The Federal Geographic Data Committee

In 1990, the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) was established by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to promote the national coordinated development, use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data. The OMB assigned responsibilities to specific federal agencies to coordinate the various themes of geospatial data that will contribute to the development of a National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).

The FGDC subcommittees and working groups provide the basic structure for institutions and individuals to come together to discuss and work on various aspects of the implementation of the NSDI. The chart shows the thematic organization of the FGDC subcommittee structure and also shows that FGDC working groups play a crosscutting role, dealing with issues that span many subcommittees.

Responsibilities of the FGDC include

Promoting the development, maintenance, and management of distributed databases of geospatial data that are national in scope
Encouraging the development and implementation of standards and exchange formats
Promoting technology development, transfer, and exchange
Interacting with other federal coordinating bodies that deal with geospatial data
Publishing technical and management reports

However, to support the National Information Infrastructure, President Clinton has issued an executive order that defines the NSDI as encompassing the technology, policies, standards, and human resources necessary to acquire, process, store, distribute, and improve the use of geospatial data. The FGDC was given an expanded role in coordinating the NSDI with a mandate to involve state, local, and tribal governments; academia; and the private sector.

The FGDC also sponsors the following activities:

National forums on geospatial data
A grant program to support cooperative agreements for clearinghouse, metadata, and framework development with participants from state and local governments and academia
A content standard for digital geospatial metadata
A reference model to define the standards development process
User training materials and conducted workshops throughout the country to support the metadata standard and clearinghouse efforts
The continuing evolution of the National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse
A framework plan and identified framework pilot projects to test the proposed concept and to improve the plan

Esri supports the FGDC and its various activities including the National Spatial Data Infrastructure Community Demonstration Projects initiative. These projects will demonstrate how Federal agencies, working in close collaboration with local partnerships, can provide communities with the geographic information necessary to solve a range of problems. Esri is supporting this initiative by providing software and services to help build the GIS systems necessary for success.

For more information, please contact the FGDC, USGS, 590 National Center, Reston, Virginia 20192 (tel.: 703-648-5514, fax: 703-648-5755, e-mail: gdc@usgs.gov, Web: www.fgdc.gov).

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