuals other than the candidate," according to the FEC web site.

The site uses a simple "CONUS" view of the nation, with Alaska and Hawaii tucked-in where Mexico would be. Amounts of contributions are represented by circles of different relative sizes. Clicking on a state's circle will "zoom" to a state-level view with circles showing contribution amounts by 3-digit ZIP code levels. Clicking on those circles, if you have a candidate selected, brings you to the individual contribution records.

Users can view data for all candidates, candidates by party affiliation, or for individual candidates. the map-based presentation offers a simple, intuitive way to view one aspect of campaign contributions -- where geographically they come from.

The site currently shows about $157 million in contributions through the end of March. The next update will come in July.

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.