National Geospatial Advisory Committee holds final meeting for 2017

The National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) held their final meeting of the year on December 11, 2017 via teleconference.  The full report of the meeting including the Powerpoints from the subcommittees are available on the NGAC Website.  The NGAC is a Federal Advisory Committee that reports to the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC).  Our role is to provide advice and recommendations related to the national geospatial program and the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. 

Ivan DeLoatch, the FGDC Executive Director, briefed the group on the Geospatial Data Act of 2017 (S. 2128 and H.R. 4395), which was originally introduced in May 2017 and then reintroduced in November of this year.  He noted that on December 5, 2017, Dr. Timothy Petty's confirmation hearing was held for his nomination to the position of Assistant Secretary of the Interior (Water and Science).  This position serves as the Chair of the FGDC Steering Committee.  Mr. DeLoatch noted that the FGDC will issue a call for nominations in Spring 2018 for the next round of appointments to the NGAC.  Fourteen appointments will expire at the end of December 2018, nearly half of the total group.  

Mr. DeLoatch announced that the MarineCadastre.gov Team are the recipients of the 2017 Doug D. Nebert NSDI Champion of the Year Award.  This is a joint effort between the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Coastal Management.  This website, "...is a dynamic system containing authoritative geospatial data that are fundamental to the business decisions about the Nation's offshore energy and ocean planning."  The award presentation ceremony will be held at an FGDC Steering Committee Meeting in 2018.  

All four NGAC subcommittees presented reports on their ongoing work.  The subcommittees will remain in place through much of 2018 and will release documents as they are completed.  The Geospatial Technology & Infrastructure Committee's paper about the impact and importance of geospatial technologies to the nation's infrastructure was provisionally approved and will be released in the first quarter of the new year.  (Update 1-16-2018: The paper is now available here.)The Landsat Advisory Group, the Cultural & Historial Geospatial Resources subcommittee, and the Data as Services subcommittee continue to actively work on their tasks with reports from all three expected through 2018.

The NGAC is scheduled to meet in person three times in 2018.  The dates are: April 3-4, June 26-27, and September 5-6.