According to a press release from the Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO), former Wyoming Governor James Geringer held a news briefing today to present details of COGO’s Report Card on the U.S. National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) released on February 6. The Report Card emphasizes the poor condition of the nation’s repository of critical geospatial data. Geringer, who chaired the panel that drafted the Report Card, stated that state and federal governments need to “make improvement of the NSDI a high priority so the nation can make significant, rapid progress on jobs, education, economic growth, public safety, energy, natural resource management, health care, agriculture, transportation and other areas.”
The Report Card analyses the condition of a set of national framework data layers and assigns them the following grades based on this analysis: cadastral data (D+), elevation (C+), geodetic control (B+), government units (C), hydrography (C), orthoimagery (C+), and transportation (D). The overall data grade assigned by the Report Card is a C.
In addition the report provides grades on the following aspects of the NSDI: Capacity (C), Condition (D), Funding (D), Future Need (D), Operation and Maintenance (C), Public Use (C), and Resilience (C), for an overall grade of C-.
The Report Card states that “while Framework data have been collected and made available for use over the past two decades, a digital geospatial Framework that is national in scope, is not yet in place.”
For an explanation and rationale behind the grade assignments, readers are referred to the Report Card document.
COGO member organizations represent approximately 170,000 professionals who develop and use geospatial information. COGO is delivering its assessment to help the government understand the importance of geospatial data and the shortcomings of the NSDI.