Purpose:

At its April 16^th 2009 meeting, the WIGICC Council discussed actions to take regarding issues raised during the October Network meeting. For the 'Data Infrastructure and Services: Clearinghouse' topic, I've been asked to summarize activity since the last meeting and propose a process for future work; for Network review/revision during its June 10 meeting. (Notes from October's meeting are posted to this forum).

From the WIGICC Network topic post re: 'Data Sharing' - "A consistent framework for data collection, management, integration, and sharing will save time and money. Without this framework, geographic data sharing and integration is often unnecessarily complicated and inefficient. Simply discovering if data exists and how it may be accessed can be exhausting. And when geographic data does exist, it may be in a format or system that cannot be easily accessed, integrated, or used. …"

This topic is intended to address the technical issues related to the problem.

Update:

Last December, through the office of the GIO, the Department of Administration approved the 'Wisconsin Spatial Data Repository' project (more info here) to aggregate and distribute statewide geospatial data sets at no cost to participating state and local agencies and academic partners.

Since then, progress has been made with a variety of state and local partners. By this July, the basic infrastructure of this facility will be in place along with several provisional datasets. Future work will improve the quantity and quality of available data and the WIGICC Network is considered to be a key part of defining that effort.

Next Steps:

Going forward, we propose that the WIGICC Network organize around the following 'Data Infrastructure and Services: Clearinghouse' topics to establish common ground among state practitioners on specific, implementation-oriented topics and to advise the GIO and its partners accordingly:

A Clearinghouse Technology Team, to address general issues such as:

Mechanisms for sharing data (FTP, WMS, REST, etc.)

Interoperability between GIS partners (versioning, standards adoption, etc.)

Transformation services for integrating disparate data

Cataloging; publishing and discovery of data services

Security and access management

Etc.

Data-specific teams, organized by theme, including: a Parcel Data Team, MCD Data Team, School District Data Team,  Roads Data Team, and Raster Data Team (and/or others…these five have repeatedly come up in work-to-date with various state agency, local agency, WLIA partners, etc.), to address layer-specific issues such as:

Custodial roles and processes

Consumer roles and processes

Data models for storage and distribution

Metadata requirements

Archiving requirements

Etc.

We'll discuss/revise during the June 10^th Network meeting, thoughts?

For framework data themes (and many more) the general business case has been understood for 20 or more years.  That is why there are companies like TeleAtlas, NavTeq, Google, Microsoft, ESRI and all the subproviders (Garmin, Magellen, Tom Tom, etc.) who periodically try to sweep our state for information to mass market it to an (obviously) large consumer base.  Many government entities, both small and large (state agencies) have licensed these products because they are their only option for comprehensive cartographic products.

There is no argument about whether there are other unique business constructs for the source data, which will require collaboration across custodian/customer lines.  Getting to those designs is certainly doable.  It is the maintenance and delivery resourcing of those designs that has stopped us in the past.  The Repository's use of a Spatial ETL will make that last part also 'doable'. 

What is really needed at this point are volunteers with knowledge and passion about either the distribution or usage of particular themes to step up and be heard.  We know there is a cartographic use.  We know there is a national map use.  What's in between - specific to how we use the theme in WI business areas?  What portions of those example roads are needed for emergency magangers, community planners, and others?  Is there a common denominator - say 6-12 attributes that meet 95% of the needs?  

For Wisconsin use - It is up to the Network to define these other ETLs. 

Consider these layer groupings and what you might to see in terms of attribution for various labeling and analytics: roads, boundaries, parcel, hydro, buildings, soils, land use, vegetation, points of interest, weather.... and many others.   Who among the WIGICC Network cares about what attributes might be used?  The Repository project has only heard from a few.  Step forward in voice/email if you care about the possibilities.