NSGIC Mid-Year Reports: National Land Parcel Data

Will Craig, from Minnesota, led a discussion of the recent National Land Parcel Data Report. The vision, he reported, is for one nation's worth of data, from multiple data sources. This is part of the NSGIC Advocacy Agenda.

The reality is that parcel data is created a very local level. It should be coordinated at the state level and made available at a national level. The federal government, as a land-holder and manager is in a similar situation, where individual agencies hold parcel data (similar to county data) and that data should be coordinated up to a national system.

Recommendations from the study include making sure there is national leadership and a lead agency and that parcel data, not just cadastre, be added to the idea of Framework data. There should be support for state coordination and local data creation , some funding, and some "carrots and sticks." And the congress should revisit the laws that require the Census Bureau to not share parts of their master address file.

Will Craig suggests working through the FGDC and other mechanisms to push for some of these recommendations. He recommends focusing on these policy issues in a variety of outreach approaches.

Update (3/18/08): Presentation materials from this session are now available on-line.

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.