OSGeo - User contributions [en]

North America Regional

2011-11-06T18:14:53Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* People */

== Mission ==

The primary focus of the North America regional charter will be to organize and run annual North American conferences. It is not the intent of this chapter to duplicate or compete with established local chapters or the international organization's ongoing efforts.

The North America regional conference will also support and collaborate with other like minded organizations for smaller technical and business focused conferences within the region.

'''Background'''
The OSGeo Board of Directors has recently discussed establishing regional focus groups and conferences that could more effectively address the needs of those areas. This would allow OSGeo to act as more of an umbrella international organization. It is anticipated that the International OSGeo conference will rotate around the globe and will be combined with the regional conference when that region is selected.

'''Objectives'''

*Organize and run an annual North American regional conference
*Increased focus on open source business models
*Provide an interface for National, Regional and Local government agencies as they adopt open source solutions
*Coordinate with local North American chapters for planned events within those localities
*Support OSGeo board for international events

'''What the North American Regional isn't about''

*Duplicating existing efforts at the OSGeo International level or at the local chapter level
*Running development projects or support infrastructure
*Local meetups
*Managing or overseeing other groups

In addition we will be coordinating closely with other relevant organizations:

*[http://mil-oss.org/ MIL-OSS ] Military Open Source Software
*[http://usgif.org/ USGIF] United States Geospatial Intelligence Agency
*[http://www.oss-institute.org/ OSSI] Open Source Software Institute
*[http://opensourceforamerica.org/ OSFA] Open Source for America

'''Official representative'''

[[User:mlucas17|Mark Lucas]]
Principal Scientist
RadiantBlue Technologies Inc.

If the majority of chapter members wish, the post of official representative will be elected on a periodic basis.

== Organization ==
The intent is to organize as a 501c non profit organization.

== Mailing List ==

http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/northamerica

== Meetings and Events ==

No meetings have been planned yet, the intent will be to establish formal quarterly meetings to review conference and organizational planning.

=== Upcoming Events ===

''' FOSS4g 2012 - Beijing [http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/FOSS4G_2012]

'''North American Regional OSGeo/foss4g Conference''' Initial discussion will be focused on organizing a follow on North American regional conference in 2012. We will work to deconflict this event with the OSGeo/foss4g international conference in Beijing as well as the as the annual Geoint conference.

'''USGIF Technology Day]''' [http://usgif.org/events/GEOINTCommWeek/Day2 USGIF Technology Day]

=== Recent Events ===

''' MIL-OSS WG3 ''' [http://mil-oss.org/wg3-overview MIL-OSS Working Group 3]

''' Geoint 2011 ''' [http://geoint2011.com/ Geoint 2011 in San Antonio Tx]

''' USGIF Tech Days ''' [http://usgif.org/events/2011/5/86-usgif-technology-day Washington DC]

== People ==

Sign up here to show interest! Also join the [http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/northamerica mailing list] so we can be in touch directly.

* [[User:mlucas17]]- Mark Lucas - Lets get this moving
* Frank Warmerdam
* [[User:Tmitchell|Tyler Mitchell]]
* Dave McIlhagga
* David Bitner
* [[User:aross|Andrew Ross]]
*[[User:msmitherdc|Michael Smith]]
* Ned Horning

== See Also ==

[[Category:North America]]
[[Category:Local Chapter]]

Educational Content Inventory

2011-10-21T13:30:47Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* 2011-2012 Initiatives */

Please provide information on '''your educational content''', use the searchable Educational Content Inventory Catalogue.

'''Important note:''' None of the content is considered "official" OSGeo material, and none of it has been peer-reviewed by anyone affiliated with OSGeo. At this juncture, we are simply trying to inventory educational material that is available through our participant community. Anything of interest to the OSGeo education community is welcome.

* To view the directory: http://www.osgeo.org/educational_content
* To enter a new resource: https://www.osgeo.org/node/add/edu-content

== Training providers ==

* [[Open Source Training Providers]]

== 2011-2012 Initiatives ==

* EU - COST workshop, possibly March (add your name below if interested in participating in planning/proposal effort)
** Ari Jolma
** Massimiliano Cannata (Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana)
** Markus Neteler
** Maria Brovelli (Milan)
** Rafael Moreno (Dept of Geography and Environmental Studies, U of Colorado, Denver)
** Suchith Anand (University of Nottingham)
** Charlie Schweik (UMass Amherst)
** Lluis Vicens
** Helena Mitasova (North Carolina State University)
** others?

* US workshop (possibly May) (add your name below if interested in participating in planning/proposal effort)
** Tyler Mitchell
** Phil Davis (GeoTech Center)
** Charlie Schweik (UMass Amherst)
** Mike Krimmer (Northern Virginia Community College)
** Tom Mueller
** Helena Mitasova (North Carolina State University)
** Ned Horning (American Museum of Natural History)
** Others?

* Virtual meeting topics for discussion

** COST proposal
*** (from Ari's email) The proposal needs a right scope and domain. Domain could be "Earth System Science and Environmental Management" (I could find one GIS related action) or "Information and Communication Technologies" (I could not find any actions directly related to FOSS - which may tell something or not). The proposal needs a main objective. The objective could be for example "enhance academic relevance/use/usability of existing free and open source geospatial (FOSS4G) software and develop methods and workflows for increasing the impact and exploitation of FOSS4G emerging from academia". That could perhaps have the right span.
*** There's "Jornades de SIG Lliure" in Girona March 21-23 and, although it is in Spanish and Catalan, perhaps we could use that for a workshop and meeting(?). http://www.sigte.udg.edu/jornadassiglibre/
** Content/scope of EU and US workshops

[[Category:Education]]

Possible edu content format standards

2008-07-09T11:01:29Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* '''Docbook''' */

=== Introduction ===
The question we continue to debate is over developing one or a set of possible recommended standards for OSGeo education content '''storage format'''. Generally, the policy should be that educational content in any format should be accepted. We want to make it as easy as possible for authors to contribute. At the same time, it makes some sense for us to be moving toward a common recommended format, as we build the OSGeo edu content repository. Several options have been proposed (listed below).

'''FOLKS: Please add any pros or cons and list your name if you intend to develop something in the future following this format, and note if you prefer this format.'''

=== '''Latex''' ===
# '''Pros''' for this format as a recommended standard
## Handles complex equations and graphics very well
## Authors can store a copy of the work on their own machines
# '''Cons''' against this format as a recommended standard
# Add your name here if you have educational material already in this format:
# Add your name here if you prefer this format:
# Other comments/notes

=== '''Docbook''' ===
# '''Pros''' for this format as a recommended standard
## Content stored in XML (neutral format capturing logical structure of content).
## Content can be published in a variety of formats, including HTML and PDF without requiring users to make any changes to the source.
## Authors can store a copy of the work on their own machines
## The team at UMass and American Museum of Natural History have already developed a proposed XML structure
## Metadata moves us one step closer to having content that can be searched via a database platform
## Output (e.g., pdf) and XML source can be stored in OSGeo Subversion system and the pdf modules can be linked to the wiki. An example already exists for this on our [[Educational Content Inventory]] page.
# '''Cons''' against this format as a recommended standard
## Requires the installation of Docbook and processing software
## Learning curve for authors; may be a real barrier for authors
## Learning curve for people who might want to derive new work from existing material.
# Add your name here if you have educational material already in this format:
## Schweik
## Horning (at this point only user guides)
# Add your name here if you prefer this format:
## Schweik (although I also have a preference for Open Office Writer)
## Horning
# Other comments/notes
## An original proposal from January 2008 is at [[Media:A_Proposal_for_OSGEO_Edu_Authoring_Summary.pdf]]. An example of one tutorial (pdf format, 845KB) built through this process is here: [[Media:db_foss_m1.pdf]].

=== '''Open Office Writer''' ===
# '''Pros''' for this format as a recommended standard
## This is a very user friendly format for many potential contributors
## Easy for other authors to derive new work using this format
## Source could be stored in our subversion system
## Could potentially be linked to in an online searchable database
## Authors can store a copy of the work on their own machines
# '''Cons''' against this format as a recommended standard
## Not as flexible as DocBook
## May be more difficult for material requiring fancy equations or graphics?
# Add your name here if you have educational material already in this format:
# Add your name here if you prefer this format:
# Other comments/notes
## Ideally, Schweik would like to see an Open Office XML template that would be compatible with the Docbook strategy above.

===''' Wiki page''' ===
# '''Pros''' for this format as a recommended standard
## OSGeo already has a wiki
## Would allow us to connect better with other larger open access educational content groups like the [http://wikieducator.org wikieducator.org] group who recently contacted us. This would potentially increase our project's visibility while at the same time helping them
## New derivatives can be made using this format with wiki editing knowledge, although there may need to be a system developed for maintaining both a "release" version and an "in development" version
## Wikieducator group has educational material already on creating tutorials and have other resources that we might be able to capitalize on (such as perhaps developing searching mechanisms, or Open Office templates?)
# '''Cons''' against this format as a recommended standard
## Currently not easily searchable as we grow in content. Can't do a search like "show me all the modules that use GRASS" easily.
## Content stored on a server that isn't controlled by the author. That is, in other formats (Docbook, Latex, Open Office) the author can store a version on his/her own system.
## Slightly tiedious when writing in the processing of graphics files

# Add your name here if you have educational material already in this format:
# Add your name here if you prefer this format:
# Other comments/notes

=== '''Other format (please list)''' ===

=== Should we consider joining the [Wikieducator.org wikieducator] effort? (list your name and yes/no/don't know) ===
# '''Pros'''
## We could create a page on their wiki about our group (good marketing), like [http://www.wikieducator.org/Otago_Polytechnic Otago] has done.
## If people think wiki format is a probable educational format they will use this might be worth doing.
## They have tutorials on how to write educational material in a wiki, and possibly other resources available for needed wiki tools (like searching for modules which is an issue I think)
# '''Cons'''
## Forces us to a wiki format, unless they have an open office conversion tool. Not sure they can handle Docbook, etc.
# '''Questions we should ask them? (Add here)'''

[[Category:Education]]

Public Geospatial Data Project Update Mission

2007-11-29T14:18:27Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Hurdles */

This page is for brainstorming for the purpose of refining the Mission Statement of the OSGeo Public Geospatial Data Project.

'''Please add any entries''' to the following sections as well as placing your name and a +1 next to those statements that you feel are *most* important and a -1 next to those statements that you feel should not be part of the Public Geospatial Data Project. Don't hesitate to add any statements that conflict or contradict any of the other statements on the lists - this is for brainstorming.

== Purpose ==
(Why do we need a Public Geospatial Data Project?)
* Free software is useless without data (from OSGeo Goals)
** bitner +1
** vdb 0. Too strong statement for me, but I can see the idea.
* Varied sample datasets are critical for GIS education
** bitner +1
** vdb + 1. This would greatly help, indeed.
* Free counterparts to Google Maps and friends are necessary
** crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
* Make it easy to find data to use in OSGeo software
** crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 Would be useful to have a utility to facilitate processing varied data to create data sets with seamless layers using a common extent, projection, resolution
* Spread the word about already available geodata collections, not only for use with OSGeo software
* Have relationships in place to respond to disasters
** (bitner +1)
** (crschmidt +1)
* Show off OSGeo software in action
** bitner +1
** crschmidt -1. This is fine if we do it en route to other things, but delaying any action based on the idea that we should be using Geodata mission as a place to 'demo' software seems silly. (I'm probably biased, because everyone uses OpenLayers either way ;))
* Extend Open Source ideals to the data world
** crschmidt -1 -- 'Open Source ideals' as a statement is too vague to neccesarily apply to data. For example, one of the big things that makes open source 'open source' in my opinion is the ability to modify the code as you see fit. Some geodata -- aerial imagery especially -- doesn't require the ability to 'modify' to be useful, so long as other, more useful, rights are available, like reuse or deriving data from the imagery.
*Promote and facilitate open data creation, licensing, documentation, and distribution
**nedhorning +1

== Tasks ==
(What are we doing to meet the needs?)
* Provide hosting support to mirror any datasets
** Crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
* Provide computing resources and volunteer support to pull together and add value to datasets
** bitner +1
** nedhorning +1
* Provide forum to create relationships and exercise the ability to come together in disasters
* Create multi-resolution datasets and services to provide best available base map data / imagery
** crschmidt +1: this is something that currently users can only get via Google, and it's something that I think a lot of people can help with in a way that Google will never be able to succeed at. Between ultralights, state agencies having more of a stake in a public project than in google, etc. it is a way to show OSGeo value quite clearly.
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 Look into collaboration with NASA WorldWind
* Host applications using free data using OSGeo software
** bitner +1
** zool +1)
* Offer guidelines for public geodata licensing and help to connect people who are needing and offering advice
** (zool +1)
** nedhorning +1
* Actively pursue interactions with holders of GIS data (state agencies, city governments, etc.) to open their data by providing infrastructure and advice
** crschmidt +1
** bitner +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 To make this viable we need to think of a long term support plan. We are currently relying on the generosity of Telescience. What if we loose this resource? This is important to think through if we offer infrastructure.
* Actively pursue interactions with community data gathering projects (a la OSM) and encourage them to engage with the OSGeo community to the benefit of both groups
** crschmidt +1
** bitner +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 This is an area where I see OSGeo having huge potential. There is clearly growing activity in this arena (it even has a name – Volunteered Geographic Information). OSGeo can play a role supporting existing projects and also generating/incubating/supporting innovative ideas.

== Beliefs ==
(What motivates are work?)
* Data should be free
** bitner +1
* It should be easy to get free geodata (with a good [or at least known] quality level)
** vdb +1
* Standards help the flow of data
** crschmidt -1: "Standards" as the term is generally useful tend to only be useful as a way to argue. Software to read all the existing data in the world is good, and we're getting pretty good at having that to the extent we need it. With that in mind, I'd say that 'standards' are less important than well documented low-setup cost services or the like.
* Too much wanking keeps things from getting done
** crschmidt: Not really relevant, but I agree anyway.
* Actions speak louder than words
** crschmidt +1

crschmidt: Note that the latter two above are not really relevant in a 'mission statement', even if they are obvious to participants :)
* The OSGeo Data Committee has some great minds and we should be able to work together to make significant contributions toward improving the state of GeoData.
** nedhorning +1
*People who want to collect/create GeoData and make it available to the masses should be able to do that with ease and those who are not interested should be enlightened
** nedhorning +1

== Hurdles ==
(What gets in our way?)
* Licensing terms
** +1 crschmidt. Many organizations that would love to help don't have the knowledge -- and more importantly, without strong legal backing, it's hard to offer it to them.
** +1 vdb (+2 if I could)
* Too much talking about what we need to do, and not just doing
** +1 vdb(me first)
* Much of the work is done under different banners
** crschmidt +1 No centalized 'mission' thus far means we have 4 people doing four different things and no osgeo-level cooperation.
* The lack of a complete version of this document ;)
** crschmidt +1
* Lack of incentives for people to work on and complete specific projects
** nedhorning +1 One incentive is money – there are certainly others. Some folks have limited volunteer time so making GeoData projects part of their day-job would likely improve productivity. It would be great to see individuals team up with others who can work together to write proposals for funding. These “team” projects might be a better way to start rather than looking for larger OSGeo-wide projects. One exception is that OSGeo could pursue funds to manage a grant-giving initiative to fund individual projects.

Public Geospatial Data Project Update Mission

2007-11-29T14:05:51Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Beliefs */

Public Geospatial Data Project Update Mission

2007-11-29T14:03:01Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Tasks */

This page is for brainstorming for the purpose of refining the Mission Statement of the OSGeo Public Geospatial Data Project.

'''Please add any entries''' to the following sections as well as placing your name and a +1 next to those statements that you feel are *most* important and a -1 next to those statements that you feel should not be part of the Public Geospatial Data Project. Don't hesitate to add any statements that conflict or contradict any of the other statements on the lists - this is for brainstorming.

== Purpose ==
(Why do we need a Public Geospatial Data Project?)
* Free software is useless without data (from OSGeo Goals)
** bitner +1
** vdb 0. Too strong statement for me, but I can see the idea.
* Varied sample datasets are critical for GIS education
** bitner +1
** vdb + 1. This would greatly help, indeed.
* Free counterparts to Google Maps and friends are necessary
** crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
* Make it easy to find data to use in OSGeo software
** crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 Would be useful to have a utility to facilitate processing varied data to create data sets with seamless layers using a common extent, projection, resolution
* Spread the word about already available geodata collections, not only for use with OSGeo software
* Have relationships in place to respond to disasters
** (bitner +1)
** (crschmidt +1)
* Show off OSGeo software in action
** bitner +1
** crschmidt -1. This is fine if we do it en route to other things, but delaying any action based on the idea that we should be using Geodata mission as a place to 'demo' software seems silly. (I'm probably biased, because everyone uses OpenLayers either way ;))
* Extend Open Source ideals to the data world
** crschmidt -1 -- 'Open Source ideals' as a statement is too vague to neccesarily apply to data. For example, one of the big things that makes open source 'open source' in my opinion is the ability to modify the code as you see fit. Some geodata -- aerial imagery especially -- doesn't require the ability to 'modify' to be useful, so long as other, more useful, rights are available, like reuse or deriving data from the imagery.
*Promote and facilitate open data creation, licensing, documentation, and distribution
**nedhorning +1

== Tasks ==
(What are we doing to meet the needs?)
* Provide hosting support to mirror any datasets
** Crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
* Provide computing resources and volunteer support to pull together and add value to datasets
** bitner +1
** nedhorning +1
* Provide forum to create relationships and exercise the ability to come together in disasters
* Create multi-resolution datasets and services to provide best available base map data / imagery
** crschmidt +1: this is something that currently users can only get via Google, and it's something that I think a lot of people can help with in a way that Google will never be able to succeed at. Between ultralights, state agencies having more of a stake in a public project than in google, etc. it is a way to show OSGeo value quite clearly.
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 Look into collaboration with NASA WorldWind
* Host applications using free data using OSGeo software
** bitner +1
** zool +1)
* Offer guidelines for public geodata licensing and help to connect people who are needing and offering advice
** (zool +1)
** nedhorning +1
* Actively pursue interactions with holders of GIS data (state agencies, city governments, etc.) to open their data by providing infrastructure and advice
** crschmidt +1
** bitner +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 To make this viable we need to think of a long term support plan. We are currently relying on the generosity of Telescience. What if we loose this resource? This is important to think through if we offer infrastructure.
* Actively pursue interactions with community data gathering projects (a la OSM) and encourage them to engage with the OSGeo community to the benefit of both groups
** crschmidt +1
** bitner +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 This is an area where I see OSGeo having huge potential. There is clearly growing activity in this arena (it even has a name – Volunteered Geographic Information). OSGeo can play a role supporting existing projects and also generating/incubating/supporting innovative ideas.

== Beliefs ==
(What motivates are work?)
* Data should be free
** bitner +1
* It should be easy to get free geodata (with a good quality level)
** vdb +1
* Standards help the flow of data
** crschmidt -1: "Standards" as the term is generally useful tend to only be useful as a way to argue. Software to read all the existing data in the world is good, and we're getting pretty good at having that to the extent we need it. With that in mind, I'd say that 'standards' are less important than well documented low-setup cost services or the like.
* Too much wanking keeps things from getting done
** crschmidt: Not really relevant, but I agree anyway.
* Actions speak louder than words
** crschmidt +1

crschmidt: Note that the latter two above are not really relevant in a 'mission statement', even if they are obvious to participants :)

== Hurdles ==
(What gets in our way?)
* Licensing terms
** +1 crschmidt. Many organizations that would love to help don't have the knowledge -- and more importantly, without strong legal backing, it's hard to offer it to them.
** +1 vdb (+2 if I could)
* Too much talking about what we need to do, and not just doing
** +1 vdb(me first)
* Much of the work is done under different banners
** crschmidt +1 No centalized 'mission' thus far means we have 4 people doing four different things and no osgeo-level cooperation.
* The lack of a complete version of this document ;)
** crschmidt +1

Public Geospatial Data Project Update Mission

2007-11-29T13:59:58Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Purpose */

This page is for brainstorming for the purpose of refining the Mission Statement of the OSGeo Public Geospatial Data Project.

'''Please add any entries''' to the following sections as well as placing your name and a +1 next to those statements that you feel are *most* important and a -1 next to those statements that you feel should not be part of the Public Geospatial Data Project. Don't hesitate to add any statements that conflict or contradict any of the other statements on the lists - this is for brainstorming.

== Purpose ==
(Why do we need a Public Geospatial Data Project?)
* Free software is useless without data (from OSGeo Goals)
** bitner +1
** vdb 0. Too strong statement for me, but I can see the idea.
* Varied sample datasets are critical for GIS education
** bitner +1
** vdb + 1. This would greatly help, indeed.
* Free counterparts to Google Maps and friends are necessary
** crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
* Make it easy to find data to use in OSGeo software
** crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
** nedhorning +1 Would be useful to have a utility to facilitate processing varied data to create data sets with seamless layers using a common extent, projection, resolution
* Spread the word about already available geodata collections, not only for use with OSGeo software
* Have relationships in place to respond to disasters
** (bitner +1)
** (crschmidt +1)
* Show off OSGeo software in action
** bitner +1
** crschmidt -1. This is fine if we do it en route to other things, but delaying any action based on the idea that we should be using Geodata mission as a place to 'demo' software seems silly. (I'm probably biased, because everyone uses OpenLayers either way ;))
* Extend Open Source ideals to the data world
** crschmidt -1 -- 'Open Source ideals' as a statement is too vague to neccesarily apply to data. For example, one of the big things that makes open source 'open source' in my opinion is the ability to modify the code as you see fit. Some geodata -- aerial imagery especially -- doesn't require the ability to 'modify' to be useful, so long as other, more useful, rights are available, like reuse or deriving data from the imagery.
*Promote and facilitate open data creation, licensing, documentation, and distribution
**nedhorning +1

== Tasks ==
(What are we doing to meet the needs?)
* Provide hosting support to mirror any datasets
** Crschmidt +1
** vdb +1
* Provide computing resources and volunteer support to pull together and add value to datasets
** bitner +1
* Provide forum to create relationships and exercise the ability to come together in disasters
* Create multi-resolution datasets and services to provide best available base map data / imagery
** crschmidt +1: this is something that currently users can only get via Google, and it's something that I think a lot of people can help with in a way that Google will never be able to succeed at. Between ultralights, state agencies having more of a stake in a public project than in google, etc. it is a way to show OSGeo value quite clearly.
** vdb +1
* Host applications using free data using OSGeo software
** bitner +1
** zool +1)
* Offer guidelines for public geodata licensing and help to connect people who are needing and offering advice
** (zool +1)
* Actively pursue interactions with holders of GIS data (state agencies, city governments, etc.) to open their data by providing infrastructure and advice
** crschmidt +1
** bitner +1
** vdb +1
* Actively pursue interactions with community data gathering projects (a la OSM) and encourage them to engage with the OSGeo community to the benefit of both groups
** crschmidt +1
** bitner +1
** vdb +1

== Beliefs ==
(What motivates are work?)
* Data should be free
** bitner +1
* It should be easy to get free geodata (with a good quality level)
** vdb +1
* Standards help the flow of data
** crschmidt -1: "Standards" as the term is generally useful tend to only be useful as a way to argue. Software to read all the existing data in the world is good, and we're getting pretty good at having that to the extent we need it. With that in mind, I'd say that 'standards' are less important than well documented low-setup cost services or the like.
* Too much wanking keeps things from getting done
** crschmidt: Not really relevant, but I agree anyway.
* Actions speak louder than words
** crschmidt +1

crschmidt: Note that the latter two above are not really relevant in a 'mission statement', even if they are obvious to participants :)

== Hurdles ==
(What gets in our way?)
* Licensing terms
** +1 crschmidt. Many organizations that would love to help don't have the knowledge -- and more importantly, without strong legal backing, it's hard to offer it to them.
** +1 vdb (+2 if I could)
* Too much talking about what we need to do, and not just doing
** +1 vdb(me first)
* Much of the work is done under different banners
** crschmidt +1 No centalized 'mission' thus far means we have 4 people doing four different things and no osgeo-level cooperation.
* The lack of a complete version of this document ;)
** crschmidt +1

OSGeo Educational Project

2007-10-31T19:48:52Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Introduction to Remote Sensing for Natural Resource Management */

There is a possibility to get funding for an OSGeo educational project. This page is for brainstorming and developing the proposal. The proposal should be only few pages, describe the general idea of the project and contain a set of separate but coordinated components. From each of these component projects we should be able to produce a more detailed, but also only a few pages long, description, if asked.

== The General Idea ==

Develop open geospatial courseware for universities, which build on free and open source geospatial software and on free data sets.

The courseware consists of

* installation packages of selected software that are readily usable in typical university settings
* two kind of data sets
** those that are usable over the internet using standard protocols
** those that are downloadable from the internet
* teaching and self-study kits that can be used in courses

== Coordinator ==

The project needs have one coordinator, who is the leader and responsible for whole project.

Questions:

* Who will take this position?

== Component projects ==

Questions:

* What is would be an ideal size for a subproject?

=== Template for a component project ===

General idea:

Software used:

Target audience:

Responsible partner:

Deliverables:

Amount of work:

=== Introduction to scripting in geospatial tasks ===

General idea: Introductory course to using a scripting language for geospatial data management and simple analysis tasks

Software used: GDAL/OGR with scripting language bindings, scripting language (Ruby, Python or Perl)

Target audience: Graduate students in geoinformatics or related subject

Responsible partner: Prof. Ari Jolma/Helsinki University of Technology

Deliverables: 5~7 workbooks on the web (getting started, querying, measurements, transformations, ...)

Amount of work: ~1 year for developing the workbooks and preparation of the programming platform for easy adoption

=== Introduction to Remote Sensing for Natural Resource Management ===

General idea: Introductory 2 or 3 credit course on remote sensing methods for natural resource conservation using open source software and other freeware. This course will build upon curriculum already developed by the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History (see
http://biodiversityinformatics.amnh.org/index.php?section=wmaterial). The course will be co-developed and co-taught between staff at the American Museum of Natural History and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Software used: Requires some further investigation, but probably will utilize one or more of the following: GRASS, QGIS, Multispec, OpenEV, 3DEM and possibly others.

Target audience: Undergraduates, graduate students and conservation professionals.

Responsible partner: Ned Horning, American Museum of Natural History and Prof. Charles Schweik, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Deliverables: Set of course modules that will be licensed as "open content" and made available on the OSGeo educational program website.

Time required: ~1 year for development of modules and curriculum part time.

[[Category: Education]]

Core Curriculum Project

2007-10-31T19:47:07Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Individuals */

''This project might be renamed to "Educational & Curriculum" or "Educational Outreach" or "Learning Resources on GIS".''

The project is now officially approved as [[Education and Curriculum Committee]].

== Mission ==

The project aims at creating and promoting curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide material that is accessible by a broad audience including academia, professionals, and the general public. Material supported through this project should directly or indirectly build and strengthen the open source geospatial user and developer communities. This can be accomplished by integrating the use of OSGeo endorsed tools in curricula that teach geospatial concepts and applications as well as the creating curricula to teach skills necessary for people to actively participate in supported OSGeo software and data projects.

== Approach ==

The project is now officially approved as [[Education and Curriculum Committee]].

=== Database of educational material ===

I propose setting up an open database, where the person interested (teacher or somebody seeking education
for him/herself) makes some selections and is presented with a list of materials and links. There should be material for both preparing for the teaching/learning and for actually carrying out the teaching/learning. Material of the first type includes instructions to install software etc. thus there are links to tasks of other OSGeo projects. The data that describes the material should cover at least data needs, licencing, and (natural) language besides this information:

* type of education
* content of the education
* method of teaching/learning

==== type of education ====

* primary school (students are 7-12 years old)
* secondary school (students are 13-15 years old)
* high school (students are 16-18 years old)
* vocational college
* university, bachelor level (undergraduate)
* university, masters level (graduate)
* university, doctoral level (graduate)
* continuing education (students have a college or university degree and work experience)
* vocational education (students do not have a college or university degree but they have work experience)

==== content of the education ====

These could be divided into two main categories according
to main viewpoint: applied or core geoinformatics.

* a subject from trad. geosciences, not modeling
* a subject from trad. geosciences, involving modeling
* subject from application area, spatial planning
* subject from application area, development studies
* subject from application area, biology, ecology, etc.
* subject from application area, forestry
* subject from application area, civil engineering
* subject from application area, military
* subject from application area, rescue, etc.
* geospatial databases
* explorative geospatial visualization
* geospatial cartographic visualization
* geospatial algorithms
* geospatial statistics
* geospatial simulation
* development of geospatial information systems, analysis
* development of geospatial information systems, design
* development of geospatial information systems, actual development
* development of geospatial information systems, implementation
* development of geospatial information systems, evaluation
* geospatial software development, <insert language>
* geospatial software development, for desktop
* geospatial software development, for web, server side
* geospatial software development, for web, client side

==== method of teaching/learning ====

* lecture
* demonstration
* interactive workshop
* self-learning, reading
* self-learning, using software
* self-learning, project work

== Links to other OSGeo efforts ==

Since teaching GIS is related to GIS data, the collaboration with [http://geodata.osgeo.org Public Geospatial Data Committee] is desired, in particular with the [[Geodata Packaging Working Group]].

== Licensing of teaching material ==

The material developed here needs to be appropriately licensed.
[http://creativecommons.org Creative Commons] licenses come to mind. This will be worked out once the committee is established.

A key component related to this whole effort (related to incentive structures for some) will be how we maintain author attribution over time. This might be as simple as establishing in every document produced a "change log" listing who developed the initial document, and then listing who contributed to new derivative works. Also we need to decide whether we want a standard way of developing curricular material (e.g., wiki pages, open office writer documents, etc.) or if we accept any format, is the wiki set up to allow for the upload of files?

And do we want to try and agree on one open content license that allows for new derivative works or do we want to have a set identified depending on the author's interests? For example, someone might be willing to provide a tutorial but not want new derivative works, while others may be open to having new derivatives works produced from their submission. [Posted by Charlie Schweik]

== Comments ==

=== Comment on Wiki Communication Format ===
[[User:Arnulf Christl | I]] am very happy that this discussion did not yet dissolve into a mailing list. I strongly believe that we should try to keep it in Wiki-style as long as possible. It is a lot easier to get an overview of what is going on this way. For more specific and short term notices one(!) mailing list will be good for sure, but especially for longer term development this Wiki will be more valuable.

=== Project Comments ===

* Ned Horning's comments [[Some_comments|are here]].

* From Helena Mitasova
I read Ned comments - if you look at NCGIA Core Curriculum, it is very broad, so I suggest to keep at least the word Curriculum there (drop Core)--if we want to stress education in general, how about calling it Education and Curriculum Project. It would be great if we could build a curriculum that people who teach at universities and colleges could use to build OSGEO courses and programs (NCGIA curriculum linked in
the document is a good example). For example, if I had to teach geospatial analysis using GRASS, I am OK, but if I wanted to include a section about Mapserver a curriculum section prepared by somebody who has a lot of experience with it would be a great help.

* From Charlie Schweik
Since I am new to this group and have been introduced via my email address, for the group's information let me give you a short status on what I am up to. I am a faculty at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the Department of Natural Resources Conservation. Right now I have two part-time students helping me develop some tutorials on Q-GIS. I have been teaching an Intro to GIS course for some time but am
relatively new to OS GIS products, so I'll be learning. I am planning on offering in April-May sessions to my students an overview to Q-GIS, and then some tutorials on fundamentals like georeferencing a scanned map, online digitizing, getting GPS data overlaid, etc. I see this as an entry point toward the use of GRASS. My ultimate goal over the next 6-8 months is to have some kind of distance learning material developed for use in an "Intro to OS GIS" online course offered out of my institution next Spring 2007. Having done research in Nepal for several years, part of my motivation for doing this was to help my colleagues there who desperately need GIS but face serious budgetary problems. I am not exactly sure how this will work under the context of my University's distance learning program. But I am a great proponent of open access and hope to use some kind of open content license (e.g., creativecommons.org) and see great value in helping move this project forward by contributing the material here to this broader educational effort. I need to see what kinds of requirements my university has related to material and an "official" online course that might get in the way of this vision. I had always envisioned making my material available somehow (e.g., MIT Open Courseware, FreeGIS.org, etc.) so the establishment of this OSGeo Curriculum and Education project is exciting to me. In short, I hope I can figure out how to use what I am doing to help this project and perhaps through this effort whatever we develop can be improved by the community here.

* From Ari Jolma

Concerning the curriculum and education project in general. I think we don't want to do something similar as NCGIA website, which, by the way, is not linked to any specific software as far as I see.

I try to be inpartial in my teaching, which is often difficult in this field and may lead to confusion on the students part sometimes on software issues. I also try to teach theory as opposed to practical use of software. So I have problems trying to figure out what is it that we should produce. I think tutorials like Gary's are good. Another good idea could be complete worked out examples, which the students can re-do, perhaps on their own time (distance learning) or without too much tutoring in a computer classroom. I've done a few like that (for example non-point source modeling and travel time analysis) but they still need quite a lot of tutoring. One problem I have is that as the software develops so fast (and I've used mostly my own..) the procedure changes slightly from year to year.

Using free tools in distance learning is really good because students can freely install their own copies of the software. On the other hand, for example my software is currently Linux-only, so it is not practical with many people. => There's a common interest with the OSGeo project creating installation packages.

I'd like to have some sort of timetable and agreed ways of working: mostly email or mostly wiki?

* From Helena Mitasova (in response to Charlie)
My idea in that respect was to use it to outline what to teach in different units (that is what NCGIA does) and then link to it a material that shows how to do it in a specific software using selected data. So for example we can have a unit on DEMs and topographic analysis
- the Curriculum will outline what is included under that unit and that can then be linked to several materials:
- general theory including equations and algorithms (this can be just a link to a relevant chapter in FreeGISBook)
- teaching material for use with GRASS
- teaching material for use with SAGA
- whatever else will people contribute to support this unit.

In this way we can minimize redundancy, cover number of different software packages and it will have an additional benefit that you can compare and see what would be the best for the class - e.g. topoanalysis in one package maybe more suited for natural resources students a different one would be better for computer science.

* From Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan
I think Curriculum, Education and Capacity Building initiatives
related to OSGEO could be broken down to three (or more) phases

;Phase 1 Short term (six months)
:a) Assimilation of existing tutorial, lecture notes, training documents, presentations that are available or could be made available under Open Document or Creative Commons License.

:b) Discuss how Curriculum can be structured with existing resources. Identify gaps for developing new material.

;Phase 2 Medium term (one year)
:a) Setup a e-learning portal (www.moodle.org) to manage existing course material and obtain user feedback. Have been experimenting with Moodle recently and we are trying to put together a online training course based on some of the material that we developed earlier. Could help with hosting a Moodle site if necessary (http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/elearn/)

:b) Develop multi-media contents (animations, screen casting), data set for tutorial etc to facilitate self-learning.

;Phase 3 Long term (two three years)

:a) Develop standardized mechanism for testing (question banks, quiz, assignments etc). Moodle is quite good for this purpose

:b) Translation to local language and collection of datasets for geographic locations some language locales. Working with datasets that the candidate is familiar with can make learning easier.

:c) Initial review and improvement of contents and possible establishment of OSGEO Virtual University to cater to education, testing and certification of OSGEO Engineer.

* From Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan
We had discussed issues about Accredited Professional training before, I reproduce some of the thoughts below.
An OSGEO-CE (OSGEO- Certified Engineer), something in the lines of, PostgreSQL-CE, RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). Having a OSGEO with tie-ups to some Universities,Academic societies, Industry, that could

a) design and market courseware and educational material
b) assure quality
c) provide accreditation to institutions that will start the course and also training to instructors at such institutes.
d) Evolve standardized mechanism for testing and certificate of candidates
c) Issue acrredited certification to successful candidates and provide placement counseling.

I think there is a market for such packaged educational and career solutions at least in Asia. I know of at least a few institutes in Aiaa that have been set-up during the last two years and have successfully (at least in term of candidate intake, the course content leaves a lot to be desired) implemented similar business model for proprietary Geoinfomrtics solutions.

Among numerous benefits that such a initiative would bring about, the one most important would be that it would help generate a pool of qualified professionals and developer who could in turn enrich the OSGEO Community.

Some additional thoughts and info about Professional Certification for OSGEO

a) A Japanese company started a Professional certification for PostgreSQL since 1st March 2005.
Details about the Certification are available at http://osb.sra.co.jp/postgresqlce/about_en.html
The testing is managed by Pearson VUE(http://www.vue.com/).
Details are available at http://www.vue.com/sra/ As per http://osb.sra.co.jp/postgresql-ce/news_en.html#20050224

b)Linux Professional Certification (http://www.lpi.org/en/home.html) offers accredited training and conducts training thru LPI approved training center the worldover. Candidates can register to take LPI exams at Pearson VUE testing centres worldwide(http://www.vue.com/) and Thomson Prometric (http://securereg3.prometric.com/Welcome.aspx) "LPI holds special exam labs at major Linux and IT tradeshows and conferences around the world, often offering LPI certification exams for substantially reduced pricing or in some cases free of cost."

c) Bradford Learning (http://www.bradfordlearning.com/en/start_page.php)
also offers LPI certification apart from various others including
apache, samba, mysql etc.

d) Some other listed as LPI sponsors (http://www.lpi.org/en/sponsors.html) also offer/manage Professional certification

* From David Hastings

I wonder if existing core curricula could be considered as relatively adequate (unless a further assessment determines otherwise). On the other hand, educational/training support for OSS has generally received bad press - and this group could help make considerable progress on that front.

I don't fully agree with the bad press about OSS support. Indeed, I seem to remember that Info World gave Red Hat Linux an award several years back for its support services - partly to counter that bad press. I personally found extensive support when I first used GRASS (in 1987), first became a GRASS system manager (in 1988), first installed Linux and put GRASS on my first dual-boot PC (in 1994), first stumbled across file-level interoperability between two GISs (1995, between GRASS and Idrisi byte data files), etc. Much support has been virtual, through searches of discussion group archives.

Nevertheless, training support for OSS GIS could be stronger. I think this could be the greatest challenge, and opportunity, in the educational arena for an Open-Source Geospatial Foundation.

My attempt to answer this during 1994-2002 was the CyberInstitute Short-Course in GIS, which ran additionally until sometime last year, 3 years after I departed Boulder for Bangkok and the UN. I think that such a general approach, strengthened by the ideas and circumstances of this Foundation, could be a useful piece in the puzzle of OSS educational/training support.

Implementation of something like the CyberInstitute Short-Course could be part of Venka's outline item 1b in his discussion on implementation phases (2 discussions above this one). I'd suggest that the name (CyberInstitute Short-Course) be considered for continuation, as it gained a bit of respect over the decade-plus that it ran on the NOAA/NGDC Website.

Please see my additional comments on the discussion page.

* From Venkatesh Raghavan

a) What are the objectives of the Core Curriculum?

The main focus would be on providing a solid foundation on Geoinformatics technology using OSGEO tools as a means of education and self-learning.

b) Who will be the actual customer to adopt the core curriculum would it be the institution or organisation which would ultimately employ our graduates?

We can think of regular and corporate sponsored training. Also focus on tailor-made courses. Direct marketing to potential clients would require lot of efforts. Maybe we need to think of providing packaged educational solutions (franchising) to institutions and universities.

c) Which kind of institutions/companies would employ OSGEO Prodessionals?

Geoinformatics industry, Government Institutions, NPO, NGO, Self-employed, Geo-contents service providers etc.

d) What would be the entry strategy? Will it be with high end courses or low end courses – i.e. in terms of pricing, content, etc?

We have to see what is presently available and at what cost. Most of info available from Google Search are summarized at http://www.institute.redlands.edu/kemp/certificates.html#Related. Details of two institutions presently offering courses in India are http://www.gisinstitute.net/upcoming.asp?id=27 http://www.mapmiddleeast.org/2006/conference/training.htm and http://www.symbiosis.ac.in/sig/course.htm. One example from Thailand is available at http://www.gac.ait.ac.th/training/catalog.php. Pricing info at these sites could be serve as reference in the Asian context. The course contents have to be decided after more discussions. I think the course should be modular introduced in a phased manner 6-8 weeks

Level 1: Introduction to GIS and Web Mapping Technologies: Basically how to install, use, producing maps using OSGEO tools. Completion of this level could result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Application User”

Level 2: Geo-spatial Database Development: Open data standards, GML, Remote Sensing, GPS, mobile GIS, RDBMS. Completion of this level could result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Spatial Database Manager”

Level 3: Advanced Module for Application Developers: Spatial data analysis using GRASS, Web GIS application development,using Mapserver Script languages, PHP, Javascript, Python. Completion of this level could result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Application Developer”

Level 4: Advanced Module for Software Developers Developing Geoinformatics software and cross-platform GIS solutions e.g. GRASS Programing & Libraries, Data Exchange Libraries, C programming, Qt, Python, Plug-in development for QGIS. Software packaging (RPM etc.) Completion of this level will result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Geoinfromatics Engineer”

Option to get a Master degree after completion for 4 Levels and conducting project research (in 16 to 18 weeks) could also be considered at a later stage.

* From [[User:Arnulf Christl | Arnulf Christl]]
The [[WhereGroup]] offers professional [http://www.wheregroup.com/en/training Training Services] for the FOSSGIS web services SDI stack that most of our customers need. It includes OSGeo software (Mapbender, MapServer, Quantum GIS, GDAL) and associated packages (GeoServer and PostGIS). This set of courses is designed to convey all information required to professionally operate an SDI stack most efficiently in a short period of time. Courses aim at professionals with previous knowledge in GIS, WebGIS and productive systems operation. This type of course differs from longer term learning followed by universities. The course material is currently published under several licenses at several places. The WhereGroup is in the process of homogenizing licenses and transferring course material and infrastructure to the OSGeo infrastructure. The first bits are already available at http://test.osgeo.net/moodle (Mapbender Introduction). All material can be used in any context including commercial use (for individual terms of use check the corresponding dual license CreativeCommons 2.0, GNU FDL).

* From [[User:Pnaciona | Perry Nacionales]]
I tend to agree with both Arnulf and Prof. Raghavan in that we have two general kinds of audience--those who are in "formal" academia and those who are already in the professional fields trying to expand their knowledge. The latter require something that won't take a lot of their time--the materials they require could be dense/packed but it shouldn't take more than a week (or a day!) to complete (it could be a series of intense but short seminars). The former will of course need something that lasts an entire school term. These two general categories can be further broken into finer subcategories and most comments address that already. It would be nice if someone can summarize these comments and present this as a proposal for a curriculum/outreach committee... I'm partial to just calling this Education and Outreach Committee. :)

A couple other things... there's an overlap between this committee/project and the visibility committee and we ought to collaborate with that group in the areas where our aims meet. We should also promote the use of open geospatial data and should work with the [[Public_Geospatial_Data_Committee | Public Geospatial Data Committee]] group for our data needs.

* From Brandon Plewe
OSGEO does not need (nor is in a strong position) to create a curriculum. There are plenty of initiatives already existing to do that (if anything, it's already a bit diluted), such as the [http://www.ucgis.org/priorities/education/modelcurriculaproject.asp UCGIS GIS&T Body of Knowledge]. What OSGEO should be doing is developing teaching/learning materials (labs, tutorials, datasets) that are aligned with these curricula, documenting connections between the general knowledge and OS technical solutions (e.g., "This skill can be performed with GRASS, this one with mapserver"), and getting involved in existing initiatives to make sure that they fairly consider open source solutions. For example, in the UCGIS initiative, we had to do a lot of work at the end to take out vendorese language and include things like mapping hacks.

* From [[User:Punkish | Puneet Kishor]]
I have been reading all the stuff posted on the wiki thus far. Lots of good stuff there. Like others who have tried to grapple with this, we have to be very clear about what we are trying to do. From the thoughts expressed thus far, the following possible objectives emerge --

1. Promote understanding of GIS (I use GIS to encompass not just the software but also the related academic fields of geography, geodesy, geoinformatics, GI Science, and complementary fields of computer science, planning, statistics, whathaveyou). The academia already does so, mostly very well, and with a lot of recognition and financial and institutional backing. The danger in us doing this is that we come off as a diluted version of rigorous academic training, sort of a lesser alternative.

2. Promote open source. The entire open source world does so, mostly very well, and with a lot of recognition, and some financial and institutional backing. The danger in us doing this is that we come off as motivated by some wayward zeal, clubbed with other anti-corporate sentiments.

3. Promote the role of open source in GIS. This is where the committee and the community can play a valuable role. This can be done in various ways -- showcasing innovative projects, building collaborative partnerships with academia, convincing them to use open source tools for GIS education in their classrooms, providing packaged tools and datasets for consumption, and encouraging, suggesting, perhaps even making possible research on and using open source GIS.

I am personally not too sure about certification. The GIS Certification Institute [http://www.gisci.org/ GIS CI] is working in this area, but I feel certification tool-ifies the field, makes it more mechanical, a skill to be mastered rather than a subject to be explored.

Anyway, lots to think about. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to work with you all on this. By the way, ecogs.osgeo.org is a possible website name for this committee (education curriculum open geo spatial)

* from V.Ravi Kumar
A good account of institutes that offer GIS courses in India are
http://www.gisdevelopment.net/education/inst/india.htm
Most of these are from earth science departments. Even the list above is not comprahensive, for example Osmania university and Andhra University, which are not listed offer courses on Remote sensing with a good part in GIS. The training institute of the Geological Survey of India, Hyderabad, also offers extensive courses, in Remote sensing and Adwanced GIS. OSGEO can break some ice with a chosen few eminent organisations like G.S.I (Geological Survey of India) and a few eminent universities like Osmani University Hyderabad, Delhi University, to start with by offering or sponsering a course on Free-GIS with some assistance through a memorandum of understanding.

== Potential Members ==
''If you add people/orgs to this list, please indicate whether you're adding yourself/your organization or whether you are "nominating" the person/organization as a potential member.''

=== Individuals ===
* Scott Emmons (added by Tyler): University of Northern British Columbia - emmons at unbc.ca.
* Ned Horning (added by self): American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation horning@amnh.org [http://biodiversityinformatics.amnh.org biodiversityinformatics.amnh.org]
* Ari Jolma (added by self): Helsinki University of Technology, Finland ari.jolma at tkk.fi
* Puneet Kishor (added by self): punkish at eidesis dot org; GeoAnalytics, Inc., soon to join [http://www.wisc.edu Univ of Wisconsin - Madison]
* Tyler Mitchell (added by markusN; 2nd: Glennon): Author of Web Mapping Illustrated [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping]. Seminars at local schools: University of Northern British Columbia, Canada [http://gis.unbc.ca] and College of New Caledonia, Canada [http://cnc.bc.ca]. Email tylermitchell at shaw.ca.
* Helena Mitasova (added by self): North Carolina State University, hmitaso@unity.ncsu.edu [http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/]
* Pericles Nacionales (added by self): University of Minnesota, naci0002 at umn dot edu
* Matthew Perry (added by self): University of California, Santa Barbara, perrygeo at gmail dot com
* Shaun Walbridge (added by self): University of California, Santa Barbara, walbridge at nceas.ucsb.edu
* Charlie Schweik (added by self): University of Massachusetts, Amherst, cschweik at pubpol dot umass dot edu [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik people.umass.edu/cschweik]
* Ian Turton (added by self; 2nd: Glennon): Penn State Uni, State College, developed Open Web Mapping course at Uni of Leeds, UK [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/] now modifying it for PennState. ianturton at gmail com [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work] [http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
* Venkatesh Raghavan (added by self): Osaka City University, Japan raghavan at .media.osaka-cu.ac.jp
* Aaron Racicot (added by self): Ecotrust, Portland Oregon USA - aaronr at ecotrust.org
* David Hastings (added by self): United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, email hastingsd at un.org
* Arnulf Christl (added by self): [[WhereGroup]] [http://www.wheregroup.com/en/training Training Services]
* V.Ravi Kumar (added by self), Geologist, Hyderabad India. ravivundavalli@yahoo.com [http://freegis.gnu.org.in/grass_geosciencedataset.pdf/ Indian Example]
* Laurent Jégou (added by self), Cartographer, author of curriculums for the Sigma Master at Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, Toulouse, France, jegou@univ-tlse2.fr.

=== Organizations ===

* 52North (added by Andreas Wytzisk): http://www.52north.org
* National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (contact: Mike Goodchild/Alan Glennon): http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu

== Existing Work ==

* [http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/ The NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience]
* [http://www.ucgis.org/priorities/education/modelcurriculaproject.asp The UCGIS Model Curricula Project], including the GIS&T Body of Knowledge, the most comprehensive attempt yet at classifying GIS knowledge
* [http://www.r-s-c-c.org/ Remote Sensing Core Curriculum]
* [http://geoworkforce.olemiss.edu/ IAEGS Curriculum], University of Mississippi, primarily focused on Remote Sensing
* [http://www.usgif.org/content.asp?pl=455&contentid=460 USGIF Academic Committee], aiming to accredit programs for Geospatial Intelligence
* [http://www.gisci.org/ GIS Certification Institute], creating standards for certified GIS Professionals
* [http://www.asprs.org/membership/certification/ ASPRS Certification Programs], including GIS
* [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik/research.html C. Schweik: 2005-2010. NSF CAREER Grant. “The Open Source/Content Commons as a New Paradigm for Collaborative Scientific Research: A Research and Teaching Agenda.”] - MN had some personal conversation at OSG'05
* [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/ Open Web Mapping course] - Ian Turton, this is under the creative commons despite living on a University web site, I just haven't got a good new home for it yet.
* D. Hastings, 1994 et seq., The CyberInstitute Short-Course on Geographic Information Systems. Formerly hosted at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov. Now archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040221110141/www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/tools/gis/referenc.shtml
* [http://www.gdf-hannover.de/translation GRASS and QGIS Tutorials Translation Portal]
* [http://test.osgeo.net/moodle OSGeo's Moodle Test platform] (some day to be migrated to osgeo.org)
* [[Resultados del Tutorial ISSTOCAM WebGIS]] SDI stack training conducted in Oostende, Belgium.

{{Template:Books}}

[[Category:Education]]

Library

2006-08-17T12:34:52Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added Horning SCGIS presentation

== Welcome to the Library! ==

This is the scaffolding for OSGeo's CC-based Reading Room.

Some presentations are found outside the osgeo.org domain:
* [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/47/presentations.html Presentations of Where 2.0 Conference 2006]

== Contents ==

The documents referenced below can be downloaded [https://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=47&maxDepth= here].

* '''Beaudette_2006a''' - "Wilderness Navigational Planning Using GRASS GIS Analysis and Public Geographic Data" by Dylan Beaudette (Where 2.0); 23 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PDF]''

* '''Christl_2006a''' - "Introduction to Spatial Data Management with Postgis", by Arnulf Christl; 27 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PDF, SXI]''

* '''Gerlek_2006a''' - "The Open Source Geospatial Foundation", by MIchael P. Gerlek, for GeoWeb 2006; 16 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PDF, ODP]''

* '''Holmes_2005a''' - "Open Source for Spatial Data Infrastructures", by Chris Holmes; focus on Africa, GIS; 18 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT, ODP]''

* '''Holmes_2005b''' - "Concept Demonstration: Implementing GEOSS Architecture using Open Standards and Open Source Software / Open Source for Spatial Data Infrastructures", by Chris Holmes; “The User and GEOSS Architecture” Workshop, 30 Oct. 2005; 25 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT, ODP]''

* '''Holmes_2005c''' - "What Spatial Data Infrastructures can learn from Open Source", by Chris Holmes. "The emergence of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) products and soutions is becoming a key factor, especially in emerging economies, in determining how and who should build Information Infrastructures such as SDI. We consider initial software costs for creating an SDI as tending toward zero regardless of whether the FOSS or proprietary option is taken, with the long-term advantages offered by FOSS matterializing as increased sustainability, independence, stakeholder buy-in, and adaptation within an ever-changing IT environment [...]" 22 pages ''[remix: yes] [format: DOC, ODT]''

* '''Holmes_2005d''' - "Towards a Free and Open Source Spatial Data Infrastructure", by Chris Holmes, Allan Doyle, Mick Wilson; from GSDI-8, 2005; 9 pages ''[remix: yes] [format: PDF]''

* '''Holmes_2006a''' - "Return on investment of Open Source Software / An Ever-increasing Return on Investment", by Chris Holmes; from Location Intelligence 2006; 5 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT, ODP]''

* '''Horning_2006''' - "The Open Source Geospatial Foundation - An Opportunity for the Conservation Community", by Ned Horning; prentation at Society for Conservation GIS Annual Conference 2006; 23 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT]''

* '''Jolma_2006a''' - "Free and Open Source Geospatial Tools for Environmental Modeling and Management", by Ari Jolma et al; from a workshop at the iEMSs 2006 conference; 16 pages ''[remix: yes] [format: PDF]''

* '''Lang_2006a''' - "How APIs, Standards, and Customers Drive Software Genres into Open Source", by Gary Lang, for GeoWeb 2006; 25 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: ODP, PDF]''

* '''McIllhagga_2006''' - "Introduction to the Open Source GeoSpatial (OSGeo) Foundation", by Dave McIllhagga; presentation to Natural Resouces Canada; 10 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT]''

* '''Mitasova_2006''' - "Open Source Geoinformatics for Environmental Modeling", Keynote presentation at Summit on Environmental Modelling and Software iEMSs 2006 (http://www.iemss.org/iemss2006/) prepared by Helena Mitasova, Markus Neteler, Jaroslav Hofierka and Carlo Ratti; 35 slides (lot of images, some animations), ''[remix: yes] [format: ODP, PPT]''

* '''Mitchell_2005''' - Presentation by Tyler Mitchell for Where 2.0 (San Francisco, 2005), called "Open Source Geo Tools". It introduces a handful of open source GIS tools/APIs. The first couple slides show some (pseudo-animated) architecture ideas. The rest of the slides were simply prompts and visual cues for the talk (no text or outline points). ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT, ODP]''

* '''Neteler_2006a''' - "The GRASS GIS software - GIS Seminar" Introduction to GRASS and QGIS for newbies, 6 hours course with practical examples based on GRASS 6.1 and QGIS 0.8, by Markus Neteler. ''[remix: yes, CC-BY-SA] [format: PDF, ODP]''

* '''Raghavan_2006''' - "Present Status of Free and Open Source Web GIS", by Venkatesh Raghavan, March 2006; 25 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: ODP]''

* '''Ticheler_2005''' - FOSS and OpenSDI - A presentation on Free and Open Source Software in the context of an OpenSDI (Open Source based Spatial Data Infrastructure). The presentation uses the LEGO® Metaphor as used in “Towards a Free and Open Source Spatial Data Infrastructure.” (Holmes_2005d); 36 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT]''

* '''Ticheler_2006a''' - "Building a FOSS based SDI" - A presentation on building a Free and Open Source Software based Spatial Data Infrastructure. This presentation was delivered at the Open Geospatial Consortium Interoperability Day in Edinburgh - Scotland, 30 June 2005; 37 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: PPT]''

* '''Walsh_2006''' - Response to the Geospatial Line of Business RFI, by Jo Walsh et al, May 2006; 8 pages ''[remix: yes] [format: DOC]''

* '''Warmerdam_2006a''' - Presentation on GDAL/OGR for Where 2.0, by Frank Warmerdam; 10 slides ''[remix: yes] [format: pdf]''

== Rough Goals and Groundrules ==

Your Visibility Committee has set up a "library" of content related to OSGeo activities, and we would like you to contribute. We know that there is a lot of very good content out there -- and so our idea is to be able to collect a number of presentations, talks, etc, under terms of CC license so that other OSGeo members can use them in order to create/derive/remix/mashup their own custom presentations, talks, etc.

The CC license used is [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ "Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)"].

The sort of content we are looking for includes, but is not limited to:
* papers
* slide presentations
* web-based presentations (e.g. for tutorials)
* podcasts
* ...?

The topics we are looking to cover include anything that touches on OSGeo, e.g. the intersection of Open Source and GIS:
* overviews of what our Foundation is and does
* why open source is good, in the GIS world
* surveys of open source geo packages
* presentations on specific OSGeo member projects
* etc

As we intend this to be a "permanent" library, higher quality material is preferred over random wiki pages of notes and scribblings. (That said, if your scribblings are any good, I'd be happy with that.) If in doubt, go ahead and submit it.

* The actual "library" will live on the OSGeo site on this Wiki page, with summaries and links. The actual content will live on osgeo.org.

* We are file format neutral: whatever format is submitted will be what we use, at least for now. PowerPoint,PDF, LaTex, troff, HyperCard, whatever. Multiple formats are OK too. Let a thousand standards bloom.

* Languages other than English are encouraged! (although you'll need to give me a short one-sentence summary in English of what the content is about...)

* Generally speaking, I think we should exclude from this CFP any material that is more "course-work" oriented, as that falls under the purview of the Educationand Curriculum Committee.)

--------
{{Template:Books}}

Protocol for requesting letter of support

2006-06-15T19:02:12Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: First draft

'''Draft guidelines regarding requests for OSGeo support of a proposed project'''

This document proposes a set of guidelines than can be used by the OSGeo community to request explicit support, in the form of a letter of support, for a proposed activity. This represents some initial ideas to be used as a starting point with the expectation that changes will be made. The intent is to have a standard set of guidelines that are easy to implement.

Given the likelihood that multiple members of the OSGeo community will request support for a single solicitation a balance should be reached between providing sufficient information so an informed decision to support or not support the proposed work can be made and to maintain sufficient confidentiality so that a competitive edge can be maintained by the requestor.

All letters of support should be archived on the OSGeo web site for access by the OSGeo community.

The process involves 4 steps: submission, comment, decision, and notification.
# To start the process, a request for support should be submitted to the OSGeo discuss mailing list. In the request sufficient information should be provided about the proposal’s goals and deliverables with explicit reference to why OSGeo support is being requested.
# During a period of 3 days (72 hours) the OSGeo community will have an opportunity to respond with comments indicating why OSGeo should or should not explicitly support the project. If more information is required that should be stated during this review period.
# After this 3-day review period the OSGeo board will discuss the request at their next scheduled meeting. One board member should be assigned the task of organizing the initial request and all replies concerning that request so this information can be distributed to board members in advance of the meeting. After discussing feedback received from the discuss mailing list the board will make one of the following decisions:
## Request additional information
## Approve the request
## Deny the request
# The requestor will be notified of the board’s decision within 24 hours of the start of the board meeting. If the request is approved the board will write the letter and deliver it. If additional information is requested the board will notify the requestor and the OSGeo community via the discuss mailing list and the review process begins again. If the request is denied a notice of denial will be sent to the requestor via-email. This notice will include the justification for denying the request.

'''Question:'''
Should it be mentioned that board members wishing to comment should do so via the discuss mailing list or is it okay for them to have the option of limiting their feedback to the board meeting?

Main Page

2006-06-15T18:55:58Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added letter of support entry

== Introduction to the Open Source Geospatial Foundation Wiki ==
This is the community Wiki of the [http://www.osgeo.org/ Open Source Geospatial Foundation]. Please refer to the official web site at http://www.osgeo.org/ for stable documents and policies. This Wiki is the place where documents can be created collaboratively (ie. adoption processes, user hints, suggestions, committee notes, etc.). All web pages that are adopted as official documents will be moved to a CVS or SVN and subsequently appear at the [http://www.osgeo.org/ OSGeo] web site, which is the only official place for documents.

If you're wondering about how to dive in to OSGeo, what it's all about and how to get involved, see [[Getting Started]].

== OSGeo Structure ==

* [https://www.osgeo.org/content/foundation/about.html "About the Foundation"] (official officers, charter docs, etc)
* [[All Members]] -- add information about yourself
* [[Roadmap]]
* [[Mailing Lists]]
* [[Library]]

== Committees and Working Groups ==
* [[Board of Directors]] (official) - [[Board tasks]]
* [[Website Committee]] (official) - [[WebComTODO|Current WebCom tasks]]
* [[Fundraising]] Committee (official)
* [[IncCom Wiki|Incubation Committee]] (official)
* [[Promotion and Visibility Committee]] (official)
* [[Public Geospatial Data Committee]] (official; maybe needs a catchier name)
* [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] (official)
* [[SAC|System Administration Committee (SAC)]] (official)
* [[Certification Committee]] (not official) - ''initial ideas stage!''

For a list of scheduled or regularly scheduled meetings of the Board Committees and Working Groups refer to the [[Foundation Calendar]].

==Project Specific Wiki ==
The following are sub-sections of the wiki, specific to hosted open source projects at OSGeo.org:

* [[MapGuide Open Source]]
* [[Brasil | Brazilian OSGeo Chapter]]
* [[Japan | Japan OSGeo Chapter]]

== Current Proposals and Documents in Editing Process ==
* [[OSGeo Description]]
* [[Press Release Process]]
* [[Press Release Template]]
* [[Talk:Proposed_Press_Release | Translations of Press Release]]
* [[Like Minded Regional Organizations]]
* [[International Outreach]]
* [[Proposed Membership Rules]]
* [[Potential Nominees for Next Membership Election]]
* [[Distribution Special Interest Groups]]
* [[Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial]]
* [[Committee Chair Guidelines]]
* [[Protocol for requesting letter of support]]

* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_Geospatial_Foundation Wikipedia entry]

== Project requests ==
* [[Volunteers Needed]]
* [[AJAX WebMapping Project Request]]
* [[Programming Languages Project]]
* [[Cpanel Installer]]
* [[Languages maps for webs]]
* [[Maps gallery]]
* [[Script Repository]]

== Project Tools ==
[[ OSGeo.org Project Tool FAQ]]

== Useful Notes ==
* [[Getting Started]] will help you to find about.
* [[How to Edit]] this Wiki.
* [[How to keep Track]] of what is going on in the Wiki.
* [[OSGEO:Protected page guidelines|Protected page guidelines]]

-----
[[OSGEO:About|Wiki Site Disclaimer]]

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-05T17:25:30Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added contact info

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
# Kevin Yam

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.' One can bypass a whole section (e.g. the scenarios, to which no-one has made a response here);
"Please respond to the appropriate Sections based on your experience"

The RFI urges this consideration of its goals, in responses:

''Respondents must factor key public values as defined by the NSDI into each response whenever applicable. Key public values include:''

* ''Privacy and security of citizens’ personal data and accuracy of statistical information on people, both in raw form and in derived information products''
* ''Access for all citizens to spatial data, information, and interpretive products, in accordance with OMB Circular A-130''
* ''Protection of proprietary interests related to licensed information and data''
* ''Interoperability of Federal information systems to enable the drawing of resources from multiple Federal agencies and their partners''

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''
Primary contact:
Chris Holmes, 212-219-6062, cholmes@openplans.org

Secondary contact:
Ned Horning, 212-313-7947, horning@amnh.org

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

'''no response? rationale?'''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

Promotion and adoption of open standards for the collection, storage, access, and processing of geographic data is fundamental to the development of best-practise common solutions. Common implementation of standard protocols (for exchange) and formats (for storage and distribution) of geographic data are can greatly simplify future transitions.

A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the interoperability benefits gained from adopting open standards.

However, the presence of standards alone is not sufficient. The Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) has made great strides in developing a set of standards, which precisely define a solution for interoperability of geographic data and systems. Yet uptake has been slow, as few outside of the standards writers see compelling reason to implement common solutions. Additionally, there are often large investments needed to adopt a standard. Investments may take the form of an upgrade to current software, developing or acquiring new software, or investing significant time in getting an open source solution running.

In transition to a common solution, these concerns can be addressed by:

- providing proof of best practise in ease of implementation of open standards for geographic data
- providing proof of value and return on investment in doing so

In order to encourage uptake, data providers need some compelling reason to transition a common solution. While the OGC community passed by promotion of their standards to write newer, more niche ones geared towards higher overhead uses, Google Earth came along with a compelling, user friendly environment with lots of available data. Far more organizations are making their data available as KML, the Google Earth standard, than have set up a Web Map Service interface. With WMS one tends to only replicate functionality that was already available, albeit in a more open way.

A compelling example of the power of interoperability is needed to render a new investment attractive to stakeholders; an open standards based solution cannot be merely a requirement demanded from above. The essence this is "bottom up" rather than "top down" approach is exemplified by the World Wide Web. Participation in the was not a question of being obliged to implement HTML and HTTP standards to share one's information; not doing so, one would be "missing the boat". If the Geospatial Web is perceived as something that is working now, and can be as compelling as the World Wide Web, it is naturally to everyone's advantage to implement common solutions.

The impact of potentially large infrastructure investment needed to adopt a standard, can be greatly minimized by available user friendly open source implementations of the open standards. This allows organizations to 'try out' new open standards without having to heavily invest in new infrastructure, the advantages of which are unknowable.

This is in no way exclusive of proprietary implementations of open standards, and most proprietary vendors that we've talked to welcome the availability of open source implementations.

After an initial evaluation phase of the standard itself, using the open source software, most organizations will complete a full evaluation of available solutions, and many times proprietary solutions will fit them best. Open standards and common solutions also benefit from many implementations; the more data that is available, the more compelling an environment. For vendors of proprietary software, 'a rising tide raises all boats', even if many people choose open source solutions. To go back to the World Wide Web analogy; though the open source Apache Web Server has a majority of the web server market, the proprietary vendors all have much greater sales as a result of the fact that more organisations are offering their online via standard protocols and formats; an outcome which Apache enabled by greatly lowering the barrier to entry.

Additionally, open source solutions will easily operate alongside legacy systems, so that an entirely new investment is not needed to transition over a whole infrastructure. Open source can run side by side with proprietary solutions, with open source implementing the new open standards. Stakeholders can maintain their regular workflows and transition to a more common solution in time. The open nature of the code means that even if a certain legacy system is not already available to be integrated, it is relatively easy to modify the open code to work with the legacy code. This mitigates the risk of transition to common solutions by allowing the transition to be iterative, incrementally adding small pieces along the way, instead of requiring a massive upheaval.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data, the process of collecting and maintaining, storing and processing these data are open. Historically, this has been the case because vendors providing these services use proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibility between data sets, and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs proprietary packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Proprietary vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current activities rely on a string of participants to manage a Geographic Information System. A system needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for appropriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be traceable to the owners/creators by average users of the data.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data interoperability – It is important that data can be used in all anticipated situations. This means it must be possible to combine it with other data and it must be usable within a broad range of available systems.</li>
<li>Accessibility – This includes physical access to data layers and the ability to work with those data in available usable systems (for example a GIS with trained personnel.)</li>
<li>Data Currency – Data currency must be within the requirements of the intended application.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatibility</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessible to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''

While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) [''reference?''] can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for coordinating use geographic data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''

Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place, the cost of entry for product development is reduced. To strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''

The most effective way to ensure continued innovation is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software that supports and promotes common standards.

It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (for example see: http://www.amso.army.mil/cc-tteam/PMG_04_MOSA.pdf). [''quote?'']

To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research and development for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

'''no response? rationale?'''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entity's ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

[''more detail..?'']

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic
information and related activities does not yet exist. As with developing standards, this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from, and better coordinate, the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability; this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 
The inability to read a particular file format is often the factor preventing access to a particular data set. This can occur for several reasons but two common problems are an insufficient capability of a software program to read a particular file format or the inability to read a proprietary file format using incompatible software. Adopting open standards and open source software can alleviate both of these problems. Having a community of individuals and organizations build on open source software libraries can help strengthen the ability of software packages to handle a wide variety of format. A good example of this is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) and OGR which are raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) translator libraries. Building on open source libraries provides excellent resources for open source and proprietary software developers alike. 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

'''no response? rationale? '''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

''' no response? rationale?'''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''

''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''

''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''

''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''

''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-04T21:39:06Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added citation to section 2.2.9

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''
* whoever sends it in could naturally be their contact

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

'''no response? rationale?'''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adopting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

But standards alone are not sufficient. The Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) has made great strides in developing a solid set of standards, which precisely defines a common solution that would go quite far towards true interoperability. But uptake has been slow, as few outside of the standards writers see compelling reason to upgrade. There are often large investment needed to adopt a standard. This may come in the form of an upgrade to their current software, creating an entirely new piece of software, or investing significant time in getting an open source solution running.

Both of these issues can be improved upon, which would greatly increase the chances of common solutions. The first is to provide some compelling reason to transition a current solution. While the OGC community passed by promotion of their standards to write newer, more niche ones geared towards higher overhead uses, Google Earth came along with a compelling, user friendly environment with lots of available data. Far more organizations are making their data available as KML, the Google Earth standard, than have set up a WMS, since with it they can visualize their data in ways they couldn't before. With WMS one tends to only replicate functionality that was already available, albeit in a more open way. What is needed is a compelling example of the power of interoperability, so that a new investment is attractive to stakeholders, and not merely a requirement demanded from above. The essence of this is a top down versus bottom up approach. The bottom up approach is exemplified by the World Wide Web, where it became so compelling and so important that it was not a question of implementing some html and http standard to share one's information, but instead a question of just missing the boat. If the GeoSpatial Web becomes as compelling as the World Wide Web, in potential if not initially in actual content, then common solutions will naturally be implemented as it is to everyone's advantage. But that potential must be able to be immediately percieved, something must be working now, or uptake will always be felt to be enforced from above.

The second issue, of large investment needed to adopt a standard, can be greatly minimized by available user friendly open source implementations of the open standards. This is in no way exclusive to proprietary implementations of open standards, and most proprietary vendors that we've talked to welcome the availability of open source implementations. The main reason for this is that it allows organizations to 'try out' new open standards with out having to fully invest with out knowing if it does bring them any advantage. After an initial evaluation phase of the standard itself, using the open source software, most organizations will complete a full evaluation of available solutions, and many times proprietary solutions will fit them best. Open standards and common solutions also benefit from many implementations, since there is more available data, making a more compelling environment. So for proprietary vendors, 'a rising tide raises all boats', even if many people choose open source solutions, the overall 'GeoSpatial Web' becomes more compelling the more people are on it. To go back to the World Wide Web, though the open source Apache Web Server has a majority of the web server market, the proprietary vendors all have much greater sales as a result of the fact that most everyone is online, which Apache enabled by greatly lowering the barrier to entry.

Additionally, open source solutions will easily operate alongside legacy systems, so that an entirely new investment is not needed to transition over a whole infrastructure. Open Source can run side by side proprietary solutions, with open source implementing the new open standards, while allowing users to keep their regular work flows and transition to a more common solution in time. The open nature of the code means that even if a certain legacy system is not already available to be integrated, it is relatively easy to modify the open code to work with the legacy code. This mitigates the risk of transition to common solutions by allowing the transition to be iterative, with everything working along the way, instead of requiring a massive upheaval.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data interoperability – It is important that data can be used in all anticipated situations. This means it must be possible to combine it with other data and it must be useable within a broad range of available systems.</li>
<li>Accessibility – This include physical access to data layers and the ability to work with those data in available useable systems, for example a GIS with trained personnel.</li>
<li>Data Currency – Data currency must be within the requirements of the intended application.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (for example see: http://www.amso.army.mil/cc-tteam/PMG_04_MOSA.pdf). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

'''no response? rationale?'''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability and this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 
The inability to read a particular file format is often the factor preventing access to a particular data set. This can occur for several reasons but two common problems are an insufficient capability of a software program to read a particular file format or the inability to read a proprietary file format using incompatible software. Adopting open standards and open source software can alleviate both of these problems. Having a community of individuals and organizations build on open source software libraries can help strengthen the ability of software packages to handle a wide variety of format. A good example of this is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) and OGR which are raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) translator libraries. Building on open source libraries provides excellent resources for open source and proprietary software developers alike. 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''

''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''

''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''

''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''

''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Talk:Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-04T21:13:50Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Initial discussion points

I have a few comments about the document and it would be good to get second opinions before changes are made.

Who will send in the final version? The final document has to be converted to word and e-mailed to geospatial@gsa.gov. The subject lines must have “RFI-GSV06PD00089 from OSGeo”

Sections 2.2.4, 2.2.6, and 2.2.7 have interesting text but I’m not sure it fits well with the question at hand. Can someone else please take a look at this and deal with it as you see fit. One possibility would be to move it to the “Additional Information” section.

At the beginning of section 1 we need to supply contact information (point of contact, phone number, e-mail address). How do we do about this with OSGeo. Is the point of contact Frank W? Does someone want to volunteer? It would be nice if someone from the board could do it.

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-04T21:04:17Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Edited section 2.2.5

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

But standards alone are not a cure all. The Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) has made great strides in developing a solid set of standards, which precisely defines a common solution that would go quite far towards true interoperability. But uptake has been slow, as few outside of the standards writers see compelling reason to upgrade, while they also see a large investment needed to adopt a standard - in the form of an upgrade to their current software, an entirely new piece of software, or significant time investment to get an open source solution running.

Both of these issues can be improved upon, which would greatly increase the chances of common solutions. The first is to provide some compelling reason to transition a current solution. While the OGC community passed by promotion of their standards to write newer, more niche ones geared towards higher overhead uses, Google Earth came along with a compelling, user friendly environment with lots of available data. Far more organizations are making their data available as KML, the Google Earth standard, than have set up a WMS, since with it they can visualize their data in ways they couldn't before. With WMS one tends to only replicate functionality that was already available, albeit in a more open way. What is needed is a compelling example of the power of interoperability, so that a new investment is attractive to stakeholders, and not merely a requirement demanded from above. The essence of this is a top down versus bottom up approach. The bottom up approach is exemplified by the World Wide Web, where it became so compelling and so important that it was not a question of implementing some html and http standard to share one's information, but instead a question of just missing the boat. If the GeoSpatial Web becomes as compelling as the World Wide Web, in potential if not initially in actual content, then common solutions will naturally be implemented as it is to everyone's advantage. But that potential must be able to be immediately percieved, something must be working now, or uptake will always be felt to be enforced from above.

The second issue, of large investment needed to adopt a standard, can be greatly minimized by available user friendly open source implementations of the open standards. This is in no way exclusive to proprietary implementations of open standards, and most proprietary vendors that we've talked to welcome the availability of open source implementations. The main reason for this is that it allows organizations to 'try out' new open standards with out having to fully invest with out knowing if it does bring them any advantage. After an initial evaluation phase of the standard itself, using the open source software, most organizations will complete a full evaluation of available solutions, and many times proprietary solutions will fit them best. Open standards and common solutions also benefit from many implementations, since there is more available data, making a more compelling environment. So for proprietary vendors, 'a rising tide raises all boats', even if many people choose open source solutions, the overall 'GeoSpatial Web' becomes more compelling the more people are on it. To go back to the World Wide Web, though the open source Apache Web Server has a majority of the web server market, the proprietary vendors all have much greater sales as a result of the fact that most everyone is online, which Apache enabled by greatly lowering the barrier to entry.

Additionally, open source solutions will easily operate alongside legacy systems, so that an entirely new investment is not needed to transition over a whole infrastructure. Open Source can run side by side proprietary solutions, with open source implementing the new open standards, while allowing users to keep their regular work flows and transition to a more common solution in time. The open nature of the code means that even if a certain legacy system is not already available to be integrated, it is relatively easy to modify the open code to work with the legacy code. This mitigates the risk of transition to common solutions by allowing the transition to be iterative, with everything working along the way, instead of requiring a massive upheaval.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data interoperability – It is important that data can be used in all anticipated situations. This means it must be possible to combine it with other data and it must be useable within a broad range of available systems.</li>
<li>Accessibility – This include physical access to data layers and the ability to work with those data in available useable systems, for example a GIS with trained personnel.</li>
<li>Data Currency – Data currency must be within the requirements of the intended application.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability and this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 
The inability to read a particular file format is often the factor preventing access to a particular data set. This can occur for several reasons but two common problems are an insufficient capability of a software program to read a particular file format or the inability to read a proprietary file format using incompatible software. Adopting open standards and open source software can alleviate both of these problems. Having a community of individuals and organizations build on open source software libraries can help strengthen the ability of software packages to handle a wide variety of format. A good example of this is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) and OGR which are raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) translator libraries. Building on open source libraries provides excellent resources for open source and proprietary software developers alike. 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''

''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''

''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''

''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''

''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-04T20:39:28Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* ''Lifecycle Activities'' */

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

But standards alone are not a cure all. The Open GeoSpatial Consortium (OGC) has made great strides in developing a solid set of standards, which precisely defines a common solution that would go quite far towards true interoperability. But uptake has been slow, as few outside of the standards writers see compelling reason to upgrade, while they also see a large investment needed to adopt a standard - in the form of an upgrade to their current software, an entirely new piece of software, or significant time investment to get an open source solution running.

Both of these issues can be improved upon, which would greatly increase the chances of common solutions. The first is to provide some compelling reason to transition a current solution. While the OGC community passed by promotion of their standards to write newer, more niche ones geared towards higher overhead uses, Google Earth came along with a compelling, user friendly environment with lots of available data. Far more organizations are making their data available as KML, the Google Earth standard, than have set up a WMS, since with it they can visualize their data in ways they couldn't before. With WMS one tends to only replicate functionality that was already available, albeit in a more open way. What is needed is a compelling example of the power of interoperability, so that a new investment is attractive to stakeholders, and not merely a requirement demanded from above. The essence of this is a top down versus bottom up approach. The bottom up approach is exemplified by the World Wide Web, where it became so compelling and so important that it was not a question of implementing some html and http standard to share one's information, but instead a question of just missing the boat. If the GeoSpatial Web becomes as compelling as the World Wide Web, in potential if not initially in actual content, then common solutions will naturally be implemented as it is to everyone's advantage. But that potential must be able to be immediately percieved, something must be working now, or uptake will always be felt to be enforced from above.

The second issue, of large investment needed to adopt a standard, can be greatly minimized by available user friendly open source implementations of the open standards. This is in no way exclusive to proprietary implementations of open standards, and most proprietary vendors that we've talked to welcome the availability of open source implementations. The main reason for this is that it allows organizations to 'try out' new open standards with out having to fully invest with out knowing if it does bring them any advantage. After an initial evaluation phase of the standard itself, using the open source software, most organizations will complete a full evaluation of available solutions, and many times proprietary solutions will fit them best. Open standards and common solutions also benefit from many implementations, since there is more available data, making a more compelling environment. So for proprietary vendors, 'a rising tide raises all boats', even if many people choose open source solutions, the overall 'GeoSpatial Web' becomes more compelling the more people are on it. To go back to the World Wide Web, though the open source Apache Web Server has a majority of the web server market, the proprietary vendors all have much greater sales as a result of the fact that most everyone is online, which Apache enabled by greatly lowering the barrier to entry.

Additionally, open source solutions will easily operate alongside legacy systems, so that an entirely new investment is not needed to transition over a whole infrastructure. Open Source can run side by side proprietary solutions, with open source implementing the new open standards, while allowing users to keep their regular work flows and transition to a more common solution in time. The open nature of the code means that even if a certain legacy system is not already available to be integrated, it is relatively easy to modify the open code to work with the legacy code. This mitigates the risk of transition to common solutions by allowing the transition to be iterative, with everything working along the way, instead of requiring a massive upheaval.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability and this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 
The inability to read a particular file format is often the factor preventing access to a particular data set. This can occur for several reasons but two common problems are an insufficient capability of a software program to read a particular file format or the inability to read a proprietary file format using incompatible software. Adopting open standards and open source software can alleviate both of these problems. Having a community of individuals and organizations build on open source software libraries can help strengthen the ability of software packages to handle a wide variety of format. A good example of this is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) and OGR which are raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) translator libraries. Building on open source libraries provides excellent resources for open source and proprietary software developers alike. 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''

''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''

''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''

''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''

''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T19:53:30Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* ''Lifecycle Activities'' */

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

Available open source solutions to allow organizations to 'try out' new open standards with lower barriers to entry.

Ability to modify the source code allows organizations to alter the common solutions to be compatible with their legacy systems, so that transition can proceed at a more natural pace, running new and old systems side by side.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use secret and proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Display all Geographic Data in bright shinny colors... Kidding
Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability and this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 
The inability to read a particular file format is often the factor preventing access to a particular data set. This can occur for several reasons but two common problems are an insufficient capability of a software program to read a particular file format or the inability to read a proprietary file format using incompatible software. Adopting open standards and open source software can alleviate both of these problems. Having a community of individuals and organizations build on open source software libraries can help strengthen the ability of software packages to handle a wide variety of format. A good example of this is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) and OGR which are raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) translator libraries. Building on open source libraries provides excellent resources for open source and proprietary software developers alike. 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''
''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''
''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''
''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''
''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T19:49:03Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added text to section 2.2.13

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build effective standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

Available open source solutions to allow organizations to 'try out' new open standards with lower barriers to entry.

Ability to modify the source code allows organizations to alter the common solutions to be compatible with their legacy systems, so that transition can proceed at a more natural pace, running new and old systems side by side.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use secret and proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Display all Geographic Data in bright shinny colors... Kidding
Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability and this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 
The inability to read a particular file format is often the factor preventing access to a particular data set. This can occur for several reasons but two common problems are an insufficient capability of a software program to read a particular file format or the inability to read a proprietary file format using incompatible software. Adopting open standards and open source software can alleviate both of these problems. Having a community of individuals and organizations build on open source software libraries can help strengthen the ability of software packages to handle a wide variety of format. A good example of this is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) and OGR which are raster (GDAL) and vector (OGR) translator libraries. Building on open source libraries provides excellent resources for open source and proprietary software developers alike. 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''
''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''
''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''
''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''
''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T18:09:45Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added section 2.2.13

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build effective standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

Available open source solutions to allow organizations to 'try out' new open standards with lower barriers to entry.

Ability to modify the source code allows organizations to alter the common solutions to be compatible with their legacy systems, so that transition can proceed at a more natural pace, running new and old systems side by side.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use secret and proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Display all Geographic Data in bright shinny colors... Kidding
Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''
The key to working with diverse data is interoperability and this can be best achieved through the use of open standards for data and software. Open source geospatial software offerings have a proven track record for often being the first to implement geospatial standards developed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). 

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''
''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''
''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''
''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''
''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T17:49:58Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added section 2.2.12

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build effective standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

Available open source solutions to allow organizations to 'try out' new open standards with lower barriers to entry.

Ability to modify the source code allows organizations to alter the common solutions to be compatible with their legacy systems, so that transition can proceed at a more natural pace, running new and old systems side by side.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use secret and proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Display all Geographic Data in bright shinny colors... Kidding
Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
A refined and clear cut governance model for coordinating the use of geographic information and related activities does not exist but as with developing standards this should be developed using an open process. There is a wealth of information related to governance models that can be drawn from the open source software community. The open source software community is thriving by leveraging the expertise and interests from a diverse group of individuals and a similar model can be used to benefit from and better coordinate the use of geographic information and to optimize related spatial data activities. 

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''
''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''
''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''
''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''
''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T14:43:16Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added section 2.2.9

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build effective standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

Available open source solutions to allow organizations to 'try out' new open standards with lower barriers to entry.

Ability to modify the source code allows organizations to alter the common solutions to be compatible with their legacy systems, so that transition can proceed at a more natural pace, running new and old systems side by side.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use secret and proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''
The most effective way to ensure continued innovation with regard to geospatial coordination and optimization is to promote and adopt open standards for the creation/collection, storage, access, and processing of geospatial data. This includes contributing to the development of open source geospatial software. It is in the data users’ and producers’ interest to have interoperable solutions and the most effective way to accomplish this is to include them in the process of developing standards and software. The benefits of using open methods are becoming well publicized (could use a citation here). To further benefit from current open approaches it is necessary to fund research to further develop open geospatial-focused standards for improved interoperability and access. Research should also be conducted on innovative open approaches for creating and maintaining geospatial data layers in an open environment. The potential of openness in the geospatial sector is great but funded research is needed to expedite the realization of these benefits.

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Display all Geographic Data in bright shinny colors... Kidding
Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''
''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''
''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''
''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''
''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T14:16:41Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added section 2.2.8

== Introduction ==

This is a wiki version of the questions we need to answer for the RFI. Please feel free to start answering questions, and to edit the existing stuff, even without asking. It's all versioned, so we can roll back if a new change that we don't like is in. Be sure to read the full RFI, that has more about what they're looking for, at: http://www.estrategy.gov/lineofbusiness/docs/geospatial_rfi.doc

Right now we have four people who've thrown their hats in to work on this, feel free to add your name.

# Chris Holmes (interspersed time till start of may)
# Ned Horning (little time this week, start of may)
# Dave McIlhagga (start of may)
# Mike Davis (interspersed as workload permits)
# Bob Basques (as workload permits)
#

==== Notes to use ====
Just ran across this, which may be helpful as a citation of sorts: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2542131185.html
It's about a report 'examining open standards, open source software, and "open innovation." The report concludes that openness should be promoted as a matter of public policy, in order to foster innovation and economic growth in the U.S. and world economies.'

[[Bibliography of OS and Geo information]]

==== Notes on submission ====

Submission of RFI Responses
Responses to the RFI must be submitted by e-mail to GSA by 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 5th, 2006. In responding to the RFI, please use the template labeled Part II: RFI Questionnaire. This template is also available at the following URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/c-6-8-glob.html. Place your responses in-line in the document, retaining the question number and question text before each answer. Your e-mail should be clearly marked in the subject line with reference to RFI-GSV06PD00089 and your organization. You are required to include a point of contact for your organization. E-mail your response in Word (version 2000 or higher) to geospatial@gsa.gov. Please do not include marketing materials with your response at this time and ensure that any sensitive or protected information is marked as such. The government will ensure this information is not released externally. The overarching objective for this RFI is information gathering and not development of possible government acquisition of products or services.

* So someone's going to have to paste from this wiki back in to the original document, and email it in.

==== More notes ====
Place any additional notes about our information here...

Note that we don't have to respond to every question. The RFI says 'If you choose not to respond to a question, indicate “no response” and identify the rationale.'

== RFI Questionnaire Section 1: Respondent Information ==

''Please provide the following information about your organization.''
''Responding Organization Name:'' Open Source GeoSpatial Foundation

''Are you responding as a:

''User organization from experience coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities''

''Vendor or consultant from experience providing products or services to help other organizations coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities''

''Both''

Both

''Type of organization (e.g. Federal agency, non-profit, state, private):'' Non-Profit

''Contact information (provide a point of contact, phone number and e-mail address):''

== ''Lifecycle Activities'' ==
''The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-161 provides direction for Federal agencies that produce, maintain, or use spatial data either directly or indirectly in the fulfillment of their respective missions. OMB Circular A-16, Section 8 describes Federal agency responsibilities and reporting requirements for collecting, using, or disseminating geographic information or carrying out related spatial data activities. These activities are identified as lifecycle activities for the purposes of this RFI.''

''Please answer the following questions from the perspective of an overall solution and approach for coordinating the use of geographic information and/or optimizing related spatial data activities. Lifecycle activities are being defined as (1) acquire, (2) process, (3) distribute, (4) use, 5) maintain, and (6) preserve spatial data. Be sure to include innovative practices, the applicability of these practices to Government and any relevant past experience.''

''2.2.1 In which data themes of national importance is there opportunity for increased effectiveness, efficiency, and cost savings potential across the Federal Government, and what is the recommended transition approach? OMB Circular A-16 framework data themes and other data themes of national significance are (1) geodetic control, (2) orthoimagery, (3) elevation and bathymetry, (4) transportation, (5) hydrography, (6) cadastral, and (7) governmental units.''

''2.2.2 What are the critical change management issues and best practices for successful transition to and full implementation of common solutions?''

A fundamental change management issue is to promote and adapt open standards for the collection (protocols), storage (file formats, media, and metadata), access, and processing of geographic data. A recently released report by the Digital Connections Council of the Committee for Economic Development, “Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness” (http://www.ced.org/projects/ecom.shtml#open) highlights the benefits from adapting open standards. This report found that openness can be used effectively to build effective standards that in turn can be used to enhance interoperability.

Available open source solutions to allow organizations to 'try out' new open standards with lower barriers to entry.

Ability to modify the source code allows organizations to alter the common solutions to be compatible with their legacy systems, so that transition can proceed at a more natural pace, running new and old systems side by side.

''2.2.3 What cultural impediments and training issues are paramount at which stages of the transition? What are the solutions to them?''

Although the United States is a global leader in providing public access to data the process of collecting/creating, storing and processing these data are less open largely because vendors providing these services use secret and proprietary methods with the intent of gaining a competitive edge over their competition. This approach is rooted in traditional intellectual property protection ideals and can result in incompatibly and high costs to the government. This mindset is a significant cultural impediment to achieving common solutions for working with geospatial data and can be overcome by developing open data and software standards and promoting the benefits of this approach to the business community and government organizations.

Cultural Issues
<ul>
<li>Data Ownership vs. Data Stewardship</li>
<li>Drawing Centric vs. Data Centric (especially in CADD shops)</li>
<li>Public vs Private (or percieved to be Private).</li>
<li>Data format preferences still exist that may not coincide with the greater good.</li>
</ul>

Training Issues
<ul>
<li>Cost of use, training materials derived from open source packages vs commercial packages.</li>
<li>Simple is better, if something is easier to use, it's more likely to be used.</li>
<li>Commercial vs OpenSource</li>
</ul>

''2.2.4 From your experience, please describe the cost/benefit of coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing NSDI components and related spatial data activities across all sectors and levels of government.''

Many current systems rely on a string of partcipants to manage a Geographic Information system. A System needs to allow individual data owners to update and maintain their respective datasets with the least amount of percieved extra work. If the process is precieved by the data owners to be additional effort on their part, it's much less likely to take hold as a standard. The process needs to be as painless as possible for the Data Steward in order for a system to be self sustaining.

Publication by Data Owners requires a few basic needs be met, such as:
<ul>
<li>Move publication and maintenance of data as close as possible to the data owners/creators.</li>
<li>Owners/creators are also responsible for approriate metadata for their respective datasets. This aids in data discovery mechanisms for the end users.</li>
<li>Responsibly for upkeep and timeliness of data should be tracable to the owners/creators by the average users.</li>
<li>User Feedback systems need to be in place for relaying of errors and/or omissions back to the data owners.</li>
</ul>

''2.2.5 What are the top three critical factors for successfully coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''
<ul>
<li>Data Consistency</li>
<li>Ease of Access</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
</ul>

My list is Different . . .(actaully, might be dependant on individual GIS Functions, don't you think?)
<ul>
<li>Enabling Data Owners to Publish and Maintain their own Data</li>
<li>Data Currency</li>
<li>Ease of Use (Systems and Data)</li>
</ul>

There may be room here to describe more than one list based on different functionalities or Tasks. A list could be made for each of: Data, Systems, Access, Currency, Ease of Use, etc.

''2.2.6 What are the top three risks in coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? How do you mitigate these risks?''
<ul>
<li>Data Accuracy</li>
<li>Data Availability</li>
<li>Data Compatability</li>
</ul>
The three biggest risks when building business practices based on shared geospatial information reflect the critical factors mentioned in 2.2.5. For shared systems to work, each proponent must be willing and able to meet a certain standard level of service that ensures the reliability and consistancy of the data provided. These data must be available in a format that is accessable to the end user regardless of software package or vendor.

''2.2.7 What are the key performance indicators related to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities? What metrics can be obtained to measure performance and how?''
While data accuracy can be a difficult metric to measure shared spatial data by, it is probably the most important factor when relying on such data for business processes.

Easier to measure is the level of consistancy maintained by shared spatial data. Data that follows an established standard (ie. SDSFIE) can be graded based on how well it follows and implements said standard.

Another important metric for shared spatial data is the length of time required for changes made by the data steward to be reflected in the shared dataset. Minimizing this refresh time is critical if the shared datasets are to be considered an authoritative source of information.

''2.2.8 How do you retain the advantages of competition while reaping the benefits of geospatial coordination and optimization?''
Advantages of competition are perceived to be improved innovation (producing a better product) and reduced cost to the consumer. By developing and using open standards innovation is improved because of the size and diversity of the community developing the standards. Cost is also reduced because once the standards and clearly defined metrics of success are in place the cost of entry to begin developing products is reduced. Competition is important but to strengthen competition it helps if companies can compete on a level playing field that is promoted through the use of open standards.

''2.2.9 How do you ensure and manage ongoing innovation in geospatial coordination and optimization?''

''2.2.10 What are the incentives and disincentives for participation in geospatial coordination and optimization as a collaboration partner, a customer and as a service provider?''

''2.2.11 How do you achieve and sustain senior management involvement and commitment to coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

Display all Geographic Data in bright shinny colors... Kidding
Sustained commitment from senior management within an organization can be assured in two ways:
<ul><li>Funding</li><li>Mission</li></ul>
Tying funding to an entities' ability to create, maintain, and distribute geospatial information is the most immediate way to ensure the interest of senior management. For long term success, the organization must evolve to embrace the geospatial data lifecycle as a key component of its mission.

''2.2.12 What governance model do you use or would you recommend for coordinating the use of geographic information or optimizing related spatial data activities?''

''2.2.13 What is the best approach for assembling and using multiple data sets from diverse fields where scale, units of analysis and data types differ?''

''2.2.14 What geospatial cross-cutting services, best practices, interoperable technologies, and data standards exist but are not necessarily coordinated or optimized by the Federal government?''

''2.2.15 What key issues and challenges must be considered when geospatial lifecycle activities occur in a foreign country that may or may not share borders with the US? What solutions do you propose to overcome these issues and challenges?''

== ''Scenarios'' ==

=== Scenario 1 - Emergency Response: ===
''The U.S. is experiencing an “Incident of National Significance”, as defined by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD-5) that has required activation of the National Response Plan (NRP). The NRP provides a framework for the coordination of Federal, state, local, private, volunteer, and Non-Governmental organizations to work together in real time to respond effectively. Under the NRP, significant Federal geospatial data and assets are mobilized and made available to the responding homeland security (HLS) community. However, significant geospatial data and assets are available at the state and local level that are not immediately available to responding Federal Departments and agencies.''

''2.3.1 Please describe the types of non-Federal geospatial data that are available at the state and local government level, as well as from private utilities and other entities that might improve the effectiveness of the NRP.''

''In your response please address any issues regarding licensing of data, the need for information sharing agreements and similar impediments to other than full and open sharing of geospatial data within the HLS community.''

''2.3.2 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure emergency managements are aware of the potential of geospatial data and assets to support emergency response?''

''2.3.3 What activities need to be undertaken during the Preparedness phase of the emergency lifecycle to assure that geospatial technology subject matter experts and data stewards are aware of the emergency response requirement and standard operating procedures?''

''2.3.4 During response to an Incident of National Significance, what needs to be done to assure geospatial data and assets are made available to all participants in the NRP?''
''In particular, please identify issues that must be addressed to assure state and local geospatial data and assets can be made readily available to all participants in the response?''

''2.3.5 What activities to coordinate geospatial data and assets for emergency management applications are you aware of?''

''2.3.6 What activities do you suggest be undertaken to coordinate the use of geographic information or optimize related spatial data activities for emergency management?''

''2.3.7 Geospatial data can also play a critical role in performing analyses to support pre-disaster mitigation plan development and implementation as well as support of recovery operations. Please describe key aspects of the use of geospatial data and assets for pre-disaster mitigation and recovery.''

''2.3.8 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical (including fixed and mobile technology) – that establish an environment that is ready to respond (preparedness), able to respond (incident management), capable of supporting pre-disaster mitigation and post-disaster recovery analysis, and provides enhancements or lessons learned for future event management?''

=== Scenario 2 - Long Term Research Scenario: ===

''The U.S. perceives societal benefit in performing long-term research. Research is being conducted in numerous social and physical science fields such as demographics, public infrastructure, climatology, health care, economics, and crime, etc.''

''2.3.9 How can we enable the use of geospatial assets, including both structured and unstructured data (e.g. statistical, geographic, imagery, narrative, etc.) and services for the types of research described in scenario 2?''
''2.3.10 How can the use of geospatial data, technologies and spatial data analysis be leveraged in this scenario?''
''2.3.11 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial data and assets to achieve research objectives?''

=== Scenario 3 - Administration and Resources Management: ===

''Federal agencies and other organizations, both individually and collectively, manage billions of dollars of resources that traditionally have not exploited geospatial assets. This encompasses human resources, facilities, supplies, and finance (including grants, contracts, and intramural resources). In the grants management arena, Federal agencies are often required by OMB and Congress to assess and report on the efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment of multiple grant programs and other expenditures made annually to meet mission goals and provide service to citizens.''
''2.3.12 How can we establish the effective and efficient use of geo-referenced or geo-enabled data and assets across organizations, for the types of activities described in scenario 3?''
''2.3.13 How can the use of geospatial data, assets and spatial data analysis be leveraged in scenario 3?''
''2.3.14 What are the key components – organizational, training, business, and technical – that establish an environment that is capable of leveraging geospatial assets to achieve operational administrative and resource management objectives?''

=== Additional Information ===
''Please feel free to provide additional information, beyond the questions found in Section 2.2 and 2.3 that you feel should be considered to meet the goals and objectives of the Geospatial Line of Business.''

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-02T13:46:31Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added section 2.2.3

Response to RFI for US Gov GeoSpatial

2006-05-01T20:24:53Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added text for section 2.2.2

OSGeo education interested participants

2006-04-13T15:23:48Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

See the [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] page for the list of initial committee members.

; Meeting
The first meeting takes place via [[Getting_Started#Jump_on_IRC | IRC #osgeo]]?. Meeting time [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=4&day=13&year=2006&hour=8&min=0&sec=0&p1=64 Thursday, April 13, 2006 at 8:00 AM Chicago time]

; Agenda (as posted by Puneet and extended by Ari)
# To introduce ourselves and our interests (sort of a repeat of what is there on the wiki already, but it will help get everyone know each other).
# To try and identify a few key threads in the variety of interests that we want to pursue.
# To attempt to aggregate ourselves into sub-committees that would pursue the various threads separately. We can't all be everything to everyone, so we have to break up our goals into sub-goals, and try and accomplish those -- from higher research, to curriculum, to pre-packaged tools, to evangelism... lets begin to identify them consensually.
# Organize Wiki pages

== Contributors by Interest ==
The following are individuals who have self-identified themselves as interested in contributing or assisting with [[Education and Curriculum Committee]] projects. You are welcome to add yourself to the list and identify areas that you are particular familiar with or interested in contributing to.

* [[User:Punkish | Puneet Kishor]] (chair) (TZ GMT-6)
* Ari Jolma (TZ GMT+2)
* [[User:Neteler | Markus Neteler ]] (TZ GMT+1) (general training/education materials; educational datasets)
* Venkatesh Raghavan (TZ GMT+9)(training/education material; educational datasets, software packaging, translation, e-learning Course Management Systems, Moodle,Certification Mechanisms, experience in international training)
* Charlie Schweik (undergraduate and graduate level education; academic research on open source collaboration, public sector information technology, natural resource management)
* [[User:Pnaciona|Pericles Nacionales]] (general training/education materials; conservation and natural resource management)
* Ned Horning (Winter: GMT-5 Summer: GMT -4) (Interested in promoting open source software development and integrating open source into the conservation community)
* [[User:Tmitchel | Tyler Mitchell]] (TZ GMT-8) (interested in workshop material and curriculum development for high school through to university)
* Gary Watry (TZ GMT-5)(Interested in using Free Open Source Software (FOSS) to replace teaching Commercial Off The Shelf Software (COTS)in education, Preparing material for course work at the Graduate and Under-Grad level and then moving down into the High School level through AP and Honors courses.)
* [[User:Arnulf Christl | Arnulf Christl]] (TZ GMT+2) (Experience as GIS instructor for fulltime workshops, trainings and courses. Organization of commercial training courses with Open Source Geospatial Software. Preparation of course and presentation material, tutorials). (Interest in enhancing presentation material, publishing under Free license, in time hardcopy production, maintenance and update of content just as any OS dev project)
* [[User:Scw | Shaun Walbridge]] (TZ GMT-8) (academic research on open source collaboration; general training/education materials; educational datasets)
* [[User:Perrygeo | Matthew Perry]] (TZ GMT-8) (primarily insterested in workshops/lab materials for university students, NGOs and using open source software to demonstrate all fundamental aspects of GIS (theory and practice). Also interested in seeing 'official' training courses and certification)
* [[User:ianturton|Ian Turton]] : Penn State Uni, State College, developed Open Web Mapping course at Uni of Leeds, UK [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/] now modifying it for PennState. ianturton at gmail com [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work] [http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
* [[User:Aaronr | Aaron Racicot]] (TZ GMT-8) (Interested in fostering more collaboration with academia through the introduction of open source GIS in the curriculum. Mainly interested in Undergraduate and Graduate level education and industry (NGO's and for-profit) collaboration. Certification is also an interest.)

== Contributors by Time Zones ==
This should help in planning meetings. If you are not here yet, please add your info, or let me know and I will do so. Going from East to West, we have --

* TZ GMT+9
** Venkatesh Raghavan
* TZ GMT+2
** Ari Jolma
** Arnulf Christl
* TZ GMT+1
** Markus Neteler
* TZ GMT-5
** Gary Watry
** Ian Turton
** Ned Horning
* TZ GMT-6
** Puneet Kishor
** Pericles Nacionales
* TZ GMT-8
** Tyler Mitchell
** Shaun Walbridge
** Matthew Perry
** Aaron Racicot

Public Geospatial Data Project

2006-04-06T21:03:50Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Geo Data Repositories / Group Collection Projects */

There is an official [[Public Geospatial Data Committee|official foundation committee]] page which provides more detail on meetings and discussions.

== Mission ==

=== Promote the use of open geospatial formats ===
Providing best-practise guidelines and examples for use of open and free standards for data (GML, WMS, WFS-T) and metadata (Dublin Core, RDF).

=== Promote public access to state-collected geodata ===

Lead by example in demonstrating economic value and research activity generated by open access to public geographic information.

=== Run a repository of open geodata ===
A collection of geospatial datasets shall be hosted by the PGDP.
Additionally, links to other open data repostories shall be collected.

=== Present and explain licenses for public geodata ===
The PGDP aims to collect licenses suitable for the publishing of public geodata. The license shall be presented along with a summary of its benefits and focus.

== Approach ==

After a [[Public Geospatial Data Committee Definition Phase|Definition phase]] this has become an official [[Committees|committee]] within [[Main Page|OSGeo]].

=== Working Groups ===

At the [[Geodata Committee Meeting 20060322|first meeting of the geodata committee]] we decided to focus interest through three [[Working Groups]]:

* A [[Geodata Discovery Working Group]] which would focus on indexing and search of data and metadata repositories.
* A [[Geodata Packaging Working Group]] to look at creation and maintanance of really high quality and rich data packages to offer for educational purposes with software packages, with [[GRASS GIS]] in particular.
* A [[Geodata Licensing Working Group]] to look into parallel licensing developments and to consult on guidelines for open licenses for geodata.

=== Mailing List ===

There is a mailing list for discussion of geodata activities within OSGeo.

Subscribe: geodata-subscribe@geodata.osgeo.org
Unsubscribe: geodata-unsubscribe@geodata.osgeo.org
Digest Subscribe: geodata-digest-subscribe@geodata.osgeo.org
Digest Unsubscribe: geodata-digest-unsubscribe@geodata.osgeo.org
Help: geodata-help@geodata.osgeo.org

=== Meetings ===

This group is having regular meetings on IRC on the #osgeo channel on irc.freenode.net. At the moment this is happening on Thursdays at 16:00 UTC. [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=3&day=29&year=2006&hour=17&min=0&sec=0&p1=215 fixed time around the world]

See the [[Public Geospatial Data Committee|Geodata Committee]] page for more details on past meetings and upcoming agendas.

=== People interested in participating ===

* David Bitner
* Allan Doyle
* Florian Kindl
* Pericles S. Nacionales
* Markus Neteler
* [[User:JoWalsh|Jo Walsh]]
* [[User:Uchoa|Helton Uchoa]]
* Aaron Racicot - Ecotrust - aaronr at ecotrust.org
* Daniel Brookshier
* Schuyler Erle
* Jeff McKenna (DM Solutions)
* Steve Coast
* Mikel Maron
* Alessandro Frigeri
* David Blasby
* [[User:putler|Dan Putler]]
* [[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]]
* Ned Horning
* ''Please add yourself''

=== Organizations to beneficially connect with ===

* [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO]
* [http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap Project]
* [http://www.gsdi.org GSDI Association]
* [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project]
* [http://www.fgdc.gov Federal Geographic Data Committee]
* [http://www.opengeospatial.org Open Geospatial Consortium]

== Events ==

Events where we can either promote our positions or are likely to run into like-minded individuals.

* [http://www.asia-commons.net/ Asian Conference on the Digital Commons - April 18-20, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand]
* [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2006/ Where 2.0 - June 13-14, 2006, San Jose, California, USA]
* [http://www.foss4g2006.org/ FOSS4G2006 - Free And Open Source Software for Geoinformatics - September 12-15, 2006, Lausanne, Switzerland]

=== Geo Data Repositories / Group Collection Projects ===
* [http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap Project]
* [http://freeearthfoundation.com/ Free Earth Foundation]
* [http://geobase.ca/ Canadian Base Data]
* [http://geotorrent.org/ Various Free Datasets via Bittorrent]
* [http://www.iscgm.org/cgi-bin/fswiki/wiki.cgi Global Map] - International Steering Committee for Global Mapping
* [http://www.geonames.org Geonames.org] - Geonames is integrating geographical data such as names, altitude, population and others from various sources
* [http://www.geo-one-stop.gov/ Geospatial One Stop]
* [http://gcmd.nasa.gov/index.html Global Change Master Directory]
* [http://conserveonline.org/workspaces/cons.geo.portal Conservation GeoPortal]

=== Geo Data Repository & Policy Research ===

* [http://geodatacommons.umaine.edu/CGDPlone University of Maine Commons for Geographic Data]
* [http://www.metrogis.org MetroGIS] [http://datafinder.org Datafinder] Twin Cities, MN Metro Area Public Agency Data Sharing Effort (includes section on benefits/testimonials from public geodata)
* [http://www.gis.state.mn.us MN Governor's Council on Geographic Information]
* [http://www.oasisnyc.org New York City Open Accessible Space Information System]
* [http://www.mass.gov/mgis Massachusetts GIS]

On the [[Geodata Repository]] page, a draft outline for OSGeo's own repository project is being prepared.

=== Geo Data Policy Advocacy ===
* [http://www.publicgeodata.org/ Public Geodata Project] (IRC: [irc://freenode/publicgeodata publicgeodata]) with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation
* [http://okfn.org/geo/manifesto.php Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data Manifesto]
* [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them] (United Kingdom)

=== Open Access ===
There are also more general open access movements, often aimed at scientific data, that could provide a venue for broadening awareness of the geo-specific issues.

* [http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-golm/index.html Berlin 4 Open Access - From Promise to Practice - March 29-31, 2006 Golm, Germany]
* [http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities]
* [http://www.conservationcommons.org/ Conservation Commons] - "The Conservation Commons is characterized by an underlying set of Principles which supports open access to, and in particular the fair use of, data and information related to the conservation of biodiversity."
* [http://www.locusforums.org/forum/ The Locus Forum] - "The Locus Association is a trade association of private organisations working to increase opportunities and reduce barriers to fair trade between the public and private sector, particularly in the use of Public Sector Information."
* [http://ppgis.iapad.org/ Public Participation GIS] - "

== Further Reading ==
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1736751,00.html Ordnance Survey challenged to open up] - 2006-03-23 article in the Guardian
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1726229,00.html Give us back our crown jewels] - 2006-03-09 article in the Guardian
* [http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2107&trv=1 Why Europe Needs to Provide its Own Public Geodata ] by Jo Walsh (Feb 15, 2006)
* [http://www.systemed.net/blog/entry060311122655.html ShareAlike considered harmful for geodata] by Richard Fairhurst, a critique of GPL-like licensing situations with suggested LGPL-like model for distribution.
* "Open Source Software for Spatial Data Infrastructure (FOSSDI)". SDIC submitted 2005 to INSPIRE/EU. [http://mpa.itc.it/markus/papers/sdic_call_fossdi.pdf PDF with layout] | [http://inspire.jrc.it/ir/sdic_view_step1_only.cfm?id=2163 HTML without layout]
* [http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/270/ Open Networks and Open Society: The Relationship between Freedom, Law, and Technology] - MIT World video featuring Hal Abelson, John Wilbanks, Creative Commons
* [http://www.metrogis.org/documents/articles/index.shtml Articles] [http://www.metrogis.org/benefits/testimonials/index.shtml Testimonials] [http://www.metrogis.org/benefits/studies/index.shtml Studies] [http://www.metrogis.org/benefits/perf_measure/index.shtml Performance Measures] about [http://www.metrogis.org Metrogis], a collaboration for GIS data sharing in the Twin Cities, MN, USA

Geodata Committee Meeting 20060406

2006-04-06T16:02:21Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: /* Attendance */

= Public Geospatial Data Committee Meeting 2006-Apr-06 =

== Meeting Info ==

Chair: Jo Walsh
Minutes: Schuyler Erle
IRC: [irc://irc.freenode.net/osgeo #osgeo channel on irc.freenode.org]
Date: 2006-Apr-07 (at least in the Americas and Europe)
Time: [http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2006&month=4&day=7&hour=17&min=0&sec=0 Thursday, 17:00 UTC]

== Agenda Items ==

=== Old Business ===
* Review [[Geodata Committee Meeting 20060329|minutes from last meeting]]
* Actions [[Geodata Committee Meeting 20060329|from previous meeting]]

=== New Business ===
* Specific discussion of data sets to be hosted at Telascience
* Deciding on baseline [[Geodata Metadata Requirements]]
* Any other business?

== Minutes ==

=== Attendance ===

Schuyler Erle, John Graham, Jeff McKenna, Jo Walsh, Frank Warmerdam, Ned Horning

''please add yourself'' ;-)

[http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/%23osgeo.2006-04-07.log IRC Log]

=== Data Hosting ===

* The [[Public Geospatial Data Committee]] (e.g. 'we') plans to host data at http://osgeo.telascience.org/, courtesy of John Graham and the SDSC.
* Agreed we should start by hosting +/- two showcase data sets, one raster, one vector.
* Agreed we should host these datasets in their original formats first, before adding derivative/value-added versions.
* Agreed we should host download via HTTP, download via BitTorrent, and OGC Web Service access.
* Agreed we should peer datasets through [http://www.geotorrent.org/ GeoTorrent]. Noted that they have [http://www.geotorrent.org/faq.php#siteb data format requirements] for hosted data sets that may not meet our needs -- e.g. VMap0. Frank Warmerdam will speak with Richard Orchard of GeoTorrent about this.
* Schuyler volunteers to sketch out a [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Geodata_Discovery_Working_Group#Hosting_Plan plan for hosting] two initial datasets, most likely VMap0 and Blue Marble NG (both of which John already has downloaded to the server).

=== Metadata Standards ===

* Concern over metadata standards like [http://biology.usgs.gov/fgdc.metadata/version2/ FGDC] that may be irrelevant or raise too high a barrier to contribution by users.
** Recommended we look at [http://edcnts11.cr.usgs.gov/metalite/ MetaLite], a Windows program for creating basic FGDC metadata.
** http://edcnts11.cr.usgs.gov/metalite/help/fgdc.html lists "the smallest complete "core" of the FGDC standard that would still give sufficient basis for creating a clearinghouse"
* Discussion of the basic minimum of metadata attributes to make a data set useful
** File format
** Projection
** Text description
** Ownership/provenance
** License
** Source URL
* Action Items
** Jo agrees to work out what is already expressed in very common metadata namespaces like Dublin Core and FOAF versus what may need to be expressed in a custom or domain-specific (e.g. GML) namespace (such as representing projection, extent data etc that can be inferred from OGR).
** John will talk to [http://www.geongrid.org/ GEON] participants about their work in agreeing on common metadata.

== Next Meeting ==

Public Geospatial Data Project

2006-04-03T14:09:23Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

There is an official [[Public Geospatial Data Committee|official foundation committee]] page which provides more detail on meetings and discussions.

== Mission ==

=== Promote the use of open geospatial formats ===
Providing best-practise guidelines and examples for use of open and free standards for data (GML, WMS, WFS-T) and metadata (Dublin Core, RDF).

=== Promote public access to state-collected geodata ===

Lead by example in demonstrating economic value and research activity generated by open access to public geographic information.

=== Run a repository of open geodata ===
A collection of geospatial datasets shall be hosted by the PGDP.
Additionally, links to other open data repostories shall be collected.

=== Present and explain licenses for public geodata ===
The PGDP aims to collect licenses suitable for the publishing of public geodata. The license shall be presented along with a summary of its benefits and focus.

== Approach ==

After a [[Public Geospatial Data Committee Definition Phase|Definition phase]] this has become an official [[Committees|committee]] within [[Main Page|OSGeo]].

=== Working Groups ===

At the [[Geodata Committee Meeting 20060322|first meeting of the geodata committee]] we decided to focus interest through three [[Working Groups]]:

* A [[Geodata Discovery Working Group]] which would focus on indexing and search of data and metadata repositories.
* A [[Geodata Packaging Working Group]] to look at creation and maintanance of really high quality and rich data packages to offer for educational purposes with software packages, with [[GRASS GIS]] in particular.
* A [[Geodata Licensing Working Group]] to look into parallel licensing developments and to consult on guidelines for open licenses for geodata.

=== Meetings ===

This group is having regular meetings on IRC on the #osgeo channel on irc.freenode.net. At the moment this is happening on Wednesdays at 15:00 UTC. [http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=3&day=29&year=2006&hour=16&min=0&sec=0&p1=215 fixed time around the world]

=== People interested in participating ===

* David Bitner
* Allan Doyle
* Florian Kindl
* Pericles S. Nacionales
* Markus Neteler
* [[User:JoWalsh|Jo Walsh]]
* [[User:Uchoa|Helton Uchoa]]
* Aaron Racicot - Ecotrust - aaronr at ecotrust.org
* Daniel Brookshier
* Schuyler Erle
* Jeff McKenna (DM Solutions)
* Steve Coast
* Mikel Maron
* Alessandro Frigeri
* David Blasby
* [[User:putler|Dan Putler]]
* [[User:Arnulf Christl|Arnulf Christl]]
* Ned Horning
* ''Please add yourself''

=== Organizations to beneficially connect with ===

* [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO]
* [http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap Project]
* [http://www.gsdi.org GSDI Association]
* [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project]
* [http://www.fgdc.gov Federal Geographic Data Committee]
* [http://www.opengeospatial.org Open Geospatial Consortium]

== Events ==

Events where we can either promote our positions or are likely to run into like-minded individuals.

* [http://www.asia-commons.net/ Asian Conference on the Digital Commons - April 18-20, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand]
* [http://conferences.oreillynet.com/where2006/ Where 2.0 - June 13-14, 2006, San Jose, California, USA]
* [http://www.foss4g2006.org/ FOSS4G2006 - Free And Open Source Software for Geoinformatics - September 12-15, 2006, Lausanne, Switzerland]

=== Geo Data Repositories / Group Collection Projects ===
* [http://www.openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetMap Project]
* [http://freeearthfoundation.com/ Free Earth Foundation]
* [http://geobase.ca/ Canadian Base Data]
* [http://geotorrent.org/ Various Free Datasets via Bittorrent]
* [http://www.iscgm.org/cgi-bin/fswiki/wiki.cgi Global Map] - International Steering Committee for Global Mapping
* [http://www.geonames.org Geonames.org] - Geonames is integrating geographical data such as names, altitude, population and others from various sources
* [http://www.geo-one-stop.gov/ Geospatial One Stop]
* [http://gcmd.nasa.gov/index.html Global Change Master Directory]

=== Geo Data Repository & Policy Research ===

* [http://geodatacommons.umaine.edu/CGDPlone University of Maine Commons for Geographic Data]
* [http://www.metrogis.org MetroGIS] [http://datafinder.org Datafinder] Twin Cities, MN Metro Area Public Agency Data Sharing Effort (includes section on benefits/testimonials from public geodata)
* [http://www.gis.state.mn.us MN Governor's Council on Geographic Information]
* [http://www.oasisnyc.org New York City Open Accessible Space Information System]
* [http://www.mass.gov/mgis Massachusetts GIS]

On the [[Geodata Repository]] page, a draft outline for OSGeo's own repository project is being prepared.

=== Geo Data Policy Advocacy ===
* [http://www.publicgeodata.org/ Public Geodata Project] (IRC: [irc://freenode/publicgeodata publicgeodata]) with the support of the Open Knowledge Foundation
* [http://okfn.org/geo/manifesto.php Open Access to State-Collected Geospatial Data Manifesto]
* [http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/ Free Our Data: Make taxpayers' data available to them] (United Kingdom)

=== Open Access ===
There are also more general open access movements, often aimed at scientific data, that could provide a venue for broadening awareness of the geo-specific issues.

* [http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-golm/index.html Berlin 4 Open Access - From Promise to Practice - March 29-31, 2006 Golm, Germany]
* [http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities]
* [http://www.conservationcommons.org/ Conservation Commons] - "The Conservation Commons is characterized by an underlying set of Principles which supports open access to, and in particular the fair use of, data and information related to the conservation of biodiversity."
* [http://www.locusforums.org/forum/ The Locus Forum] - "The Locus Association is a trade association of private organisations working to increase opportunities and reduce barriers to fair trade between the public and private sector, particularly in the use of Public Sector Information."
* [http://ppgis.iapad.org/ Public Participation GIS] - "

== Further Reading ==
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1736751,00.html Ordnance Survey challenged to open up] - 2006-03-23 article in the Guardian
* [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1726229,00.html Give us back our crown jewels] - 2006-03-09 article in the Guardian
* [http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=2107&trv=1 Why Europe Needs to Provide its Own Public Geodata ] by Jo Walsh (Feb 15, 2006)
* [http://www.systemed.net/blog/entry060311122655.html ShareAlike considered harmful for geodata] by Richard Fairhurst, a critique of GPL-like licensing situations with suggested LGPL-like model for distribution.
* "Open Source Software for Spatial Data Infrastructure (FOSSDI)". SDIC submitted 2005 to INSPIRE/EU. [http://mpa.itc.it/markus/papers/sdic_call_fossdi.pdf PDF with layout] | [http://inspire.jrc.it/ir/sdic_view_step1_only.cfm?id=2163 HTML without layout]
* [http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/270/ Open Networks and Open Society: The Relationship between Freedom, Law, and Technology] - MIT World video featuring Hal Abelson, John Wilbanks, Creative Commons
* [http://www.metrogis.org/documents/articles/index.shtml Articles] [http://www.metrogis.org/benefits/testimonials/index.shtml Testimonials] [http://www.metrogis.org/benefits/studies/index.shtml Studies] [http://www.metrogis.org/benefits/perf_measure/index.shtml Performance Measures] about [http://www.metrogis.org Metrogis], a collaboration for GIS data sharing in the Twin Cities, MN, USA

OSGeo education interested participants

2006-04-03T13:38:36Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

See the [[Education_and_Curriculum_Committee]] page for the list of initial committee members.

== Contributors by Interest ==
The following are individuals who have self-identified themselves as interested in contributing or assisting with [[Education_and_Curriculum_Committee]] projects. You are welcome to add yourself to the list and identify areas that you are particular familiar with or interested in contributing to.

* [[User:Punkish | Puneet Kishor]] (chair) (TZ GMT-6)
* Ari Jolma (TZ GMT+2)
* [[User:Neteler | Markus Neteler ]] (TZ GMT+1) (general training/education materials; educational datasets)
* Venkatesh Raghavan (TZ GMT+9)(training/education material; educational datasets, software packaging, translation, e-learning Course Management Systems, Moodle,Certification Mechanisms, experience in international training)
* Charlie Schweik (undergraduate and graduate level education; academic research on open source collaboration, public sector information technology, natural resource management)
* [[User:Pnaciona|Pericles Nacionales]] (general training/education materials; conservation and natural resource management)
* Ned Horning
* [[User:Tmitchel | Tyler Mitchell]] (TZ GMT-8) (interested in workshop material and curriculum development for high school through to university)
* Gary Watry (TZ GMT-5)(Interested in using Free Open Source Software (FOSS) to replace teaching Commercial Off The Shelf Software (COTS)in education, Preparing material for course work at the Graduate and Under-Grad level and then moving down into the High School level through AP and Honors courses.)
* [[User:Arnulf Christl | Arnulf Christl]] (TZ GMT+2) (Experience as GIS instructor for fulltime workshops, trainings and courses. Organization of commercial training courses with Open Source Geospatial Software. Preparation of course and presentation material, tutorials). (Interest in enhancing presentation material, publishing under Free license, in time hardcopy production, maintenance and update of content just as any OS dev project)
* [[User:Scw | Shaun Walbridge]] (TZ GMT-8) (academic research on open source collaboration; general training/education materials; educational datasets)
* [[User:Perrygeo | Matthew Perry]] (TZ GMT-8) (primarily insterested in workshops/lab materials for university students, NGOs and using open source software to demonstrate all fundamental aspects of GIS (theory and practice). Also interested in seeing 'official' training courses and certification)
* [[User:ianturton|Ian Turton]] : Penn State Uni, State College, developed Open Web Mapping course at Uni of Leeds, UK [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/] now modifying it for PennState. ianturton at gmail com [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work] [http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
* [[User:Aaronr | Aaron Racicot]] (TZ GMT-8) (Interested in fostering more collaboration with academia through the introduction of open source GIS in the curriculum. Mainly interested in Undergraduate and Graduate level education and industry (NGO's and for-profit) collaboration. Certification is also an interest.)

== Contributors by Time Zones ==
This should help in planning meetings. If you are not here yet, please add your info, or let me know and I will do so. Going from East to West, we have --

* TZ GMT+9
** Venkatesh Raghavan
* TZ GMT+2
** Ari Jolma
** Arnulf Christl
* TZ GMT+1
** Markus Neteler
* TZ GMT-5
** Gary Watry
** Ian Turton
** Ned Horning
* TZ GMT-6
** Puneet Kishor
** Pericles Nacionales
* TZ GMT-8
** Tyler Mitchell
** Shaun Walbridge
** Matthew Perry
** Aaron Racicot

GeoForAll History

2006-03-25T04:06:36Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added Ned Horning to committee membership

I, Markus Neteler, move that a "Education and Curriculum Committee" be designated to create and promote educational and curriculum material. The initial committee membership shall include:

* Puneet Kishor (chair)
* Ari Jolma
* Markus Neteler
* Venkatesh Raghavan
* Charlie Schweik
* Pericles Nacionales
* Ned Horning

== Mission ==

The project aims at creating and promoting educational and curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide appropriately licensed material that is accessible by a broad audience including academia, professionals, and the general public. Material supported through this project should directly or indirectly build and strengthen the open source geospatial user and developer communities. This can be accomplished by integrating the use of OSGeo endorsed tools in curricula that teach geospatial concepts and applications as well as the creating curricula to teach skills necessary for people to actively participate in supported OSGeo software and data projects. The committee seeks strong cooperation with academic research projects.

Details are given at [[Core Curriculum Project]]

== Links ==

The committee will be linked to the [http://geodata.osgeo.org Public Geospatial Data Committee], in particular with the [[Geodata Packaging Working Group]] to work on educational datasets.

----
This motion was accepted at the [[Fifth Board Meeting]].

All Members

2006-03-09T13:57:25Z

Wiki-Nedhorning: Added Ned Horning

{| border="1" class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; border-collapse: collapse;"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#ffdead;" | Affiliations
! style="background:#efefef;" | OSGeo Projects
! style="background:#ffdead;" | (Lat,Lon)
! style="background:#efefef;" | About
|-
| Chris Holmes
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://geoserver.org GeoServer]
| [http://incubator.osgeo.org Incubator], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| (40.72,-74.00)
| I come from the Java side of the OSGeo fence, getting my start in GeoServer, where I was lead developer for a couple years, and GeoTools, where I still serve on the PMC. My time is made possible by [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project (TOPP)], a great non-profit in New York that has been the lead supporter of GeoServer for years now. I spent the last year in Zambia on a Fulbright Scholarship, looking at the potential for open source software to help implement spatial data infrastructures in developing countries. It was a bit of a failure, but I learned a ton, and I see a lot of potential for open source in developing countries, towards truly open spatial data infrastructures. I'm back at TOPP, in a new role as VP of Strategic Development, helping to grow the organization, and figuring out how to make our geospatial stuff self sustaining. Once that's rolling, I hope to reinvest extra revenue in to figuring out and building a truly open geospatial web. And just like apache and linux are the bedrock that the World Wide Web rests on, so too do I believe that the geospatial web necessarily must be built on a foundation of OS Geo software. My continuing thoughts on all of this can be found at http://cholmes.wordpress.com
|-
| Michael P. Gerlek
| [http://www.lizardtech.com LizardTech]
| [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee]
| (47.673166,-122.530143)
| Engineer at LizardTech, doing MrSID and JPEG 2000 stuff. Playing with with the next generation of technologies for supporting raster data GIS workflows.
|-
| Frank Warmerdam
| Independent
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR], [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu MapServer], [http://incubator.osgeo.org Incubator], [http://board.osgeo.org Board]
| (45.45,-77.25)
| Lead developer of GDAL/OGR and freelance geospatial software developer.
|-
| Jason Birch
| [http://www.nanaimo.ca/ City of Nanaimo]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion & Visibility]
| (49.155, -124.005)
| I am a long-time GIS/IT/'Net junkie, and am currently working for the City of Nanaimo's IT department as a Sr. Applications Analyst (GIS Specialist). I am excited about what I see happening in the open source geospatial world, with OSGeo as a catalyst. [[User:Jasonbirch]]
|-
|Howard Butler
| [http://www.hobu.biz/ Hobu, Inc]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee],
| (42.00, -93.00)
| MapServer hacker, MTSC member. GDAL hacker. ESRI ArcSDE hack. Purveyor of Windows binary builds [[User:hobu]]
|-
| Markus Neteler
| [http://mpa.itc.it ITC-irst], [http://www.cealp.it CEA], [http://www.gdf-hannover.de GDF Hannover]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion & Visibility]
| (46.06714, 11.15113)
| Developer of GRASS GIS, researcher at ITC-irst + CEA, Trento, Italy and co-founder of GDF Hannover [[User:neteler]]
|-
| R. Paul Warriner
| [http://www.orchardparkny.org/ Town of Orchard Park]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee]
| (43.17, -78.69)
| Network Coordinator, old oil field hand (really, I do know what a frac job is), started with remote data comm. from well sites in '84 as a truckdriver, turned computer jockey by Linux in '93, found ArcView 1.0 the same year (I think), and the rest is ..... (oh yeah, I did some of that Calculus, Organic Chemistry, and Thermo thingy stuff along the way). [[User:RPaulW]]
|-
|Bart van den Eijnden
| [http://www.osgis.nl/ OSGIS]
| [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon],
| (52.0768396070808, 5.12454)
| Freelancer working with several open source GIS tools, mainly Chameleon, Mapserver and Geoserver.
[[User:bartvde]]
|-
| Helena Mitasova
| [http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/ North Carolina State University]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
| (35.77, -78.69)
| Researcher at NCSU (geospatial technology, environmental modeling, sustainable development), Developer of GRASS GIS. [[User:Helena]]
|-
| Daniel Morissette
| [http://www.mapgears.com/ Mapgears]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR]
| (48.42, -71.04)
| Involved in MapServer, GDAL/OGR and most [http://maptools.org/ MapTools.org] projects, mostly around webmapping and data access and distribution. [[User:dmorissette]]
|-
| Ari Jolma
| [http://users.tkk.fi/~jolma/index.html TKK]
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
| (60° 16' , 24° 47' 4'')
| Professor at TKK, Finland (geoinformatics, environmental information systems, water resources systems), [http://map.hut.fi/PerlForGeoinformatics/ just another Perl hacker] [[User:ajolma]]
|-
| Jeff McKenna
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| MapServer documentation, [http://www.maptools/ms4w MS4W] maintainer, [http://www.maptools.org maptools] co-maintainer. [[User:jmckenna]]
|-
| Ian Turton
| [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work][http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
| [http://www.geotools.org GeoTools]
| (40.7932, -77.847)
| [http://www.geotools.org GeoTools] founder and developer, [http://www.geovistastudio.psu.edu GeoVistaStudio] benevolent dictator, [http://geoserver.org GeoServer] user. [[User:ianturton]]
|-
| David Blasby
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://geoserver.org GeoServer], [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| (varies)
| Currently, I'm the Project Lead for Geoserver and am on the GeoTools Project Management Committee. I'm just starting a GeoWiki (Public Participation GIS) (please contact me if you're interested). I was the orginal creator of PostGIS, and have contributed to several OS GIS projects, including JTS, JUMP, and Mapserver.
|-
| Andrey Kiselev
| "Radar" R&D Centre (Russia)
| GDAL/OGR
| (60.04,30.33)
| Freelance developer and contributor to GDAL/OGR project.
|-
| Helton Uchoa
| [http://www.geolivre.org.br Geolivre Community], [http://www.open3dgis.org Open 3D GIS Project]
| -
| (-22.96, -43,11)
| I'm a Geomatics Enginner and I work at [http://www.opengeo.com.br OpenGEO Company] as a GIS Specialist. I'm responsible for many GIS projects using FOSS and the OpenGIS Specifications in Brazil and I have some relevant papers and scientific articles presented in Brazilian and Latin-American conferences and published in scientific magazines. In last year, I have helped, as a teacher, introduce the GNU/FSF philosophy at the Transportation Engineering Department of IME (Military Institute of Engineering, Brazil). I have worked in Geolivre Rio 2004 and 2005 as member of organization commitee. Now I'm working in [http://www.geolivre.org Geolivre Conference 2007]. [[User:Uchoa]]
|-
| Toru Mori
| [http://www.orkney.co.jp/english Orkney, Inc.]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS]
| (35.448, 139.642)
| President of Orkney, Inc. Advocate of Open Geospatial tools in Japan and Asia. Promote open geospatial data. [[User:moritoru]]
|-
| Allan Doyle
| [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO],[http://museum.mit.edu/cmp MIT Museum],[http://spg.gsfc.nasa.gov/ NASA Earth Science Data Systems Standards Process Group]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data Project]
| (42.28, -71.24)
| President of [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO] and [http://www.intl-interfaces.com International Interfaces], long-time geo-interoperability interests, opensourced (is that a verb?) [http://openmap.bbn.com OpenMap], originator of OGC testbed idea, Web Mapping Testbed, WMS spec editor, worked on WMS Context, [http://www.georss.org GeoRSS]. [http://www.eogeo.org/Members/adoyle more details]. [http://think.random-stuff.org Blog][[User:adoyle]]
|-
| Ned Horning
| [http://cbc.amnh.org/ Center for Biodiversity and Conservation], [http://www.amnh.org/ American Museum of Natural History]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
|(43.9933, -73.0407)
|Program manager for [http://geospatial.amnh.org/ remote sensing/GIS]. Promoter of open source geospatial tools in the global conservation community.
|-
| Add yourself
| Everyone is welcome
| Just edit the wiki (login/join in upper right corner)
| Input lat/long here
| Copy and paste this entry, put it last, and change the one above to your information
|}

User talk:Nedhorning

2006-02-19T13:19:07Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

Core Curriculum Project

2006-02-17T20:47:38Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

== Introduction ==

The Core Curriculum Project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation is currently in the "definition phase". ([[some comments]])

The project aims at creating and promoting curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide material that is accessible by a broad audience including academia, professionals, and the general public. Material supported through this project should directly or indirectly build and strengthen the open source geospatial user and developer communities. This can be accomplished by integrating the use of OSGeo endorsed tools in curricula that teach geospatial concepts and applications as well as the creating curricula to teach skills necessary for people to actively participate in supported OSGeo software and data projects.

'''Likely scenario'''
* Information gathering
* Develop list of potential participants
* Invite people/organizations to express interest
* Discuss potential charter (is there an "official" OSGeo name for this?)
* Present charter to OSGeo Board for approval (or do the members also get to vote on it?)
** Charter should probably have "Terms of Reference" - i.e. what the group will do
** Charter should probably have an initial list of participants/organizations (not all need to be members)
** Charter should name a Chair and a Vice Chair (or co-chairs?) (must proposed chair already be a member or can s/he become a member by virtue of being part of this?)
* Assuming project is approved - Get to work!

== Potential Members ==
If you add people/orgs to this list, please indicate whether you're adding yourself/your organization or whether you are "nominating" the person/organization as a potential member.

=== Individuals ===
Ned Horning (added by self): American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation horning@amnh.org [http://www.geospatial.amnh.org www.geospatial.amnh.org]
...

=== Organizations ===
...

== Existing Work ==

* [http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/ The NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience]
* [http://www.r-s-c-c.org/ Remote Sensing Core Curriculum]
* [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik/research.html C. Schweik: 2005-2010. NSF CAREER Grant. “The Open Source/Content Commons as a New Paradigm for Collaborative Scientific Research: A Research and Teaching Agenda.”] - MN had some personal conversation at OSG'05

Some comments on Curriculum

2006-02-17T20:20:23Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

I wonder if "Core Curriculum" is what we really mean. I think of "Core Curriculum" as a set of resources to support a single topic, even if that topic is quite broad. For OSGeo I’m not sure what the “Core” is. I think we would want material to support a broad range of topics that would be difficult to bring under a single theme. Would something like the Education and Outreach Project make more sense?

Core Curriculum Project

2006-02-17T20:07:16Z

Wiki-Nedhorning:

== Introduction ==

The Core Curriculum Project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation is currently in the "definition phase". ([[some comments]])

The project aims at creating and promoting curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide material that is accessible by a broad audience including academia, professionals, and the general public. Material supported through this project should directly or indirectly build and strengthen the open source geospatial user and developer communities. This can be accomplished by integrating the use of OSGeo endorsed tools in curricula that teach geospatial concepts and applications as well as the creating curricula to teach skills necessary for people to actively participate in supported OSGeo software and data projects.

'''Likely scenario'''
* Information gathering
* Develop list of potential participants
* Invite people/organizations to express interest
* Discuss potential charter (is there an "official" OSGeo name for this?)
* Present charter to OSGeo Board for approval (or do the members also get to vote on it?)
** Charter should probably have "Terms of Reference" - i.e. what the group will do
** Charter should probably have an initial list of participants/organizations (not all need to be members)
** Charter should name a Chair and a Vice Chair (or co-chairs?) (must proposed chair already be a member or can s/he become a member by virtue of being part of this?)
* Assuming project is approved - Get to work!

== Potential Members ==
If you add people/orgs to this list, please indicate whether you're adding yourself/your organization or whether you are "nominating" the person/organization as a potential member.

=== Individuals ===
Ned Horning (added by self): American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation horning@amnh.org [http://www.geospatial.amnh.org www.geospatial.amnh.org]
...

=== Organizations ===
...

== Existing Work ==

* [http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/ The NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience]
* [http://www.r-s-c-c.org/ Remote Sensing Core Curriculum]
* [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik/research.html C. Schweick: 2005-2010. NSF CAREER Grant. “The Open Source/Content Commons as a New Paradigm for Collaborative Scientific Research: A Research and Teaching Agenda.”] - MN had some personal conversation at OSG'05