NSGIC Member, and Some Friends, Found Among GovTech's "Top 25"

Long time NSGIC member Eric Swanson (Michigan) is among the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2010 selected by the editors of Government Technology magazine. Each march, the magazine fociuses on 25 people who"cut through the public sector's infamous barriers to innovation -- tight budgets, organizational inertia, politics as usual, etc. -- to reshape government operations for the better."

Eric Swanson is noted for his work at Michigan's Center for Shared Solutions and Technology Partnerships.

The center's mission is "to transform government with IT being the catalyst, fostering collaboration across government lines," and Swanson and his team have worked hard to make that possible over the years.

Among the rest of the Top 25 are a number of friends of NSGIC and state and local technology leaders who have helped state GIS coordination along the way. They include:

• Utah CTO David Fletcher -- According to Bert Granberg, and Matt Peters, of Utah, Mr. Fletcher is "a great champion of GIS and is very supportive of AGRC." They add that he is working on location based services for state and local government in Utahand has spearheaded the drive for a data.utah.gov portal.
• Virginia deputy secretary of technology Karen Jackson -- Virginia's Dan Widner reports that Ms. Jackson is leading the charge on Broadband in Virginia and is doing some great behind the scenes work with the industry and the feds on “connectivity” issues.
• Colorado CIO Mike Locatis -- I thought I must have met Mr. Locatis at some point, but itr turns out that I have simply heard him mentioned whenever Jon Gottsegen speaks about success at GIS Coordination in Colorado. Thet wo apparently have worked closely together.
• Beth Noveck, of the Obama Administration, is well-known among the NSGIC community for her spearheading of government transparency initiatives.
• Maryland secretary of the Department of Information Technology Elliot Schlanger -- He developed CityStat when Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley was Mayor of Baltimore. When O'Malley brought him up to the state level he created StateStat and made Maryland GIS Coordinator Kenny Miller a very busy man.

Broadband Mapping Funding Available

The US Department of Commerce has released a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) (PDF) for a State Broadband Data and Development Grant Program. The Notice is published in the Federal Register. There is also a Fact Sheet (PDF).

The media announcement, from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), explains that the funds are intended to support the collection of state-level broadband data, "as well as state-wide broadband mapping and planning."

The Program will provide approximately $240 million in grants to assist states or their designees to develop state-specific data on the deployment levels and adoption rates of broadband services. These data, including publicly available state-wide broadband maps, will also be used to develop the comprehensive, interactive national broadband map that NTIA is required by the Recovery Act to create and make publicly available by February 17, 2011.

This is a grant opportunity that has been expected for some time. Most states have already established teams working on possible approaches to broadband mapping. Broadband mapping is a part of the "Technology for the 21st Century" section of the NSGIC 2008-2009 Advocacy Agenda (PDF). And broadband mapping has been the subject of presentations and discussions at the most recent NSGIC Annual (September 2008) and Midyear (February 2009) conferences.

The program allows only one grant application per state. State-level grants will range from $1.9 million to $3.9 million. Applications are to be accepted via grants.gov between July 14 and August 14, 2009.

Issue Brief: Technology for the 21st Century

At a New Years Eve dinner with family and friends, we all were struck by the advances in technology since New Years day in 2000. Wasn’t it just nine short years ago, at the same dinner party, that we wondered if financial systems, street lights, elevators and all else computer-controlled would fail at the stroke of midnight?

We live in a different world now. A world where my sons know what Google Earth is before they learn to ride a bicycle without training wheels. A world where a smartphone lets us know if any friends are close by. A world where we publish maps for anyone to consume via the Internet. A world in which we pretty much must be connected to the rest of the world and in which business requires electrons.

Except, some of the world isn’t as connected as the rest. Many communities, urban and rural, are still dial-up environments. Many communities do not have the telecommunications infrastructure to substantially access the financial, education, health, safety and environmental applications that government and others provide.

This is why NSGIC, as part of its advocacy agenda series, has published a paper outlining why we need to advocate for alignment of 21st Century Technologies. The paper identifies two key issues for this year:

• First, a core commitment to mapping broadband availability as outlined in new Federal Communications Commissions guidelines.
• Second, the implementation of the eGovernment Act principles.

Ensuring the success of these initiatives is key to a successful implementation of the Spatial Data Infrastructure as the state GIS Coordinators of NSGIC see it. Without a strong backbone and commitment to advances in next generation technology we cannot move beyond simple advocacy for spatial data and toward the real policy problem solving that we know spatial technologies can open.

NSGIC Mid-Year Reports: Emerging Technologies

Members of the NSGIC Corporate Leadership Council gave a presentation on emerging technologies in the geospatial industries.

Malcolm Adkins, of Michael Baker, spoke about the on-going effort to update the nation's Flood Maps. He noted that the tools now available make it easier to create widely usable flood maps. He also pointed to new ways to share data with the public using new tools from Google, Microsoft, and others.

Martin Hogeweg, of ESRI, spoke about working towards service-oriented architectures to take full advantage of data and applications. It is the advent of services that are widely available and inter-operative that has brought about the new practice of "mash-ups." He drew a parallel between established enterprise business models and an open, enterprise approach to the use and sharing of geospatial data.

Bill Bates, from TeleAtlas, gave an overview of navigation devices and a sense of how rapidly they are changing and being adopted. He noted that technology advances are helping to drive the market changes. This is true both of the tools used to collect and edit data and of the tools used by the public to make use of that data. He speculated that eventual two-way data communication between data users and data managers will allow continual, real-time data update by communities of data users.

John Auble, of DigitalGlobe, looked at changes in the aerial imagery tools and techniques, especially as satellite data improves. He hopes to work with the state GIS Coordinators to shape the business model that will take advantage of this growing volume of data. He suggested one day having a steady relationship for imagery; a line-item rather than a capital expense. He noted the idea of licensing data, rather than owning it (licensing rather than owning the copyright).

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

Bob? Bob?.... Is He on Mute? Is Bob Still on the Call?

There's an interesting article on CIO.com about ways to run effective teleconferences and virtual meetings.

Meetings are hard enough to run when the participants are all in the same room, fighting over the last chocolate doughnut. . . . You may be great at orchestrating an in-person meeting, but running an effective teleconference requires new skills.

NSGIC is increasingly taking advantage of teleconferencing and WebEx to bring together members, sponsors, partners and leaders to work on issues around creating the NSDI. We're slowly learning lessons about making the best use of this technology; we are often amused at our own fumbling.

We do a pretty good job, but it may be worth a few moments to share the tips and tricks in this article before our next NSGIC Call.