With the elections over I’ve had a little time to think about what the new administration could mean for the GeoWeb. For those who follow the GeoWanking list serv there has been a raging debate on neogeography versus paleogeography. Some of the rhetoric reminds me of the just finished election and how we strive to create a binary world – blue state/red state or neo/paleo. In the spirit of moving beyond stereotypes and on to solving problems; I thought a closer look at what the potential impact of Obama’s technology platform on the GeoWeb could be. Might be a good diversion from our own self reflection – despite the fact I’ve added plenty of fuel to that fire 
You can read Obama’s technology platform overview here. The plank that really grabbed my attention was the promise to “Open Up Government to its Citizens”. The idea that data about government (Congressional voting records) and created by the government (census data) should be easily available to the public. Specifically:
“Making government data available online in universally accessible formats to allow citizens to make use of that data to comment, derive value, and take action in their own communities. Greater access to environmental data, for example, will help citizens learn about pollution in their communities, provide information about local conditions back to government and empower people to protect themselves.”
The beauty is that we (the collective GeoWeb) have so many of these tools already built. The ability to deliver the data once it is made easily available has great promise. For instance here is EPA data on power plant emissions from GeoCommons:
From the map above you can see which power plants are producing the most poisonous CO2 emissions (click the down carrot on the layers box for the filter) or zoom into your specific neighborhood to see the plant and the type of environment around it. (Still refining the embed capability, but an example of how data can be virally spread).
The report goes on to recommend that the federal government should:
“Establishing pilot programs to open up government decision-making and involve the public in the work of agencies, not simply by soliciting opinions, but by tapping into the vast and distributed expertise of the American citizenry to help government make more informed decisions.”
This strikes again at the heart of the GeoWeb – enabling collaboration of experts and citizens across the country. Several projects and companies have pioneered dynamic collaboration around maps. Below is a Google MyMap with feedback around the GeoCommons power plant data in Florida”
The blue push pins are the user generated feedback linking to expert opinion and photos from the field. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is possible with collaboration around maps. These approaches can also be leveraged inside of government agencies, which is another plank in the Obama technology platform:
“Employing technologies, including blogs, wikis and social networking tools, to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision making.”
We’ve seen a lot of this type of work going on in the intelligence community with Intelink, Intellipedia, and A-Space. There is also data fusion and sharing concepts, like the EPA’s Central Data Exchange. I’d love to hear other projects that fit in with the three planks, and more importantly existing or planned GeoWeb technologies that could help enable the new vision. I’ve really only highlighted two and I know there are tons more out there.
9 Responses to What Could the Obama Administration Mean for the GeoWeb?
Leave a Reply
New GeoCommons Maps- Ancient Near East bradconner
- CO BLM Oil & Gas Leases 01/30/2012 ConnorBailey
- BVTRIERG azmisy
- geotaps mariosadio
- U.S. Bank Exposure to Europe thefactfile
- 2011_Mulch_Order dcacner
Thanks Sean! You just saved me some work
Within the Center of Excellence for GIScience at the USGS, we have a project titled “User Centered Design for The National Map”. That project was conceived about two years ago. We have since redefined what we mean by “user” to focus on data consumers via OGC standards rather than a pretty face for another proprietary front-end.
So how do I get access to the UGC for the power plants. Just putting it on top of GMaps doesn’t really help me if I want to do text analysis on the UGC or any other fun things.
There is no link on that page that says where to get the underlying data.
@Steven – both maps in GeoCommons as well as Google Maps are accessible as KML files. So you can download the original data to do your own analysis.
In GeoCommons Maker! click “Details” to get the KML. For Google Maps, click “View Larger Map” and then get the KML or GeoRSS feed.
@Steve – I should caveat that I made up the UGC data for the sake of having an example. We’ll be interconnecting all this so you can do the kind of analysis you are talking about in the future.
@Eric – At a Gate’s workshop I met Barb Ryan (recently at USGS) who mentioned a project around the National Map we might be useful for. Maybe this was what she had in mind. Sounds like a cool project is there a link to learn more?
@Sean and @Eric- Hi Sean. I am the PI of the project Eric mentioned. So far we don’t have a website but I am happy to see you are going to AAG’s in Las Vegas and really excited about the session on Google. Maybe we should have a paleo meets neo meetup. I do think that we need to find some way to bring what you guys are doing into the redesign of the National Map.
ps the first example above does not have a map background in my browser.
Deprecating the OGC’s W*S architecture is probably too much to ask of the incoming administration, but maybe we’ll get a CTO that groks REST and Web Architecture and can successfully evangelize better architecture for the “GeoWeb”.
Hi Barbara -
Thanks would be great to catch up at AAG. Also we are in DC if you are based here or get out this way. Would be great to help out on the National Map.
The embed requires that you have flash installed which may be the issue. We are still testing it so also could be a cross browser issue, especially if you are using an older browser. If you can pass along the details on the browser we’d be happy to take a look.
best,
sean
@Sean if they could get that yanked from government requirements it would definitely make our life better. Should we start the push now for Gillies as Fed CTO
On the upside I have not heard W*S coming up in some of the more recent OGC discussions like geosearch.
We have been working on a framework that is not only interested in making data globally available through Universally Accessible Formats but also how we collect, collate, verify and validate data. The home and alpha version of this project is at
http://openmodel.newmexicoconsortium.org/
and we would very much like to hear what the community thinks and how the whole process could be made more transparent.