I’ve worked in dozens of states, with dozens of local survey companies. I’ve worked with Universities around the country. As one commenter already said, “Public sources of data vary widely in quality and reliability.” That is putting it lightly! Surveyors must be licensed to get their data legally accepted. It is very good, but getting at it is impossible. For all of us who have to go state-by-state and more often county-by-county, a good, National GIS would be a boon to our industries. It would be HUGE. I, for one, would love to see one.

The NSDI 2.0 Concept Paper is available at http://www.nsdi2.net.

The paper notes that “the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will create jobs in the short-term and spur economic growth and competitiveness in the long-term. But this plan must be designed in a new way. We must make smart strategic investments that serve as a down payment on our long-term economic future, create millions of new jobs – and provide the American workforce with new skills.

To build a 21st century economy, we must engage Local, State, and Federal agencies and their partnering contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding crumbling roads, bridges, electric grids and schools – but these organizations need an updated online information network that will allow them to rebuild in a smart, efficient, environmentally conscientious and sustainable way. A National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), updated with vital environmental information, will speed economic recovery by producing jobs putting “green” shovels in the ground quickly and tie together ongoing government initiatives.

An “NSDI 2.0″ will leave the country with a public resource, a modern spatial data infrastructure that will become a foundation for new business and technology investment – including broadband infrastructure development efforts now under consideration. Most importantly, this framework provides a sustainable, long-term infrastructure and innovation investment that will create thousands of new jobs and contribute to the economy for many years to come.”

To learn more visit: http://www.nsdi2.net.

About the NSDI 2.0 Concept Paper

The NSDI 2.0 Concept Paper is a proposition offered by a collaborative grassroots coalition that advances a business case applicable to the entire geospatial and environmental sector. It embodies an inclusive, collective approach that is well positioned to provide widespread economic success throughout public, private, and non-profit organizations of all types and sizes. This paper represents (although unofficially) the consensus view of a collaboration between corporate entities, the non-profit sector, the open source GIS software community, as well as Municipal, County, Regional, and State Government Agencies who produce and rely upon the Nation’s critical geospatial and environmental data resources. For more information please visit: http://www.nsdi2.net.

First, Like it or not, Microsoft, Yahoo, MapQuest, Google and even ESRI use mostly commercial data to make their applications work. Public sources of data vary widely in quality and reliability. This impacts their usability in applications. We forget government collect and create data to satisfy their own business needs making it useful for some applications but useless in others.

We should recognize the work of openstreetmap, I suspect the majority of the money be spent on the development of critical datasets with much funding going to develop data for GIS have-nots

http://www.geoconnections.org/en/index.html

I have used several excellent tools such as MapServer, MapWindow, GRASS, Quantum GIS, UDig. If the government would make smaller grants to such efforts, it may bear more return for the dollar.

Maaza