    [House Hearing, 106 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

             GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS POLICIES AND PROGRAMS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   before the

                     SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
                          INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY

                                     of the

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                               GOVERNMENT REFORM

                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                           ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                  JUNE 9, 1999

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 106-92

                                   __________

           Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

      Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
                          http://www.house.gov/reform

                                     ______

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
                              WASHINGTON : 2000

                                   __________

                         COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

                         DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
    BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York         HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
    CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland       TOM LANTOS, California
    CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut       ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
    ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida         MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
    JOHN M. McHUGH, New York             EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
    STEPHEN HORN, California             PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
    JOHN L. MICA, Florida                PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
    THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia            CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
    DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana           ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
    MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana                  DC
    JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida             CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
    STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio           ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
    MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South     DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
        Carolina                         ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
    BOB BARR, Georgia                    DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
    DAN MILLER, Florida                  JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
    ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas             JIM TURNER, Texas
    LEE TERRY, Nebraska                  THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
    JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois               HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
    GREG WALDEN, Oregon                  JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
    DOUG OSE, California                             ------
    PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin                 BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
    JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California            (Independent)
    HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

                          Kevin Binger, Staff Director
                     Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
               David A. Kass, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
                          Carla J. Martin, Chief Clerk
                     Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
                                     ------

       Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology

                       STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman
    JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois               JIM TURNER, Texas
    THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia            PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
    GREG WALDEN, Oregon                  MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
    DOUG OSE, California                 PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
    PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin                 CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

                                   Ex Officio

    DAN BURTON, Indiana                  HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
              J. Russell George, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
                    Bonnie Heald, Director of Communications
                         Matthew Ebert, Policy Director
                         Faith Weiss, Minority Counsel

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------
                                                                       Page
    Hearing held on June 9, 1999.....................................     1
    Statement of:
        Bills, Terry, managing principal planner, Information
          Services Department, Southern California Association of
          Governments; Tom Sweet, Pennsylvania GIS Consortium;
          Suzanne Hall, assistant county executive, Wayne County, MI;
          Victoria Reinhardt, commissioner and chair, Ramsey County,
          MN; Sue Cameron, commissioner and chair, Tillamook County,
          OR; and Lawrence F. Ayers, Jr., project panel member,
          National Academy of Public Administration..................    44
        Dangermond, Jack, president, Environmental Systems Research
          Institute, Inc.; Jerry Miller, senior vice president and
          chief information officer, Sears Roebuck & Co.; Bruce
          Cahan, president, Urban Logic, Inc.; and Jack Pellicci,
          vice president, Global Public Sector, Oracle...............   169
        Geringer, Jim, Governor of Wyoming; and Bruce Babbitt,
          Secretary of the Interior..................................    15
        Hooley, Darlene, a Representative in Congress from the State
          of Oregon..................................................    44
    Letters, statements, et cetera, submitted for the record by:
        Ayers, Lawrence F., Jr., project panel member, National
          Academy of Public Administration, prepared statement of....   147
        Babbitt, Bruce, Secretary of the Interior, prepared statement
          of.........................................................    34
        Bills, Terry, managing principal planner, Information
          Services Department, Southern California Association of
          Governments, prepared statement of.........................    47
        Cahan, Bruce, president, Urban Logic, Inc., prepared
          statement of...............................................   187
        Cameron, Sue, commissioner and chair, Tillamook County, OR,
          prepared statement of......................................   138
        Dangermond, Jack, president, Environmental Systems Research
          Institute, Inc., prepared statement of.....................   172
        Geringer, Jim, Governor of Wyoming, prepared statement of....    20
        Hall, Suzanne, assistant county executive, Wayne County, MI,
          prepared statement of......................................    69
        Horn, Hon. Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the
          State of California, prepared statement of.................     3
        Kanjorski, Hon. Paul E., a Representative in Congress from
          the State of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of...........    11
        Miller, Jerry, senior vice president and chief information
          officer, Sears Roebuck & Co., prepared statement of........   179
        Reinhardt, Victoria, commissioner and chair, Ramsey County,
          MN, prepared statement of..................................    79
        Sweet, Tom, Pennsylvania GIS Consortium, prepared statement
          of.........................................................    53
        Turner, Hon. Jim, a Representative in Congress from the State
          of Texas, prepared statement of............................     6

             GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS POLICIES AND PROGRAMS

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 1999

                          House of Representatives,
                Subcommittee on Government Management,
                          Information, and Technology,
                                Committee on Government Reform,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:02 p.m., in
    room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Stephen Horn
    (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
        Present: Representatives Horn, Turner, Maloney, and
    Kanjorski.
        Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and chief
    counsel; Matthew Ebert, policy advisor; Bonnie Heald, director
    of communications; Grant Newman, staff assistant; Paul Wicker
    and Justin Schlueter, interns; Faith Weiss, minority counsel,
    and Early Green, minority staff assistant.
        Mr. Horn. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
    Government Management, Information, and Technology will come to
    order.
        We are here today to review the Federal Government's
    efforts toward standardizing and sharing Geographic Information
    Systems with other government entities and with the private
    sector.
        Dramatic advances in computer technology and the Internet
    allow access to geographic information that was once very
    limited to topographic lines, reproduced on paper maps. Now,
    precise data can be displayed on personal computers, allowing
    users to tailor a vast array of information to their needs.
        Today, students can use Geographic Information Systems to
    plot maps on their own classroom computers. Families who are
    moving to a new city can use this technology to locate schools,
    ATM machines, or examine the landscape of their new
    neighborhoods. Farmers can rotate their crops using government
    analyses of the soil. Federal, county, and city governments can
    analyze flood plains, population density, and natural
    resources. Private businesses can provide more efficient
    delivery services.
        The collection of these geographic information is a multi-
    billion dollar business in the United States. Yet, sharing this
    information is often more difficult because many software
    applications still cannot communicate with others, requiring
    public and private organizations to collect duplicate
    information on the same region.
        In addition, there has been no commitment among governments
    and the private sector to share this information. Data
    collected by one local government may not be available to the
    Federal and State government planners.
        Similarly, Federal data bases are not always available to
    State and local government planners, or to the private sector.
    Billions of dollars are being unnecessarily spent on this
    duplication.
        We will discuss how Federal, State, regional, and municipal
    governments are using their Geographic Information Systems to
    manage programs and services. How is this information being
    used by the private sector is certainly another concern for all
    of us. We will examine how the Federal Government can help
    improve the compatibility of these networks and data bases.
        In addition, we will discuss how the Federal Government
    might assist States, regions, municipalities, and the private
    sector in forming partnerships to provide Geographic
    Information Systems in a cost effective manner. We will hear
    from a number of well-known witnesses and leading experts in
    the geographic data industry. Governor Jim Geringer of Wyoming
    will discuss how Wyoming uses its Geographic Information
    Systems to manage programs. Secretary of the Interior Bruce
    Babbitt also serves as chairman of the Federal Geographic Data
    Committee, and we are delighted to have him with us today. This
    interagency committee promotes the coordinated use, sharing,
    and dissemination of geographic information on a national
    basis. We hope to learn more about the committee's progress in
    this effort.
        The second panel includes county and city officials. These
    witnesses have used Geographic Information Systems to assist
    their local and regional communities in making critical
    management decisions on programs and activities.
        Witnesses on the third panel represent the private sector.
    Their companies use Geographic Information Systems to increase
    productivity, reduce operational expenses, and create new
    products and services.
        We look forward to today's testimony and welcome each of
    our witnesses. I now yield the ranking member, Mr. Turner of
    Texas, for an opening statement.
        [The prepared statement of Hon. Stephen Horn follows:]

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.001

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.002

        Mr. Turner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to start
    by recognizing Mr. Kanjorski's hard work and his leadership on
    issues relating to Geographic Information Systems, including
    his work on the steering committee for the 1999 National
    Geodata Forum, which I understand is just concluding.
        I want to thank also Chairman Horn for his support in
    conducting this hearing, and for the bipartisan manner in which
    he always conducts hearings of this committee. I must say, as a
    ranking Democrat, it is a pleasure to be on a committee where
    we have a chair who takes bipartisanship seriously.
        I want to welcome Secretary Babbitt today. The Secretary of
    the Interior has been very involved in this issue, and we look
    forward to hearing your insights, Mr. Secretary. And I also
    want to welcome Governor Geringer from Wyoming. We appreciate
    you being here with us today. And Mr. Chairman, I would like to
    yield the balance of my time to Mr. Kanjorski in acknowledgment
    of his leadership and his hard work on this important issue.
        [The prepared statement of Hon. Jim Turner follows:]

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.003

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.004

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.005

        Mr. Horn. Without objection, we are delighted to have our
    colleague from Pennsylvania, and we thank him for all the help
    and solid information he has provided with reference to this
    topic.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Turner,
    our ranking member, and recognize your bipartisan approach in
    examining this and other technologies. I believe this is the
    first time a congressional committee will devote its entire
    time to the new technology used in GIS activity and hope to
    have a record created today--by governmental officials from the
    Cabinet office of Secretary Babbitt on down through the
    Governor of Wyoming, and then interested specialists from
    professionals in the field, and finally, private industry--that
    will give us a picture that I think is both exciting and
    enlightening to the American people.
        This is the dawning of a new age. It is pleasureable to be
    a part of it, although I concede I do not understand it. And I
    fear that some of my friends in that field think I do, and if I
    do, and what I know the rest of the Congress knows, we have got
    a learning process, an educational process, that we have to go
    through for our fellow members and for ourselves.
        We have a key witness here in Secretary Babbitt--he
    certainly has taken in the Department of Interior the
    responsibility of establishing the organization of the Federal
    Geographic Data Committee under the national spatial data
    infrastructure. He has worked very closely with the vision and
    leadership of Vice President Gore; and they have really moved
    this tool to another level in reinventing government and
    community livability. I think that we will hear from their
    testimony today that setting standards and bringing together
    all levels of government and the private sector are not only
    important, but are essential, if this great tool is to be
    properly utilized, not only in the United States, but
    ultimately globally.
        We have an opportunity here in the Federal Government to
    actually take a lot of information from the localities and from
    the other elements of government in our society and learn and
    interact in partnership with them. And then we have, in a
    partisan nature, the Governor of Wyoming. I had the pleasure of
    meeting with him today. He has a leading role in GIS
    implementation in Wyoming. He has taken this issue to the
    Western Governors' Conference and the National Governors'
    Association. I think it is so important that those of us in
    public life, regardless of what level, take time out from our
    normal chores of being politicians to be thinkers and
    innovators. And certainly, the Governor has been that.
        I believe that GIS and spatial data will be driving forces
    in our rapidly growing knowledge-based economy and provide for
    the capacity to have electronic democracy. As I said in my
    speech on Monday at the beginning of the Forum, it used to be
    said that a picture is worth 1,000 words. With GIS, it will be
    said that an image is worth 10,000 words. This is going to give
    us an incredible capacity to identify, address, and rectify
    complex problems in all sorts of areas of our society that we
    have never had before.
        Although I have prepared remarks, I just want to give you
    an example, Mr. Chairman, of how important it is to a State
    like Pennsylvania and to my particular district and the
    surrounding districts around me, which make up part of the
    anthracite coal region. We have had devastation in processes
    for 150 years. We have degraded water, degraded land, and a
    depressed economy. Never have we had the tool or the
    opportunity to view holistically 2,000 or 4,000 square miles of
    area with the incredible amounts of information that is
    interrelated in that area that is necessary if you are really
    to do a holistic approach to environmental cleanup, economic
    development, infrastructure repair, or development. It is this
    type of system that we are using in my area of Pennsylvania
    now, with the hope that we will create a model for the rest of
    the Nation.
        With all that said and done, and all the time and money
    that will be spent on these things, there are certain basic
    tools that the forum pointed out to me over the past 3 days and
    that I have observed over the last several months of my
    involvement in a deep way in this thing. As the government
    participates, in the Federal Government we must use our
    capacity to release data at the lowest levels of government
    which is generally more accurate and is very important to be
    part of this system. Whether we do it by the carrot or the
    stick it is essential that we create an atmosphere in this
    country that this data is available to everyone.
        Second, we have to create standards for this data and
    certify the validity of the data because it will be piled layer
    on layer, and eventually no one will remember where it really
    came from or who has tested that data.
        Finally, those areas of the country, such as mine, that are
    broken into many subdivisions, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
    has 2,500 municipalities, 90 percent of which are under 3,500
    population will be left out of this technology if we do not
    encourage locally independent, regionally coordinated, multi-
    purpose GIS. Organizations must come together and gather
    hundreds of communities together so that they can participate
    or they will become the equivalent of our Third World.
        Finally, when all this is said and done, I hope the
    government can participate in a big way, either with a
    foundation or non-profit organization or with the multi-layers
    of government and the private sector, in developing a concept
    of an institute for best practices. This gives us a real
    opportunity to reinvent the wheel once and not require so many
    people to reinvent it again. The efficiencies and the
    effectiveness, or as a tool for democracy and government and
    planning, will only give, as one of the Secretary's main
    assistants said today, it will actually bring into place Thomas
    Jefferson's dream of an enlightened citizenry and democratic
    society.
        So, GIS is a tool. It is a medicine. It may be not a cure-
    all, but the nearest we are going to have to it in our
    lifetime. I hope this committee and this Congress pay close
    attention to the testimony we are about to hear today. Thank
    you, Mr. Chairman.
        [The prepared statement of Hon. Paul E. Kanjorski follows:]

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.006

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.007

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.008

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3008.009

        Mr. Horn. Thank you very much for your comments on this.
    Let me just explain how we function here. When we introduce an
    individual, your full text is automatically in the record. We
    have had an opportunity to go through those texts, and we would
    like to spend most of the time on a dialog with the individual
    rather than just see them read the text. So, please do not read
    the text. Just summarize from the heart.
        I know the Governor knows all of that and the Secretary
    knows all of that, but some of the other people might not.
        No. 2, since this is an investigating committee, we swear
    in all witnesses, and we will try to move expeditiously because
    we know a number of you have appointments elsewhere, planes to
    catch, so forth. Governor, I am conscious of how difficult it
    is to get from/to Wyoming easily. There aren't too many non-
    stops.
        But let me just say, if we can swear you in, we will begin
    with your testimony.
        [Witness sworn.]
        Mr. Horn. The clerk will note that the Governor has taken
    the oath, and please proceed. We are delighted to have you with
    us.

       STATEMENT OF JIM GERINGER, GOVERNOR OF WYOMING; AND BRUCE
                   BABBITT, SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

        Governor Geringer. Thank you, Chairman Horn, and thank you
    to the committee for taking the opportunity to highlight what
    is a very important issue, and I would say a very important
    concept, because it goes beyond the technology and deals with
    the very heart of the fundamentals of American democracy.
        I compliment you for dealing with it in a timely way. We
    never know exactly when the best time is, and I've often said
    the difference between being a visionary and a fool can often
    be just a matter of timing.
        There is a definite need to acknowledge how Geographic
    Information Systems will reshape our institutions, as well as
    our approaches to governing. It is with that in mind that I
    would like to submit my remarks, as you have noted already, for
    the record; to highlight a few of the principles that are
    involved, and then certainly respond--engage in a dialog with
    you.
        The most fundamental issue I would like to stress, though,
    is that we are on the verge of moving away from a hierarchy of
    control that truly allows the information and the ability to
    make decisions to move down to the individual level. That is a
    concept that is embodied in GIS, and GIS in much more than just
    a geographic natural resource management system.
        It is spatial--S-P-A-T-I-A-L--in the sense that it not only
    shows us the relationship between physical activities, but,
    more than that, it helps define the interrelationships of data,
    of knowledge, and decisions that result from that. It truly
    leads to what we would call enabling the citizen or empowering
    decisions.
        Now, empowerment means being able to make decisions.
    Decisions can come from information, information that has been
    evaluated that can be synthesized and lead to knowledge that
    then becomes persuasive enough to lead to a decision.
        We will talk today somewhat about how the quality of data
    will be critical to that, because a good decision made on bad
    data is still a bad decision. If we are to enable our citizens,
    we have to provide information that is accessible, of quality,
    or at least the limitations are known, and are usable down at
    the individual citizen and the community level. We need to be
    able to enable achievement.
        Let me quickly highlight a few principles and then talk
    more in general terms about the fundamentals that have been
    raised already.
        First of all, as this is an investigative committee that
    will lead toward policy, I offer these principles to serve as a
    basis for your legislative, and even your appropriations,
    decisions.
        First of all, when it comes to GIS, we need standards, yes.
    And these are standards that should be developed nationally,
    not mandated from above at the Federal level, but developed
    between and among our various institutions at the State and
    local level.
        Federal agency involvement should be primarily one of
    national administration and coordination, and then beyond that,
    the enabling through training and grants and technical
    assistance to help develop that local capacity.
        We have citizens of high potential and low engagement, and
    that's where the Federal Government and State governments can
    serve a purpose. So point No. 1 would be, yes, develop national
    standards with neighborhood solutions, and assign
    responsibilities at the most appropriate level.
        Point No. 2, we need to work for collaboration and not
    polarization. The old model that we have in government too
    often prescribes the method of getting there. One thing that we
    know about technology is that it changes so quickly that, if we
    tried to standardize a particular process, we will always lag
    the opportunity that is available to us. We need to keep our
    focus on the end result, and let technology take care of
    itself, rather than mandating a particular approach.
        We need locally based solutions. We need collaboration, and
    not litigation. And the interests that are involved should have
    the incentive to provide resources to support their own
    efforts, not just be looking to someone else for the money.
        The primary cost would be borne by the affected public or
    the private entity using the GIS systems or the data. The
    Federal Government's role would be to provide regulatory
    incentives or competitive grants that reward innovation.
        Point No. 3 is focused on results. Reward the results. Do
    not focus on the processes. The longer an institution is in
    effect, the more likely it is to focus on its own process than
    the end result it was created to achieve. Far too often,
    compliance with a nationally developed goal is measured by
    whether or not an affected party has rigidly followed a
    process, rather than measuring whether any substantive goal was
    achieved. We need to allow innovation rather than--solving
    problems has to take priority over mandated processes.
        Point No. 4 deals with credible science. In order to
    establish proper priorities, we need to allow science to evolve
    to the knowledge that leads to a decision. Competing interests
    too often seek the science that will support their point of
    view rather than letting the underlying facts frame the choices
    to be made. We need to move away from debates about whose data
    is right, and instead, agree that the data is correct and the
    content over values and solutions--much more constructive.
        Point No. 5--and principle No. 5, I should say--markets
    before mandates. Let the marketplace determine the most
    appropriate approach. Governments are especially notorious, at
    every level, for requiring the use of specific technologies or
    processes to achieve what they thought was an end result.
    Prescriptive approaches only reward litigation rather than
    cooperation, and delay is the enemy of achievement. We should
    allow market-based approaches and economic incentives that can
    allow for more efficient and cost-effective results that will
    allow the timely use of data and Geographic Information
    Systems.
        Principle No. 6 deals with that personal understanding that
    Mr. Kanjorski talked about--the Jeffersonian principle. The
    personal understanding of the issue is crucial to quality
    governing. Success in anything depends on the daily choices and
    individual perspectives of our citizens. While we talk about
    the formal structures of government, it is the informal
    structures that really allow governing to be done. These are
    the service organizations, the volunteer organizations, even
    the coffee clubs that meet on a regular basis. The formal
    institutions exist primarily to guide and to settle disputes.
    The informal ones are where government truly occurs. We need to
    start with our Nation's youth, so that all of our citizens are
    empowered to take greater responsibility for what they expect
    from government. Their personal responsibility, on their own
    part, as well as for future generations, allows them to take
    the data that will enable the decisions that will enable that
    capacity at the local level and actually need less government
    as a result.
        Principle No. 7 says measure the benefits against the costs
    and assess the costs and benefits of different options. Many
    times the last ounce of marginal gain is achieved at a very
    high cost. Now, GIS can enable us to see the interrelationships
    of those things and help with making the final decision, and
    principally in measuring the final result against the cost.
        Principle No. 8 is very important, and that is that the
    solutions that we come up with will go across political
    boundaries. When we talk, particularly about GIS and mapping--
    when I fly over America, when I fly over Wyoming, I see a State
    that is big enough for any point of view, and I cannot see on
    the ground where it divides Wyoming from Nebraska, Colorado,
    Utah, or even any other area that might define an international
    boundary. Those are limitations that we have imposed. Yet,
    systems require the awareness of concurrent jurisdictions and
    shared responsibilities. We will work best when we consider
    solutions to problems in the natural resource area on
    watersheds, regional issues, biologic, but then going into
    economic and social issues as well.
        If there is one underappreciated area in the use of GIS, it
    is the fact that it can go far beyond natural resource
    management; that while that is the principle focus and that is
    where much of the GIS application began, anything that can be
    viewed in relationship to anything else is a candidate for GIS.
    You can describe it first in terms of geography, but then we
    can go much beyond that and link tables, data bases; and very
    soon--in fact, already--to update those tables and data bases
    real time, so that we have the information available as we need
    it and make the decision based on actual, current information
    as well as any historical trend.
        I will come back to the notion of empowerment, because I
    think that is a worthwhile concept to reinforce, and how we
    obtain information and where we are going and to focus on
    results. This is a GPS receiving unit. It is fairly common. It
    is one of the low-cost models, and it gives me information I
    can use, provided I know what I am doing with it.
        A friend of mine was noting the other day, yesterday, that
    he knew exactly where we were, what altitude we were, the
    velocity at which we were traveling. And I said, ``Bob, where
    are we going?'' We knew exactly where we were, but we did not
    exactly know where we were going, because that data point had
    not been entered yet.
        Mr. Chairman, we would assist our citizens in that
    empowerment aspect if we understood where we were going before
    we imposed all the restrictions. So if we create a body to
    administer the coordination, administration, training, and
    grant offerings through any kind of a GIS system, let us not
    create a body that dictates the outcome. We should decide that
    at the local level, the citizen level, the community level.
        That access to data, then, also demands that we need
    connectivity to enable the achievement. If we are going to get
    to the Jeffersonian view and graduate to the next of democracy,
    we need to assure the availability of data.
        There is a restriction, whether it be in our urban areas,
    the innercity areas, or the rural areas of America, where
    connectivity is not a fact yet, or at least broadband
    capability is not a fact. GIS systems take a large amount of
    bandwidth. So we need larger pipes. We need the opportunity to
    use it, and one thing that will happen as a result of your
    hearing, Mr. Chairman, is a national focus on how much more
    application can be made of GIS systems. Increased usage, then,
    reduces the cost.
        But if there is an area where we need your assistance and
    our mutual assistance--State, local, government included--it is
    how we can collectively generate the market that will encourage
    the private sector to come in and install those systems,
    because I do not believe that government should own the systems
    that connect us. They should not have to own the systems that
    utilize the information. What we should be are the anchor
    tenants in the utilization of systems and data to enable our
    people truly to engage in democracy.
        That would be the extent of my presentation to the
    committee, Mr. Chairman. I have listed in my remarks, the
    testimony offered to the committee, a number of applications in
    the public sector. It is not a complete and comprehensive list,
    nor is the one called private sector, because there are many
    applications far beyond, even which anyone of us are already
    aware. That is the point again to make: that data that shows
    relationships, or data that can be enhanced to show
    relationships through a GIS system, teaches visually something
    we would not grasp any other way.
        As we use technology, it should be so easy and so secure in
    its use that the public feels that they are using something and
    they are not even aware they are using technology. It is
    transparent to the user. It is user-friendly, and it is widely
    acceptable to the point where people are motivated. Knowledge
    gained through discovery is the most enduring, and we can
    discover how we are individually enabled through GIS systems.
        Thank you for your courtesies, Mr. Chairman. And I would
    respond to any questions.
        [The prepared statement of Governor Geringer follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, I am sorry you have to leave--I understand
    that you need to go catch an airplane--because I would like to
    have Secretary Babbitt, a former Governor, also join us at the
    table and have a dialog. So I do not know what your schedule
    is, but I want to ask you--I do not want you to miss it.
        Governor Geringer. I have a 3 p.m. flight out of Dulles.
        Mr. Horn. Out of Dulles? [Laughter.]
        Well, as an expert on getting to Dulles, you are in good
    shape. It will take 35 minutes.
        Governor Geringer. Got my GPS, too. Well, Mr. Chairman, I
    will excuse myself, then, so you get on with the people here
    who know far more than I.
        I compliment Secretary Babbitt on his initiative with the
    forum that was just concluded. I look forward to a great
    relationship with your committee and the agency.
        Mr. Horn. Let me just ask a fast question, as you are
    leaving here.
        How effective, in your judgment, as a Governor--and I know
    the Governors have probably discussed this--is the coordination
    across the different levels of government in implementing a
    national data infrastructure? Does that worry people as Big
    Brother or something, or what is your feeling on that?
        Governor Geringer. Mr. Chairman, there would be an
    unwillingness to yield to something that is viewed as being
    managed and dictated as somewhere else. We can call above--it
    could be somewhere else. I think the way to overcome that is to
    put enough information and systems in the hands of the people
    to where they think of it as their system; that what we are
    doing, through government, is guiding the standardization, the
    quality, the definition of the data, so that everyone can use
    it.
        GIS is the next step beyond a web browser. The Internet has
    been in existence for a long time, but it did not become
    effective and democratized until there was a web browser. GIS
    is the next step beyond that, because it shows relationships.
    That will be the key to whether or not the public feels
    threatened.
        Mr. Horn. What incentives do you think are needed to help
    build Geographic Information Systems' capabilities and to speed
    up the implementation of the national spatial data
    infrastructure? Do you have any feelings on the types of
    incentives?
        Governor Geringer. I would say the No. 1 incentive is just
    pure advocacy. We should encourage people through demonstration
    and example how effectively it can affect every aspect of their
    life in a positive way, and not just through government.
        Incentives to engage people at the local level would be
    competitive grants. It should not be outright subsidizing, but
    it should be offered in terms of a competitive grant to enable
    that local leadership that is going to be vital. This has to be
    thought of as a community tool, an individual tool, not
    something that government is imposing; and the type that it
    would encourage that would be most appropriate.
        Mr. Horn. So, it is really any data base that the community
    found was a real need, they might well develop that, and then
    the system at all levels would be functioning and open to all;
    is that sort of a conclusion on that?
        Governor Geringer. Definitely, Mr. Chairman. It could be a
    healthcare issue; it could be an open spaces issue. It could be
    a realtor looking for quality neighborhoods. Anything that you
    can visualize in picture format, or a decision that can be
    drawn from an interrelationship, is a candidate for GIS. So we
    should not prescribe that only these areas would qualify for a
    GIS grant. We should say, submit your proposal, and we will
    evaluate that--the criteria of innovation, community
    involvement, and personal empowerment.
        Mr. Horn. Do any of the Members have questions for the
    Governor?
        [No response.]
        Mr. Horn. OK. Well, thank you very much, Governor. We
    appreciate you taking the time.
        Governor Geringer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly
    appreciate your courtesies.
        Mr. Horn. OK, we will have the former Governor of Arizona,
    and the current Secretary of the Interior. We welcome you to
    the committee.
        If you would raise your right hand?
        [Witness sworn.]
        Mr. Horn. The clerk will note the Secretary has affirmed.
        I might ask you, Mr. Secretary, that if you have any
    comments to make about the Governor, and the ideas that are
    being percolated in some of the States, based on your own
    experience, we would certainly welcome them.
        Secretary Babbitt. Mr. Chairman, committee members, I very
    much appreciate the chance to come here, and the leadership
    demonstrated by yourself and Congressman Kanjorski in taking up
    a topic which, so far as I can tell, has never stirred the
    heart of a single citizen of the United States, and which to
    this day remains happily unknown to the American community.
    That, of course, is going to change, and I think this is a very
    timely hearing.
        Now, I appear here as the chairman of the Federal
    Geographic Data Committee. It is an interesting committee. I
    have now been chairman--I am going into my 7th year as chairman
    of this committee. As chairman, I have no power of any kind--
    [laughter]--except to come to lengthy meetings on a quarterly
    basis to talk with a rag-tag band of dedicated people from
    Federal agencies who really care about this stuff.
        And for 7 years, we have been under the radar to the point
    of being totally invisible. We have, I believe, in 7 years,
    generated two articles in the general press, both of which
    during those 7 years appeared I think on about page 39 of every
    newspaper that I saw. That, too, Mr. Chairman and committee
    members, is about to change. And with your help, I believe can
    change in a very productive way.
        This issue was focused in my mind in January 1998, when the
    National Academy of Public Administration, which had been
    commissioned by some of the participating agencies to study
    this process, issued a report. I commend this to the committee
    members and everyone else who is interested in this product,
    and some of the people who participated in it will be
    testifying today.
        The importance of this report, particularly in chapters
    four and five, is that the Academy study says, you are reaching
    the limits of this pick-up ball game approach to the
    organization of the Federal Geographic Data Committee, and the
    participation, which they say, has really been quite good in
    terms of the university GIS people, the State parties, and all
    of the others. But the clear message in this report is we need
    some legislation to put this together and make a congressional
    statement about the importance of this.
        There are two or three proposals in here that I think are
    ripe for legislative consideration. I am not sure I would have
    said that in January 1998. I certainly would have said it in
    1995 or 1993. But I think we are there.
        The first recommendation that I would focus you on is the
    committee's conclusion that we need framework legislation to
    define the Federal effort. The FG--the Federal Geographic Data
    Committee--as I have already said, is an entirely voluntary
    kind of tea party. We need to get some starch in this
    organization now. And we need some direction from Congress
    about mandates, not to other partners, and not out in the
    outside world, but internally within the Federal Government.
        We are spending billions of dollars on GIS issues all over
    this government. And I think we have reached the limits of our
    ability to jawbone, and that it really is an appropriate time
    for the Congress to look at this and say, OK, we would like
    Federal agencies to do as follows, and then write the
    prescription. I would make I think an enormous difference.
        The second proposal in here is a very interesting one, and
    I would urge you, Mr. Chairman, and committee members, to quiz
    the private sector and State and local governments about this
    recommendation. The report suggests that there should be a
    National Spatial Data Council. Now this is stepping outside the
    Federal family. And the report would have that body chartered
    by the government, by Federal legislation, but operating
    outside of government, as a quasi-governmental, essentially
    private, non-profit organization, which would operate with all
    of the partners at the table, searching for consensus and
    standards. I think it is a very significant proposal. There is
    some division of opinion about it, but I think the committee
    should look at that very carefully.
        Third is a proposal in this report to consolidate within
    the Federal Government the geodesy and geodesic functions of
    the government. And this stuff gets pretty technical. But
    underlying the kinds of things the Governor spoke about is a
    very basic issue of cadastral survey, geodesy, geodetics. This
    is basically about how it is this information process is tied
    the Earth, and how it is that we establish reference points
    that relate to the shape of the Earth, and how this all works
    down at the point of contact with the globe. These functions
    are scattered all over government right now, and there is some
    very interesting proposals here.
        Now, Mr. Chairman, last, I realize that this is not an
    Appropriations Committee, but I would respectfully suggests
    that the members of this committee could play an important role
    internally in the budget process, and I would--rather than
    going through that--ask you to weigh the comments of some of
    the other witnesses, particularly, I believe the representative
    from the National Association of Counties. But what we have for
    the coming year is effectively a budget cross-cut, put together
    by five or six agencies to do the kinds of things that Governor
    Geringer described, in terms of competitive grants to kind of
    jump start this process.
        Mr. Chairman, committee members, I would be happy to rest.
    I do not have an airplane to catch. I just got off an airplane,
    and I would like to get out of here and go sit under a tree
    somewhere. [Laughter.]
        [The prepared statement of Secretary Babbitt follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. You would have to leave the Capitol grounds, as
    some said. When our group came in 1992, they said, ``hey, do
    you know they have got one tree of every type in America on
    these grounds.'' We cannot escape the allergies. [Laughter.]
        So, we are all sneezing this time of year, one way or the
    other.
        Well, let me just pick up that last point on a council and
    the representation. We have got some other ones that come to
    everybody's mind--the Governors' Association, the big city
    mayors, the small city mayors, the counties, the State
    legislatures, the international city managers, and on down the
    line--that would have a direct relevant interest. What do you
    think about a council that specifies a representative from
    those particular groups, and others obviously, as well as the
    professional groups that are involved, that mixes the
    practitioner with the professional? I have formulated a council
    once with a good friend of mine, the National Institute of
    Corrections, and we put space for people that knew nothing
    about the subject, so they could hold everybody accountable.
    That was always my role. So I am used to that role, and
    somebody that is not a practitioner or is not a professional,
    or is not an elected official, but someone with an interest
    there, shall we say.
        So, I am sure that everybody would have a lot of good ideas
    on that, but I think it makes a lot of sense what you are
    talking about.
        Secretary Babbitt. Mr. Chairman, if I might briefly
    respond?
        The idea of having community representatives is, I think,
    very important because it would teach people how to make this
    comprehensible and interesting. Now, I must say, that is a very
    hard job. I was once invited to explain the national spatial
    data infrastructure at a Cabinet meeting, and I could just
    watch people nodding off all the way around the table, and I
    finally gave up.
        The private sector is the other important piece here.
        Mr. Horn. Sure.
        Secretary Babbitt. And Mr. Dangermond and others will
    discuss that.
        Mr. Horn. In terms of the standards that are to be
    developed--and you heard the Governor's strong feelings, and I
    am sure there are many of our feelings--to go from the bottom
    up, not the top down. And then the question would be, to what
    degree would both federally mandated or non-federally mandated
    standards be related to this, and how do you see that working?
        Secretary Babbitt. Mr. Chairman, we have considerable
    experience with that, and we have developed a number of
    standards, both what are known as framework standards, which
    kind of set the table for fitting the data in, and data
    standards themselves. But we have done that in a consensus-
    driven process. We do not have any power to mandate anything.
        But if you go out there, and you might press Mr. Dangermond
    about this and see if he is--and others--in agreement, but we
    have managed to formulate non-binding, non-mandatory consensus
    standards. Nobody has to do nothing. But almost everybody is,
    in fact, moving toward implementation of these standards. And I
    think we can continue that process.
        Now, there may be standards issues within particular
    groups. For example, it may be that this committee would say,
    within the Federal family, there are particular issues that
    would require the Congress to mandate particular things. But in
    terms of the standards generally used, I don't think there's
    any need to do that.
        Mr. Horn. Do my colleagues have some questions at this
    point? Mr. Kanjorski.
        Mr. Kanjorski. I thank you very much. Mr. Secretary, going
    along with the need for, or lack thereof, a formalized set of
    standards, I wanted to call your attention to a visit I made to
    Missouri several years ago at one of the USGS Centers. As a
    friend of mine, Bill Emerson, and I were going through this
    center, the leadership took us aside and said, ``Do not ever
    allow the Congress to do what they did the last time.'' We
    said, ``what was that?'' They said, when we were told to map
    America, it got into a political issue of States' rights, so
    the determination of Congress was that each State shall award
    the contract to map its State, and then it would be brought
    together. When they put the 50 States together, America could
    not be joined.
        What I am particularly worried about is that we just may
    end up doing something similar. I like a voluntary standard.
    But there are certain things, it would seem to me, that have to
    line up and be rather standardized, particularly if we are
    going to work with--and I am most worried not only that we have
    standards, but that we have a way of validating the data; that
    they comport with those standards and the information is
    actually correct.
        I look at this issue starting out almost virgin. We have a
    few years to try and make sure that it does not get polluted.
    If we do not, a lot of this information will become axiomatic.
    We may end up bombing the Chinese Embassy by mistake but nobody
    will ever believe us.
        I do not like to mandate from the top but I think the fact
    that you bring the issue up is important.
        Do you think, with the use of the funding that we are
    talking about that the administration and the various agencies
    have requested to get some handle on GIS, we could have some
    organized thought process as to encourage standards to be
    pooled, at least, and considered? Or standardized at least in
    these beginning grants?
        Secretary Babbitt. Congressman, all right, I hope you will
    ask that question of people from other sectors here. And I am
    going to venture that what you will hear from all of them is
    that there is not a problem with standards; that we have, in
    fact, progressively, for 6 years, with the involvement of
    everybody here, worked out some very basic things. The
    framework standards are moving. This is how you fit everything
    together in a national kind of container. And they are being
    implemented. The data standards are now moving out. This has
    been an excruciatingly slow process because we have talked and
    talked and met and met and worked with States and cities and
    universities and the private sector, but those standards are
    popping out.
        With respect to the quality of the information, the trade
    calls them meta-data standards, the data behind the data. That
    one has been worked out, for the most part, by consensus.
        Now, the theory is that in this voluntary group of Federal/
    State, the early users into the system will set a standard
    which will become the presumptive standard, because it so
    obviously would be in the interest of everyone. But I would be
    interested to hear more about that.
        It is my feeling that we need not mandate anything in terms
    of the broader community, which would be encompassed by this
    National Spatial Data Council. I do urge you to entertain some
    direction for the Federal partners and how they go about
    gathering information, because some of them are onboard, and it
    is going great. Other ones are--you know, I am not sure we are
    doing it as efficiently as we ought to.
        Mr. Kanjorski. One other question. The President is about
    to go on a tour, in the beginning of July, of the distressed
    economic areas of the country that have not benefited from the
    last 6\1/2\ years of economic improvement. Generally, when I
    get into these areas, whether it is in hearings or
    investigative mode, I find that, to a large extent, they do not
    have the building blocks that are necessary to really be
    competitive, to be attractive for industry, and to develop.
        How are we going to stimulate communities like the
    Mississippi Delta, and a lot of the interior of the United
    States that have really been passed by and that are on their
    way, proportionately at least--they are starting to appear to
    be Third World Nations? If left to their own designs, I am not
    sure whether I agree with the Governor or not, that he thinks
    devolution will work. I am not sure it does. In my district, I
    have seen it not work. That is why it came to my attention.
    That is why I got involved.
        Secretary Babbitt. Congressman, interesting question. In
    the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, El Salvador, and
    Nicaragua, this huge relief effort was mounted. And early on,
    these mapping and spatial data issues became critical because
    there were no maps, no data. The infrastructure was all out.
    And in the emergency legislation, the Geological Survey was
    called upon to provide the kind of thing you are talking about.
    And I would encourage staffers and committee members to take a
    couple hours and go out to the center in Reston and let them
    show you what is up and operating in Central America, because
    it is really an incredible, powerful display of what can be
    done from existing satellite resources, merged through the
    Civil Applications Committee and the other institutions out
    there.
        And I, you know, lay that out to answer--if we can do it in
    Central America, we ought to be able to do it in the
    Mississippi Delta as well. Yes, it is a matter of resources.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Is that the role of the Federal Government?
        Secretary Babbitt. Absolutely.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Do we have to stimulate?
        Secretary Babbitt. Absolutely.
        Mr. Kanjorski. At least that level. Then, if Government
    wants to get more sophisticated or have its standards changed
    or modified by private industry or locality, they can do that.
    At least, we ought to have something of a standard bit of
    information existing and up to a level that helps put everybody
    on a competitive equal ground.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Mr. Horn. Thank you. Let me ask you about the U.S.
    Geological Survey. I have been a long-time fan of that since I
    had geologists in my family, and I enjoyed taking the courses.
        As you look at it, are they pursuing a lot of these data
    bases or have they not been given appropriate funding in the
    last several decades? What is your reading on that?
        Secretary Babbitt. Well, two thoughts. The National Mapping
    Division of the GS has undergone a profound change in the last
    decade, because it used to be a paper map group. When I was in
    graduate school, we made maps by plane-tabling. We would carry
    our plane table out there with a rod man, and work the
    landscape. That stuff is all obsolete. Gone. This is a digital
    world, and no aspiring geologist is ever going to see anything
    like that because it all comes out of the sky now.
        And the GS is making a transition to a digital data
    universe. And it has not been without complications, and that
    is discussed in this report, too. And I would say that the
    discussion in here is quite fair. The transition is underway,
    and I think they are getting back into a leadership position.
        The Geological Survey has been starved for funding over the
    last 7 years. The reason is: It does not have a constituency.
    The constituency for science in this Congress, because of
    public command, is NASA, big space programs, NIH, medicine. And
    we are lagging on basic science, and the GS may be the best
    example of that.
        Mr. Horn. Well, I appreciate that comment. And we do have
    good relations with the relevant Appropriations Committees, and
    I hope we can be helpful on some of these things.
        Secretary Babbitt. Thank you.
        Mr. Horn. If there are no more questions from my
    colleagues, we thank you very much for spending the time with
    us, and we appreciate it. We welcome any ideas you have or any
    other thoughts on the way when you find that tree? [Laughter.]
        Secretary Babbitt. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you.
        Mr. Horn. And do not let anybody call you ``Ferdinand,'' by
    the way.
        OK, panel two, we will start with, and we have a
    distinguished colleague which will introduce one of the
    panelists.
        Panel two is Mr. Terry Bills, the managing principal
    planner, Information Services Department, Southern California
    Association of Governments, otherwise known as SCAG; Mr. Tom
    Sweet, Pennsylvania GIS Consortium; Ms. Suzanne Hall, assistant
    county executive, Wayne County, MI. This subcommittee will be
    in Detroit in the next few months. We are looking at the year
    2000 situation. Honorable Victoria Reinhardt, commissioner and
    chair, Ramsey County, MN. And the Honorable Sue Cameron,
    commissioner and chair, Tillamook County, OR; Mr. Lawrence F.
    Ayers, Jr., project panel member, National Academy of Public
    Administration.
        Congresswoman Darlene Hooley is here, a Member from Oregon.
    And Members have lots of things to do, so we are going to take
    this group out of sequence, and have you introduce Ms. Cameron.

    STATEMENT OF DARLENE HOOLEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM
                          THE STATE OF OREGON

        Ms. Hooley. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and other members. It is
    my pleasure to introduce someone like Sue Cameron, who is
    commissioner of Tillamook County. As a native Oregonian, people
    have come to know her by more than just her achievements. Her
    license plate back home says it all. And it says: NRG. And if
    you say it quickly, it is what she brings to all situations, a
    lot of energy.
        During her 13 years as administrator of the health
    department in Tillamook County, she was able to institute a
    teen pregnancy program that caught the attention of the entire
    Nation. Under her watch, Tillamook County teen pregnancy rates
    dropped from 20 per 1,000 down to 7. Sue's energy was at work
    then, and she is still one of our most respected county
    commissioners in our State.
        She is now bringing people together to solve some huge
    problems that we have in Tillamook County, with the performance
    partnership taking on issues like economic development and
    planning and watershed issues. And probably, more than anyone
    else, she knows how important GIS is to the rural communities
    and rural counties. And so I know you will enjoy her testimony,
    as I am sure you will of all the panelists. And I am glad to
    introduce one of Tillamook's greatest assets, Commissioner
    Cameron. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Mr. Horn. Well, we thank you very much for coming and
    spending some time with us.
        If you will stand and raise your right hands, please. Well,
    let me ask you, are there any assistants that will be talking
    behind you, because we will swear them all in. All right.
        [Witnesses sworn.]
        Mr. Horn. The six witnesses affirmed, the clerk will note.
        And we will start down the agenda with Mr. Bills, the
    managing principal planner, Information Services Department,
    Southern California Association of Governments.
        Nice to have you.

        STATEMENTS OF TERRY BILLS, MANAGING PRINCIPAL PLANNER,
         INFORMATION SERVICES DEPARTMENT, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
        ASSOCIATION OF GOVERNMENTS; TOM SWEET, PENNSYLVANIA GIS
      CONSORTIUM; SUZANNE HALL, ASSISTANT COUNTY EXECUTIVE, WAYNE
    COUNTY, MI; VICTORIA REINHARDT, COMMISSIONER AND CHAIR, RAMSEY
      COUNTY, MN; SUE CAMERON, COMMISSIONER AND CHAIR, TILLAMOOK
     COUNTY, OR; AND LAWRENCE F. AYERS, JR., PROJECT PANEL MEMBER,
               NATIONAL ACADEMY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

        Mr. Bills. Thank you, Chairman Horn and members of the
    committee. I appreciate the opportunity to address your
    committee today and to present a few thoughts on how we might
    create more effective partnerships between our various levels
    of government.
        Much like some of the speakers that you have and will hear
    today, we at SCAG feel that GIS technology can provide an
    effective tool in the decisionmaking process and which can
    broaden participation in the formulation of public policy. We
    feel so strongly about that, that we have actually distributed
    computers, GIS technology, software, data, and pre-built
    applications, as well as training to all of the jurisdictions
    in our area, some 180 cities. At the heart, these applications
    are designed to help our cities more effectively coordinate
    their actions, recognizing that we will only solve our very
    severe air quality and congestion problems in southern
    California through the joint efforts of cities working
    together.
        The heart of every effective GIS is the data and
    information upon which this technology depends. While data
    collection costs have been coming down, it still remains that
    data is probably one of the most expensive components in a GIS.
    And in this context, we applaud the efforts of the Federal
    Government Data Committee, through the national spatial data
    infrastructure, to encourage the creation of spatial data
    catalogs which help and seek to make more data accessible to
    all. I think it still remains, however, that there is too much
    unnecessary duplication in data collection, with the result
    that scarce public resources are not being used as effectively
    as they should. Because different agencies and levels of
    government have different needs for the information, it is
    quite common for two agencies to collect the same information
    at different scales.
        We have many examples, and I will not bore you with all the
    details. But I do think there is considerable opportunity to
    reduce redundancy among Federal, State, and local efforts.
        The root cause of this is ultimately a human one: that data
    partnerships take time and they take effort to succeed. In
    various agencies, when the data collection budgets are already
    approved within individual agencies, we have few incentives to
    form effective partnerships. Let me state that I think that the
    technology already exists to make such partnerships easier and
    to resolve the issues of scale and consistency, which have been
    the most common objections to such multi-agency coordination.
        As an example, in southern California, when we will collect
    the basic information for our year 2000 land use update, we at
    SCAG will pay for the cost of the digital ortho-photographs,
    photos, at a scale appropriate for regional purposes, while
    partnering with all of the individual cities, to collect the
    data that are more appropriate for their uses, allowing them to
    pay the incremental cost difference. While this makes the
    process a little bit more cumbersome and more difficult, from a
    logistical point of view, we do it because it is part of our
    mission to provide wide benefits to our members.
        Let me be clear that I do not think this is an area which
    requires additional regulation, nor should budgets be reduced
    to bring about collaboration. Rather, I think ultimately we
    need to change the mission and the incentive structure of
    agencies to place a premium on the creation of effective
    partnerships among agencies.
        In this context, a role that this committee may wish to
    consider is to ensure that the performance standards of various
    Federal agencies also include measures of effective partnering
    with State, regional, and local agencies. I maintain ultimately
    that the Federal agencies stand to gain as much from that
    process as the State and regional agencies.
        I think this can be accomplished with little, if any,
    additional cost to the Federal Government, while ultimately
    ensuring that the data which is collected will ultimately
    benefit the greatest number of users.
        Additionally, as I think was previously mentioned,
    competitive grant programs designed to foster such interagency
    coordination can be effective at bringing down the bureaucratic
    barriers which have typically prevented data coordination and
    partnering.
        Finally, if I might say a few words about data standards,
    or what we often called in the GIS community meta-data. The
    Federal Government has taken I think a commendable lead in
    attempting to establish common meta-data standards. These are a
    critical component which allows agencies to effectively share
    information. But I also think that up to this point, these
    committees have been, to some extent, among the already
    converted and among the most technically proficient, but which
    have missed important components of the community. As one who
    has attempted to encourage local cities and counties into
    adopting such standards, I can also point out the difficulty or
    perhaps even irrelevance of existing meta-data standards to
    many local governments. It is very difficult to get them to
    implement what are, at this point in time, quite admirable
    standards, but also quite complex standards.
        The value of GIS technology is too important to relegate to
    technical experts, but ultimately should be broadened to
    include a much wider audience. The Federal Data Committee can
    and should play an important role in this regard. But I think
    it does need to encompass and broaden to include the entire
    community. Only in this way can we devise standards relevant to
    all.
        This concludes my remarks, and, again, thank you for
    inviting me to participate and or consideration of my comments.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Bills follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you very much.
        I think one or two might have come in after I noted that
    your full statement is automatically put in the record when we
    call on you. And if you could summarize it in about 5 minutes,
    that would be appreciated, so we have more time to dialog among
    you and with you.
        Our next presenter is Mr. Tom Sweet of the Pennsylvania GIS
    Consortium. Mr. Sweet.
        Mr. Sweet. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
    this opportunity to participate in what I think is a very
    important event. I think I would like to take you up on your
    offer of leaning on the testimony that I have submitted, and I
    will be brief, and hit some of the highlights.
        I think that what we need to understand here is in central
    Pennsylvania we have started to see the evolution of some
    organizations, like one that I currently represent, the
    Pennsylvania Geographic Information Systems Consortium, which
    is working to coordinate GIS in the central and northeastern
    portions of the State.
        I think some of the key concepts that are worth revisiting
    are the impacts of coordination and locally independent
    activities that take place at the county levels. Specifically,
    what I have seen since 1994, or where I have had the
    opportunity to work with several counties in the center of the
    State in deploying this type of technology, is that, when they
    do it separately, some rather dramatic things happen. When you
    start to get them to work together, and they are starting to do
    it on their own, some things worth noting, I think, take place.
        One of the best examples, I think, is we had a county in
    central Pennsylvania that went out on a data acquisition
    process that ended up costing it approximately $225 per square
    mile in a 300-square mile county. When we took the same
    specifications that they used and started to tweak them a
    little bit for the second time around kind of thing where you
    can improve them, and we put six counties together, the same
    process cost $84 a square mile. That is a significant savings.
    And I think that when we look at trying to find the resources
    to coordinate, when we look at trying to find the resources to
    make these kinds of things happen, we cannot miss the obvious
    resources that seem to be laying around at the local level.
        I think the other thing that starts to happen is that as we
    look at the day-to-day operations of individual elements of
    local government, what we are starting to see is that entities
    like the 911 centers, entities like tax assessment offices,
    zoning and planning offices, are not embracing GIS because it
    is a new technology that has got a lot of whistles and bells.
    They are embracing it because it makes their job easier to do.
        And what that offers us is an opportunity, as Mr. Bills
    pointed out. What we found is the significant costs of a GIS
    implementation are in the data acquisition and maintenance
    activities. They can run as high as 70 percent of a particular
    application. Of those two, the routine data maintenance
    activities are the ones that continue to linger on and on. What
    we are finding is that in deployments where the data
    maintenance and acquisition activities are not including the
    people who have to do that on a day-to-day basis, those types
    of deployments have difficulty surviving and ultimately fail.
        I think as we look at what can be done at the State level
    and the Federal level, what we have to understand is that what
    we really need to form are true partnerships between the
    Federal and the State organizations, between the State and the
    local organizations. We have to include the educational
    sectors. We have to include the private sectors, all of which
    have expertise to offer. In that line of thinking, there are a
    couple of actions that I think would help.
        I think we need to provide incentives to local governments
    to continue to develop NSDI compliance or framework-compliant
    data sets. All too often what happens is that they see no
    Federal dollars or no State dollars coming to their data
    acquisition processes, so they do not feel obligated to do
    things that might be in the betterment of a larger community.
        We need to provide, likewise, incentives for State and
    Federal Government to demonstrate that they are, in fact,
    partnering with each other. I think we need to create budget
    line items that not necessarily take-away moneys in particular
    sources, but provide some kind of a mechanism for demonstrating
    that that coordination activity is taking place.
        I think, specifically, we need to support and accelerate
    the NSDI and framework methodologies; try to get that into the
    field as rapidly as possible. A survey in the State of
    Pennsylvania has indicated that all of the counties are
    currently embracing GIS. Many have already begun.
        Finally, I think it is necessary to support the community
    Federal information partnership process. And I think it is
    important in doing so to support it in such a fashion that
    creates a mechanism where those resources can be delivered
    flexibly and efficiently to where they make the most sense. And
    in my instance, or from my perspective, they make the most
    sense in the coordination activities of the data acquisition
    and maintenance process. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Sweet follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Thank you very much.
        Our next witness is Ms. Suzanne Hall, who is the assistant
    county executive of Wayne County, MI.
        Let me ask you, Ms. Hall, do you also handle things like
    the year 2000 Y2K problem?
        Ms. Hall. Yes.
        Mr. Horn. OK. Well, I hope our staff will get with you
    before you leave town, because we are hoping to have a hearing
    in Detroit, and we would love----
        Ms. Hall. Oh, very good.
        Mr. Horn [continuing]. To hear what Wayne County is doing.
        Ms. Hall. We would love to welcome you to Wayne County.
        Mr. Horn. Good. Thank you. I thought we would save a little
    phone calls that way.
        So please proceed.
        Ms. Hall. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I
    appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I really appreciate
    the chairman saying throw out your speech and just summarize
    it, because I do much better with summary than reading word for
    word. And the 5-minute time limit made me quite anxious on
    whether I could get through everything we wanted to say.
        Mr. Horn. Don't worry. We will give you another 10 seconds.
        Ms. Hall. OK. I am here on behalf of our county elected
    executive, Ed McNamara, to talk about what we have done in
    Wayne County, which we think is a model for the rest of the
    country in how we approach GIS.
        A little bit about Wayne County: We are the eighth largest
    county in the country. We have 2.1 million people; 43
    jurisdictions, including the city of Detroit. We are very
    diverse. We go from the very, very rural to the very urban.
        And what happened in Wayne County--we have 6,000
    employees--is that the county executive was hearing that the
    airport was going to develop a GIS application, and environment
    department, and roads department, and they were all out
    developing their own little GIS, and he said: Wait a second,
    let us pull it in, and let us do it together as one GIS for
    Wayne County. And that is how I view the Federal Government
    that they are out doing a lot of little GISs, but they are not
    pulling it together.
        Primarily, we need to have an organizational structure that
    is consensus-based. And what we have done with our partnerships
    that we have developed with neighboring counties, with the
    State of Michigan, with the utilities, and with the private
    sector, is that we will build--in Wayne County we are investing
    $14 million--we are different than many other municipalities in
    that we are putting up the money upfront--$14 million to build
    a parcel base map. And we are going to provide it to all our
    local jurisdictions, free of charge, as we make the same offer
    to the Federal Government--in exchange for the data elements
    that we need from those municipalities back to us.
        We view this as an opportunity to improve government
    services to make us more efficient; and therefore, that is the
    payback in the long-term. We, however, recognize that we cannot
    do it by ourselves. That is a huge investment from county tax
    dollars, and we are actually looking for leadership from the
    Congress, and I have actually spent the last couple of days
    talking to members of the Michigan delegation just, first of
    all, educating them what GIS is, because I am not a
    technocrat--it took me about 2 years to even know what it
    means--but educating them and having them understand what it
    means to their constituents. I mean, that is what this is all
    about: What does it mean to our community? What does it mean to
    our neighborhood? What does it mean to our individual families?
    And I think that that is really the toughest saw of all, is
    that: How do you bring it to individuals?
        So we have been working with our congressional delegation,
    and we are asking--although you are not at the Appropriations
    Committee, we understand that--we are asking for your
    leadership in helping to receive support for the President's
    Community/Federal Information Partnership, like CFAB, budget
    recommendations.
        Then, how do you go about allocating the money? I would
    hope that, if, in fact, the funding does become available, the
    government will look at those places that have developed
    partnerships and use that as the framework for competitively
    providing funds to local units. Because getting back to what
    Congressman Kanjorski had said earlier today at the conference,
    and then also this afternoon, it is that we are going to be at
    a point where we have the haves and have-nots within the
    communities.
        We have communities in Wayne County that do not have
    computers. Yet, we have those that spend millions and millions
    of dollars to correct Y2K. So we have to make sure that, as we
    approach GIS, and as we institutionalize it and in providing
    community services, that we help the haves as well as the have-
    nots.
        So that is a very quick summary of my statement because I
    would rather spend time in dialog.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Hall follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you very much. That is a very helpful
    statement.
        Next is the Honorable Victoria Reinhardt, commissioner and
    chair of the County of Ramsey in Minnesota. Glad to have you
    here.
        Ms. Reinhardt. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I am
    Ramsey County Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt, Chair, not of
    the county board, but of the Metro GIS Policy Board.
        Thank you for this opportunity to testify regarding Federal
    Government assistance for implementation of locally
    independent, regionally coordinated multi-purpose GIS programs.
        Since 1995, organizations in the St. Paul-Minneapolis metro
    region have been working for a sustainable structure for our
    common geospatial data needs. Metro GIS is an ambitious
    undertaking to fill that need that has brought together over
    250 local units of government.
        The board is a broad cross-section of the organizations
    that have made strong commitments to Metro GIS. The policy
    board itself is advised by a coordinating committee comprised
    of over 20 GIS professionals and managers. The Metro Council,
    which is a regional agency in the seven-county metro area of
    Minnesota, covering 3,000 square miles and more than 2\1/2\
    million people, has been a champion for Metro GIS and is
    committed to achieving the Metro GIS vision. That vision is to
    provide an ongoing stakeholder-governed, metro-wide mechanism
    through which participants easily and equitably share
    geographically referenced graphic and associated attribute data
    that are accurate, current, secure, of common benefit, and
    readily usable.
        Metro GIS is a stakeholder-governed board and is a work-in-
    progress. The definition stage will be substantially complete
    this fall. We abide by guiding principles which include, first
    of all, policymaker involvement early and throughout.
        Second, common business information needs drive the
    organization. In other words, what information do you need to
    do your business?
        Third, recognition is given to cost recovery as a
    legitimate practice, and one that must be dealt with head on.
        And finally, compensation is needed for tasks beyond
    internal business needs.
        Major accomplishments include a 1998 Governor's
    Commendation for an Exemplary GIS Project, a partnership that
    provides access to the Lawrence Group's addressable street
    center line data set. We have received formal endorsement from
    all the policy boards of the key stakeholders, and an agreement
    was reached to appoint a member to serve on the policy board.
    The priority information needs were unanimously approved, and
    the data finder is operational and can be found at
    www.datafinder.org. We are very proud of data finder. We have
    data- and cost-sharing agreements that have been executed with
    all seven counties, which levels the playing field for data-
    sharing, and was something that was mentioned earlier by
    members of the committee.
        And finally, we received a grant from NSDI Framework in
    1998 for the Fair-Share Financial Model Project.
        Major challenges that are faced by Metro GIS include
    achieving agreement on benefits received from Metro GIS, and I
    think, all too often, the needs that we are talking about here
    are simply taken for granted.
        Defining an equitable means to share the cost and securing
    a stable financing source.
        Data practices are an obvious consideration.
        And finally, achieving Metro GIS' needs while also trying
    to ensure that a migration path will be available to achieve
    objectives of NSDI.
        As far as the Federal Government involvement, I believe you
    should continue to advocate the data-sharing and dialog;
    provide leadership on development of standards; maintain the
    grant programs, and consider something such as bridge funding
    to help establish collaboratives. The Federal Government in the
    long run will save money. Support benefits research and
    participate directly in operating collaboratives based on the
    direct benefit received.
        Current Federal efforts are seeking to provide for livable,
    sustainable communities. Through GIS and data-sharing, we can
    attack issues such as urban sprawl and improved economic
    competitiveness. Issues such as these do not recognize
    jurisdictional boundaries.
        In conclusion, we are ready, willing, and able to work
    collaboratively with you on regional GIS efforts. Again, thank
    you for this opportunity.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Reinhardt follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate your
    statement there.
        Another elected official is the commissioner and chair of
    Tillamook County, OR, who has been introduced, the Honorable
    Sue Cameron. I might tell you that I do know where Tillamook
    is; I have been there. I have not only bought the cheese, but I
    had an uncle who ran a newspaper there, probably before you
    were born, but we will talk about that later. OK, Ms. Cameron.
        Ms. Cameron. Mr. Chair, Congressman Kanjorski, members of
    the committee----
        Mr. Horn. You want to bring that microphone a little
    closer?
        Ms. Cameron. Are we OK?
        Mr. Horn. Yes, we have terrible microphones. We are in the
    19th century.
        Ms. Cameron. On. There, is that better now? You can hear
    me?
        Mr. Horn. Yes.
        Ms. Cameron. All right. I appreciate the opportunity to be
    invited to testify today. I came all the way from Oregon for
    this reason, and the reason I did that was because I felt it
    was so important to talk about the role of GIS in our community
    that it was worth the time and the justification from my
    constituents back in Oregon to explain why I came here today.
        It is very, very important, and I would like to put this in
    context if I could. Tillamook, as you know, is the land of
    cheese, trees, and ocean breeze--and sometimes mud up to your
    knees. And that reflects the issues around our community. It
    reflects our timber-based economy; our dairy-based economy. In
    fact, we have more cows than people. And it also reflects our
    tourism--none of which you can build a strong economic base on
    in Tillamook County, and because of that, we actually have a
    number of problems.
        We have a beautiful community, but we also have some
    issues. We have the fact that our fish have been listed as
    threatened and endangered. We have the fact that our streams
    don't meet the water quality standards of EPA and our local
    Department of Environmental Quality. We also have the issue of
    the fact that since 1996 we had $63 million worth of damage
    from flooding, and we have a per capita income of about $18,000
    per year; that is one of the lowest in the State and the United
    States, and yet we try to survive in this process.
        We don't just sit there and take it; we have been planning.
    We have so many plans: we have the President's Forest Plan; we
    have the Department of Forestry Plan; we have our flood hazard
    mitigation plan; we have our land use plans; we have our energy
    plans; we have any kind of plan you want to have. In fact, if I
    stack them up, they are probably taller than I am, and that is
    fine, and it tells us what to do, but our citizens are saying,
    ``Enough of planning. Let us get on with it. Let us get the job
    done. We want to see some results.'' And based on that, we took
    an aggressive, assertive approach to dealing with those needs.
    We formed what we call a ``performance partnership'' made up of
    State people, Federal people, local people, citizens, and
    business, so that when we have a meeting, we have 50 entities
    represented in our small county, and people travel to Tillamook
    for those community meetings, performance partnerships. It is
    about partners working together to achieve results. That is a
    critical element, and probably one of the most important tools
    we have is GIS. We need to be able to bring the information to
    people in a way that they can actually understand it and
    visualize it. Our citizens have come to us and asked us for
    more GIS-based information.
        Picture this, if you will: we have watershed councils.
    Citizens that have volunteered their evenings and their
    weekends and their after-work hours to try to fix their stream
    that they care about so that the fish are back and the bacteria
    and the sedimentation are taken care of. So, they sit in a
    meeting in the evening and on the wall is a projector with a
    map of that watershed, and in parts of that watershed you will
    see a green line, and it says, ``These are the best salmon
    habitat areas in that river.'' Unfortunately, the line right
    before that is a different color that shows violation of
    sediment, violation of bacteria, and violation of temperature
    standards. Now, everybody in the room sees that those fish have
    to go through that part of the watershed to get to the best
    part for their habitat, and, immediately, the citizens begin to
    say, ``Well, you know, if we are going to spend our time and
    our energy on this, we are going to put it in this area,
    because it is so obvious. We will work on this culvert; we will
    replant these trees; we will donate some land, and we will work
    on the issues surrounding that part of the watershed,'' And
    that is one application of GIS; it is not the only one. In our
    community, we can apply it in any way.
        We have been lucky enough to develop over 300 layers of GIS
    information through our National Estuary Project, so we are
    able to see those maps now. Our next step is to put it on the
    Internet, so you can see our watershed from here; so you can
    see what we are doing, and we can share it with everybody else.
    We have been involved in this GIS approach, which we believe is
    probably one of the most powerful tools in bringing communities
    together around strategies, because if people can see the
    issue, they can understand where to best put their limited
    resources and their limited time.
        Now, I have included in my testimony, which I am not going
    to go over today, a letter from a citizen. It is one page. I
    would suggest you take the time, and I think you will feel
    probably as I do. That letter is addressed to our Senator and
    copied to us, and I asked for permission to include it.
        I would also suggest that one of the more exciting things
    for our community is to be involved in the Community Federal
    Information Partnership, and I would stress the word
    ``community,'' because it really is about partnership, and that
    is an opportunity to be one of six pilots across the United
    States. A little bit of seed money to get our GIS information
    on the web to be able to provide to anybody who wants it to
    have that information, and that seed money has been incredibly
    powerful in our community, and I would like to give you an
    example. Two weeks ago, we had a hearing on our budget. Our
    county general fund budget is all of $13 million, and that is
    not very much, but we had a line-up of people coming to us in
    our hearing, not asking about anything--roads or anything
    else--they were there to ask us to invest in GIS; $200,000 so
    that we can actually do our base map and then employ the kind
    of people to not only digitize the information but analyze it
    and feed it back to the community for decisionmaking. So, our
    community took the chance, and we are approving that budget of
    putting in $200,000 to match with our public utility district
    that is going to put in another $160,000. So, it is about
    leveraging. A little bit of seed money can go a very, very long
    way, and that way, we will be able to address the issues around
    our fish and our flooding and our water quality and our
    economic development.
        So, I would urge, along with membership of NACO--and I have
    submitted a resolution on behalf of the National Association of
    Counties [NACO] asking you to support this kind of work--
    community information processes and projects--so that we can
    use GIS as a major infrastructure in our communities, to build
    strong communities, and I thank you for inviting us to testify.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Cameron follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you very much. That is immensely
    helpful. We will have a number of questions about it later.
        The last on this panel is Mr. Lawrence F. Ayers, Jr., the
    project panel member on the National Academy of Public
    Administration Study. Maybe you could tell us a little bit
    about your background, Mr. Ayers, and then go ahead.
        Mr. Ayers. My background--I have 45 years in this business.
        Mr. Horn. That is what I thought.
        Mr. Ayers. I was the civilian Director of the Defense
    Mapping Agency as it came out of the archaic period and into
    the time of satellite and was on the team that wrote the specs
    for GPS. So, I have been around a long time. I left the
    Government in 1987 and have been with industry for the past 13
    years focused on the civil applications.
        I would say, though, that these past 2 years have been
    particularly exciting. I have had the privilege of working on
    the National Academy of Public Administration panels with some
    very distinguished colleagues, and I would suggest that when
    Secretary Babbitt held up that report, you note the membership
    of the people that were on that committee. We had good
    representation from local cities--Eric Anderson; we had
    representation from counties, States, and a good
    representation. But probably more important was that we
    interviewed a host of people. I think if you go back to the
    report you will see all of the different government
    organizations all levels--private sector, utility companies,
    and even some foreign people to get a good grasp of what the
    issue was. I would note, Chairman Horn, that you are a fellow
    of the Academy, so I am sure that you understand the process of
    the panels and the committees.
        Mr. Horn. I have great respect for my colleagues, and I
    only wish I had the time to participate more.
        Mr. Ayers. Thank you.
        The second Academy panel I served on just issued their
    final report, and it addressed the limitations and disclosures
    of spatial data particularly as it relates to disaster, and I
    would like to talk about that a little bit, because we really
    have some impediments in the copyright, privacy, liability, and
    security issues that need to be addressed, and there are some
    significant conflicting laws up and down the line that ought to
    be looked at judiciously to see what we can do with this.
        Over my years, I have seen the transition from the tools of
    making maps to go from, I think, as Secretary Babbitt said, the
    plane table to the satellite imagery, aircraft imagery, and one
    that I would highlight for you. You can't get all the spatial
    information from satellites. You need access to one of the more
    important data sources, i.e., transactional data. That is the
    data that occurs by people transactions daily--changing fire
    hydrants, traffic lights, digging holes, changing utilities,
    and even knowing where the Chinese Embassy is on the map. So,
    this transition has really brought us into the new realm of
    real time spatial information. That is where the action is now.
    The action is real time where you can deal with the spatial
    data in the natural resources, commerce, transportation, all of
    the areas that are terribly important and particularly in
    national disasters.
        We talked a little bit about standards, and if you will
    allow me just a minute, I would like to talk to that. GPS,
    whether you realize it or not, really has set the national
    standard for the geodetic framework of this Nation. Now, today,
    if you go across this Nation, you are going to find a lot of
    data on different projections; each county and town typically
    puts their spatial data on a flat projection. But GPS operates
    on a projection that approximates the Earth's shape, and
    whenever you make the transition from a GPS position to the
    local datum, you are going to introduce a certain amount of
    error, but over time, I am impressed with the fact that people
    are beginning to describe land parcels with GPS coordinates;
    the users are beginning to locate the utilities with GPS
    coordinates; in fact the public has accepted GPS. So, it has
    become one of the basic frameworks. The second issue that has
    been talked about is the need for common definitions of
    features and attributes so the people, when they share data,
    recognize that their descriptions have some similarity.
    Finally, the need to document the source and quality of the
    data.
        Now, the Academy panel addressed these areas in the two
    reports. I have the summary of the second report, which I think
    was submitted to the committee for the record. I would like to
    make a few comments. I think Secretary Babbitt did a superb job
    of highlighting what the recommendations were of the first
    report, and I would like to make a couple of comments. One, is
    we really did feel that the Congress ought to address a
    statutory base for a national spatial data infrastructure
    [NSDI]. Today, we are operating on a Presidential order, but I
    think it is probably more important--and we all agree--that it
    should have a congressional statutory base on it.
        Second, the panel really urged that we have a truly
    National Council, the panel wrestled with that concept for a
    long time. The panel felt that the Federal Government had been
    doing a pretty good job reaching out, but there was not
    ownership at all levels by all stakeholders, and we felt that
    if there was a level playing field when everybody came to the
    table, and they spoke with equal authority and equal
    accountability; that a National Council was the way to go. We
    spent some time in the report describing that. Third, in the
    area that I have just described to you, the fundamental base to
    which all spatial data sits in--the GPS coordinate system, the
    shape of the Earth with its elevation data, the photography
    from which data is extracted--is spread all over the Federal
    Government, and we felt that there ought to be a single focus
    that is concerned with base data along with a national data
    clearinghouse. You should be able to go into any library or to
    any computer and ask by name or coordinate for spatial data and
    the system should tell you where it is, who has it, how much
    you have to pay for it, what accuracy is it, and who do I
    contact to go get it?
        The fourth area that we addressed was the area of multi-
    level partnerships. I think that has been discussed very
    heavily. I would make one point. About 90 percent of the data
    for the national spatial data infrastructure is created at the
    local level. It is not created at the Federal level, and the
    fact that the local level is where information is credited and
    that the local level is where the transactions are occurring
    which will keep the data current--you want current data, so
    when you tap into data to make a study, you don't want data 5
    years old, you want current data--found that we--and the
    Federal agencies do projects using local data. We feel very
    strongly that the partnership is the right way to go and that
    the Federal agencies are in fact supporting the local people,
    because they are tapping into the local data for analysis and
    decisionmaking.
        Mr. Chairman, I think that pretty well summarizes my
    thoughts. We would encourage you to support the current budget.
    We think the budget support for the matching funds and
    partnerships is the right way to go, and we would also
    encourage that some of the other Federal agencies need a
    similar program. Your committee might take a look at this need.
        Thank you, and I would like to answer any questions you may
    have.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Ayers follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you. Those were very pertinent
    comments.
        As I have listened to all of you this afternoon and when
    Mr. Kanjorski and I are trying to piece a bill together in this
    area, one thought comes to mind is that we need a data room in
    Congress, and we might put it over in the Library of Congress
    or we might use a vacant hearing room around here, and any
    Member could come in and see what the impact of some particular
    point of coordinate and all that would be on that Member's
    district, and I think that would be very useful information.
        The President ought to have a similar type of room. They
    have a war room down there for national security affairs, and I
    remember Senator Humphrey and I, 25 years ago happened to be on
    the same TV show, and he and I agreed that there ought to be.
    The President is not very well served by the data that is
    relevant to what a President needs to deal with and that he
    ought to have that kind of a, ``war room,'' ``peace room,''
    whatever you want to call it. And under Franklin Roosevelt, it
    was there. The management group in the old era of the budget
    has just been decimated the last 20, 25 years. It has all
    become much more politicized. As I remember--I hope I am right
    on this--that it was an uncle of the President, Delano
    Roosevelt, that headed the national, sort of, physical planning
    operation under the Bureau of the Budget or within it--it was a
    national council--and that made, to me, a lot of sense when I
    was a student coming in 50 years ago, whatever, and we have
    lost all that, and I am very interested in what Mr. Kanjorski
    has asked us to do, that it makes a lot of sense to me, and it
    makes sense to anybody that is a practitioner, because you need
    those data just as the elected Members here want with examples
    of seeing how we can use those data in solving very
    controversial problems sometimes. But when you get the right
    data out on the wall, most people are pretty reasonable and
    say, ``Yes, that makes sense to me.''
        Let me ask you, generally, all of you as what are the
    privacy or intellectual property issues that act as a barrier
    for public and private sectors to share geographic information
    and form effective partnerships? What can you tell us about
    that? Let us start with Mr. Bills.
        Mr. Bills. Well, I think one of the, I guess, sort of,
    central limitations is the number of Government agencies who
    undertake in many cases quite extensive and expensive efforts
    to create partial data bases, have sought to recoup many of the
    costs associated with that, and, so, as a result, some of the
    costs are quite high in southern California. Los Angeles County
    and some of the other counties actually charge about $2 a
    parcel to local jurisdictions for that parcel data. If you are
    a city the size of Long Beach, for example, that is quite a
    substantial investment, and it really does inhibit the ability
    of local government to have access to what for most cities is
    really the central building block of their own GIS systems.
    And, so, again, that is where I think we need to sort of have
    pooling of resources so that we can actually share that data
    among a multiplicity of agencies. We want to make sure that the
    public is getting the most for its public dollars.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Sweet, any thoughts on this?
        Mr. Sweet. I think two very, very quickly. One is that most
    of the local government officials in our region have seen this
    as a gold mine--and they have used those words; that they now
    have this data----
        Mr. Horn. Get the microphone a little closer.
        Mr. Sweet. I am sorry. I think many of the local officials
    in our region have seen this is as a cost recovery mechanism,
    and now they are trying to sell data which you can go to the
    courthouse and get for free on paper, but, now, to put it on
    the web or to put it into some digital format seems to make a
    different kind of data, and it seems to make it something that
    they want to recover costs for.
        The other fear is that--and I think education can largely
    take care of this--is that information that is used in 911
    dispatching and other types of activities that the courthouses
    are obligated to provide will become mixed in and then flow out
    in an unrestrained process. And I think in our area, largely,
    education has been able to deal with those issues.
        Mr. Horn. Ms. Hall.
        Ms. Hall. In our area, we have elected officials that are
    very concerned about the whole privacy issue around this data,
    because when you build a parcel map, you have all information
    about that particular household. What we are doing is we are
    doing a partnership or we are looking at developing a
    partnership with the private sector that the citizens can
    benefit by having this through--same-day bank loan approval,
    title searches done on the same day--so we are showing that
    from a--I hate to use the word ``commercialization''--but to
    their benefit that their lifestyle, what their needs are will
    be enhanced by having that, and that is really the balancing
    act that we have been trying to address on this issue.
        Mr. Horn. Commissioner Reinhardt.
        Ms. Reinhardt. Well, Minnesota laws governing the data
    privacy and the intellectual property cost recovery were
    recently reviewed by the Information Policy Task Force and a
    report was presented to the 1999 legislature. There were
    several recommendations that were made in there, including many
    that were just plain common sense and others that were very
    controversial, specifically, those relating to cost recovery
    and indicating that the data that was being collected at great
    cost to the counties and to the local units of government had
    no commercial value, and, therefore, had to be simply provided
    for free. That is something that was not presented during this
    legislative session, but we are really going to deal with that
    issue of what is public free data and what can be charged for
    especially when you look at, again, the cost of collecting that
    data.
        Mr. Horn. Commissioner Cameron.
        Ms. Cameron. Mr. Chair, I would agree with my previous
    colleagues on this issue. It is something that we are still
    exploring. I would give you a couple of examples, one of them
    being, as we start to look at our watershed, we look at the
    private timber ownership areas, and there is certainly some
    concern by the private sector that this information might be
    used to show violations. We are trying to focus the energy and
    the information more on what will they be able to achieve and
    how can they better provide and get to the same results--better
    riparian areas--but it is in their interest, as well, as we do
    have some good partnership there, but it is a threat that
    sometimes if there is too much information out there, it may be
    used against them.
        The other privacy piece comes with any kind of situation
    where you are dealing with Government information when you have
    agencies that may know quite a bit, particularly when you deal
    with social service issues, that there has to be some walls
    there where some information is accessible for those people
    that are dealing with families, particularly specific around
    health or mental health issues, and it might be within the
    purview of the agency information, which is already in the
    purview of the agency, but to not let that information out to
    the general public, and those kinds of things are where the
    real discussions are happening.
        Our county tends to believe that it is very important to
    provide services to people in the community, and, therefore, it
    is a fine line between just keeping the costs of monitoring and
    the updating the system as well as trying to make sure that
    people have access to that information. So, it is still in the
    works for major discussion.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Ayers.
        Mr. Ayers. Sir, I would say that it is like peeling an
    onion back. The more we studied the spatial data needs, the
    more we found. We did make an observation that I think is
    worthy of consideration. When you are dealing with disaster or
    catastrophe information needs you start dealing with privacy,
    copyright, liability, and security issue a little bit
    differently than for the general utilization of data. For
    example, elderly people, homebound, are not particularly
    excited about that being general information, but they are very
    concerned that they be looked after during emergencies. So,
    there have been some very cogent observations about a national
    security network or a national disaster network which would be
    like an intranet that would be able to have more information
    than you have in a general system.
        The other observation I would make is that utility
    companies during disaster have been reluctant to share data
    because of the liability. I was speaking with the Wyoming
    Governor during this conference, and he made the observation
    that the Governors can in fact indemnify utility data during
    crises. Maybe this should be considered as a solution. The
    Academy report recommends that more study be undertaken.
        Mr. Horn. Let me just ask one more question, and then Mr.
    Kanjorski can have the rest of the afternoon. You have
    mentioned pilot programs, demonstration programs, and some of
    you said, ``Why don't we let the relevant Federal agency that
    knows more about this category.'' I would be interested in any
    thoughts that you have as to what kind of categories are needed
    to make sure that this system is relevant to the client,
    namely, you that are at this table who would have great need
    for it? Members might, executives might. Can you give me a
    little guidance on that? Mr. Bill.
        Mr. Bills. I guess I am a strong advocate of a project
    level approach; that is, that I think individual projects
    really determine the particular expertise that are required,
    and I think everyone that comes to the table with particular
    projects bring their own particular expertise so that I think
    in some cases, the Federal Government can play stronger roles
    and others perhaps a more subsidiary role to some of the local
    or regional agencies. But, again, I think it is very important
    that we do help facilitate across the country these types of
    partnerships. I think we have some wonderful examples today,
    and we really should be having this across the country, and I
    think there should be a much more aggressive involvement of the
    Federal agencies in these, but, as I stated in my comments, I
    think that we all gain from that. I think the Federal agencies
    can gain, because they will learn. I think we, on the local
    side, can also, and so----
        Mr. Horn. Now, do we have projects underway from Federal
    agencies that are represented on the committee that Secretary
    Babbitt Chairs? Are some of these occurring now within their
    current budgets?
        Mr. Bills. There are, I guess I would sort of urge strongly
    that there be an even stronger emphasis. I think that there are
    still enough examples in which Federal agencies have not been
    able to participate with the regional or local agencies for a
    variety of reasons. I think that really is the approach that we
    should take to make sure that we eliminate some of the
    redundancy in data collection, because data is very, very
    expensive, and I think, as was ably pointed out, it really has
    tremendous value to the community.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Sweet.
        Mr. Sweet. If I had a single pot of limited resources to
    invest in trying to address the problem, I would try to address
    the problem toward coordination and education. I think that the
    duplication that we are seeing oftentimes is in the best
    intention. We simply don't know that ``it'' is has already been
    done or ``it'' is about to be done. In the latter of that case,
    where we can be timely enough to determine that ``it'' is about
    to be done, can yield some very significant savings which then
    can be rechanneled into other types of projects that would be
    used to increase the impact of the coordination activity.
        Mr. Horn. Ms. Hall.
        Ms. Hall. I think from our perspective, our frustration is
    we don't know everything that is being done at the Federal
    level. We just know bits and pieces of what is being done, and
    it is not being done in a coordinated fashion, and it is not
    being communicated in any shape in terms of a clearinghouse.
    And then we see at our local level that even though the feds
    have a map, we have to rebuild that map so that it has the
    accuracy that we need, which is 1 to 2 feet as opposed to the
    Federal map whose accuracy is 35 to 40 feet. But the Federal
    agencies need our data, and they need our--I mean, we have IRS
    agents that sit in our registered deeds office, five of them,
    every single day, to do nothing but look up information on our
    parcel information. That is all they do, and if we had some
    cooperation where they would help fund our parcel map or help
    in terms of our partnership, they could be linked to directly
    at the IRS building instead of sitting in our offices. HUD is
    very interested in terms of--we have 70,000 vacant parcels in
    Wayne County, not just vacant, but parcels that have been
    turned over to the State of Michigan; 70,000 out of our
    900,000. HUD needs that information, and wants that information
    to redevelop those properties to put homeowners in it or to
    tear them down, because they are blighted. So, I think the
    whole concept of partnership from the local level on up through
    consensus is really the best approach.
        Mr. Horn. Commissioner Reinhardt.
        Ms. Reinhardt. Well, I agree. I think that there are
    certainly lead agencies across the Federal Government that can
    assist with the collaborative efforts that are taking place
    around the country. We need to know is there an inventory of
    what services are--what is taking place right now so that you
    know where you can go and tap into those services, and the
    Federal Government or the lead agency at the Federal level
    knows where they can get information from us to avoid
    duplication of efforts. And, I think strong support for the
    collaborative working together is really the key.
        Mr. Horn. Commissioner Cameron.
        Ms. Cameron. I would suggest that being one of the pilots
    that Secretary Babbitt Chairs that we were just awarded, we
    were excited. In fact, the opportunities of sharing information
    and trading information back and forth is phenomenal. We are
    actually going into a partnership right now with the Lackawanna
    Susquehanna partnership to work with us in Oregon to do some
    more work around the watersheds. It is a drop in the bucket,
    and it is a starting point, and we become very good at sharing
    best practices within a small cadre of pilots. We need to bring
    that beyond, and I think the Federal Government can play a
    wonderful role in helping us do that. You have got pilots in
    FEMA for Project Impact that realize there are other projects
    that are doing the other work, and you start to bring them
    together, and that is the role that you can play to help us.
        But probably one of the most frustrating pieces for local
    county government, if you really want to take this full scale,
    is those base or parcel maps. It is an investment. When I
    talked proudly about the $200,000 we are investing, that is at
    the expense of a vehicle reserve fund or our contingency fund,
    and those aren't easy locally. I think that it is incumbent
    upon us to provide good information for everybody in terms of
    maps, but I also think that the Federal Government can assist
    local government in helping us do that in a cost share way that
    makes sense. Currently, in Oregon, our Department of Revenue
    does cost share those base maps with us. We still have to come
    up with half money, and that is where it gets very difficult,
    but it is an investment, and so you have to shift money, and so
    it is a balance, and I guess, if you really want to take this
    full scale and you want to make this work throughout the
    community at the right standards that we can agree on and the
    right resolutions so it makes it all tie together, it is
    assisting in that very basic portion of those maps that
    counties need.
        Mr. Horn. The grant you received was what? About $250,000?
        Ms. Cameron. Actually, it was about $100,000.
        Mr. Horn. $100,000. Was a match required?
        Ms. Cameron. It is in-kind match, and that is the only way
    we can participate. If it is hard dollar match--and I can give
    you an example of an Army Corps of Engineers study we are doing
    right now that needs $700,000 for Tillamook County to do a
    model to help us deal with the flooding--we can't raise that
    kind of money through donations from our community or our
    budgets. So, the hard cash dollar match is something that puts
    us all in a very difficult situation.
        Mr. Horn. Well, you have given some good examples.
        Mr. Ayers.
        Mr. Ayers. I guess I would just make a point that it is a
    savior and a curse. In one way, when you have different
    Government agencies doing projects, the projects get very
    focused, and the data is collected only for the project, and it
    isn't considered as part of a national or a local general
    purpose data source, I think Mr. Sweet and the Honorable
    Cameron make that point. Now, I think that Secretary Babbitt
    and the FGDC and I believe that this National Council could put
    the emphasis that is needed to have projects collect data to
    national standards. It is going to be for integrating lots of
    activity as opposed to a single stovepipe projects.
        Mr. Horn. Good. Well, I am now going to yield the rest of
    the day to my colleague from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kanjorski, and I
    will relax.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I am
    sure we are not going to take the rest of the day.
        So many good issues were brought out here. Let me just
    refer back to something that you brought up--privacy. I went
    home this weekend to Pennsylvania and much to my chagrin, I
    discovered that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was
    negotiating to sell the private information off unemployment
    compensation forms, which would disclose 80 percent of the
    incomes, the dependents, and some of the most private
    information in terms of personal affairs of Pennsylvanians.
    About 80 percent were being sold outright. And, so I heard one
    of the panelists say, ``Well, there is some material that is
    available, so it should be free and other material is gathered
    and cost something,'' so there may be a return for proprietary
    interests in there, but I want to caution that some of this
    material is private, and no one really deserves it, and Ms.
    Hall scared me when she talked about the five IRS agents
    sitting in there, and if we gain the reputation that that is
    another forum that is big brother is in, we will be in great
    difficulty.
        In listening to the overall testimony, I would--and I think
    everybody agrees--that we need the national protection to
    examine privacy, and whatever those standards are they should
    apply at the national level, the State level, and the local
    level. Is that correct? There is no disagreement; that is just
    generally across the profession? I think the County
    Commissioner Cameron made a good point of the need for a
    clearinghouse. We are constantly reinventing the wheel.
        I happen to be more sensitive to these things in talking to
    my county commissioners, not only in my congressional district
    but across the State, and maybe I will use them as an example,
    so you won't be embarrassed, but I will say I am more in their
    camp than in others. I find GIS is starting to become ``a sexy
    issue'' for sort of being a techie, but nobody in elected
    office seems to know anything about it. When they are putting
    out a contract, they are trying to hire some consultant that
    will come in and tell them that they are going to cure all
    their wonders and do it well within a certain budgetary
    constraint, but the specifications of the contracts and what
    should be gotten and how it should be put together or what it
    should serve, the elected officials making the decisions are
    almost absent of that basic information. Do you find that to be
    correct up and down the line?
        Mr. Horn. The record will note the panel is nodding their
    heads. [Laughter.]
        Mr. Kanjorski. I can say Mr. Sweet came to my attention
    based in Pennsylvania on that very subject. We have this
    horrible problem of 2,500 communities in Pennsylvania and are
    always in the process of trying to get them organized in some
    way. In my congressional district, I have 176. Unfortunately, I
    don't have room large enough to meet with all my mayors and
    councilmen in the entire district, which shows you the problem
    in Pennsylvania. I would say probably 70 to 80 percent of these
    people have absolutely no idea as to how to go about writing
    the specifications for the GIS system. What Tom basically did
    was interact local communities, county governments, State
    programs, Federal programs to do a regional system, and it
    shows the interaction and multiple cooperation. That brought
    him to my attention. He has now assumed a role of being one of
    the six models of the Vice President's project across the
    country, and they will be now cooperating with Oregon and other
    States like that that are named that way.
        I think the Commissioner makes a good point, even though we
    have a forum like this where we bring 300 or 400 people to
    Washington where they find their way here and they talk, they
    are energizing, but the rest of the country out there really is
    not anywhere near the standard of knowledge or information that
    these folks before us have, and yet the ideas that have spun
    out over the last 3 days, Mr. Chairman, really make your mind
    boggle as to what the possibilities are; what can be done; what
    correlation and, therefore, identified possible causal
    relations can be identified? What profiles can be established
    to indicate either problems with salmon or forests or the need
    for education or the county commissioner has discovered how to
    prevent child pregnancy? I do not mean to be facetious in that
    way, but just by identifying the numbers, she was able to get
    the community involved to understand they had a problem that
    they had to address and what simpler way to do that?
        That would give us approximately 10 more minutes before we
    have to go and vote, I suspect. So, I am going to ask the
    members of the panel to make whatever observations you wish in
    terms of about a minute apiece, if you can, in what did you
    gain from this forum? Where is GIS? What would you like the
    Congress to do if you had your wish? What should we do to
    participate, to help facilitate, to help partnership, and to
    help open the doors? Whatever you individually have concluded
    after your use or study of this?
        Mr. Bills. Again, I--with danger of flogging my horse
    here--I think whatever we can do to encourage partnerships
    between levels of government I think is quite critical, and I
    think that that really is one of the most critical roles that
    this committee could play to ensure that the various Federal
    agencies and States and regional and local agencies do come
    together so that we can most effectively take advantage of the
    technology. Another point, really, is that we do need to have
    advanced mechanisms so that we know when other agencies are
    going to be preparing data so that we don't engage in
    duplications. So, how can we know if, for example, USGS is
    going to undertake a study in 6 months and that they will
    actually be doing digital orthos for a particular area? So,
    ways in which we can communicate this information within the
    communities so that we can avoid this duplication, I think is--
    well, it is, actually--we currently have spatial data catalogs,
    so we already know--we have ways of knowing what data has
    already been produced, but we don't have good mechanisms as to
    knowing what data will be produced in a particular time period,
    and I think that that would also serve to help reduce some of
    the duplication.
        Mr. Horn. When Mr. Kanjorski finishes his questioning, he
    has to vote. I am going to vote to keep this thing going, so
    this panel will be through when he finishes his line of
    questioning, and then the third panel we will bring up next.
    So, I will try to be back in 10 minutes.
        Mr. Sweet. I am excited I think, first and foremost, what I
    would do is applaud your efforts. We now have GIS moving from
    obscurity to the forefront in being recognized as something
    that is going to have a significant impact in the way we manage
    our Government and the way we compete in the 21st century, and
    I hope that we can keep that in the forefront and not let it
    fly back into obscurity. On the other side, I think that the
    key to the success that we had in organizing nine counties, a
    dozen different boroughs and municipalities was that we were
    able to guarantee their independence while still getting them
    to work toward regional cooperation, and I think the guarantee
    of independence is what continued to bring them back to the
    table. I also think that the guarantee of independence at the
    local level was a significant if not the most significant fact
    in our ability to leverage the Federal investment dollars on a
    10 to 1 ratio. That effectively enables you to fight your match
    problems. When you need it, projects with--when you need hard
    match, you can get it more readily when they think they are
    investing in their future, their own future, not somebody
    else's idea of what they should be doing, and those are the two
    things that I would concentrate on.
        Ms. Hall. I am going to take a different stand. I think one
    of the things that this committee and you, as Members of
    Congress, could help do is educate your colleagues, because
    they know the value of GIS and what it does for them and their
    constituents, then they are out being the cheerleaders for
    this. I mean, right now, it is just a small group of people,
    and there are some elected officials that know the value of it.
    But it is how do you communicate that on a continuous basis,
    because the synergy that you develop from that and the
    excitement and then the support you get maybe from the
    Transportation Committee and in the Judiciary Committee and of
    course the Appropriations Committee, and that brings the value
    to all of us in what we do in the different aspects of
    governmental services that we provide. So that is one.
        And, two, I still want to go back to somehow of a
    clearinghouse or a way that we at the local units know what the
    Federal Government is doing in terms of GIs. There are some
    that may know that, and I am not a technocrat; I am a higher
    level administrator, so I am not aware of it. If there is an
    easy way to get that information out to elected officials, I
    think that is important.
        Ms. Reinhardt. Yes, and I agree with that, as well. I think
    the most important thing that needs to take place is the
    definition of what the benefits are, and it is not just at your
    level but also at the local level. When I go to my peers on
    county boards in Minnesota, when I talk about GIS, I, first of
    all, have to say exactly what GIS means and then talk about the
    benefits that can be accrued to them by participating in the
    data sharing and what it really means to them in their
    programs; what it means as far as health, and tracking--we had
    a recent case where there was mosquito-borne encephalitis, and
    we were able, within hours, to track down exactly where the
    problem was and to isolate and to talk to the people in that
    neighborhood so that they knew what was going on. That would
    have taken a week prior to metro GIS being in place. So, we
    need to make sure that people understand those benefits. When
    you get that understanding, then you can go after and be, I
    guess, more successful at forming the partnerships, at getting
    the financing in place, I touched on briefly the idea of the
    bridge financing, and I think that that would be critical from
    the Federal level. If you can get us started, you can get us
    established so that we can then show people what the benefits
    are, it will take off on its own. It will be a benefit all the
    way across the board, from cities, counties, State, Federal
    Government, and the private sector, as well.
        Ms. Cameron. I would like to agree with everything that is
    said, because there is no point in repeating that, but what I
    would say is when you talk about that match piece, the costs
    are fairly fixed, but the communities' ability to respond to
    those costs are not fixed, so there needs to be some way to
    look at how does a community, such as ours, one with the same
    kind of model as Napa Valley, CA, meet that match that has just
    become such a barrier. So, I would suggest any work that is
    being done in dollars, deal with that match.
        And the last piece that I would suggest is that I heard
    some discussion about the appointment of a council, and I would
    highly recommend that. I think that is a very good approach to
    getting a sense of where to go from here, and that is involving
    local communities on that council, whether it be cities,
    special districts, counties, and the Federal Government as well
    as State and our private interests, as well, because I think
    that will help us delineate which strategy to pick first and
    get the support around that.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Ms. Cameron are you suggesting that having
    to come up with $750,000 for a Corps of Engineers study may be
    impossible whereas the same type of study and the same type
    cost for Napa Valley or Los Angeles is minuscule? Would you be
    in favor of the Congress looking at something like a graduated
    local share contribution?
        Ms. Cameron. Absolutely.
        Mr. Kanjorski Maybe taking unemployment income tax base
    into consideration?
        Ms. Cameron. Absolutely, and I would give weight to in-
    kind, because there is a lot of things communities can generate
    on an in-kind basis that we cannot generate in hard match, and
    when I talk about that $700,000, that is over a 3-year period
    of what we would have to pay on a $3 million project to do the
    hydrodynamic flood model to help us mitigate the damage of the
    flood.
        Mr. Kanjorski. I think that is a decided disadvantage to
    small communities and less dense areas of the country. I also
    notice, throughout the rural areas of Pennsylvania, it is the
    same problem.
        Ms. Cameron. Right.
        Mr. Ayers. I would just add one thing: I think the council,
    the idea of a national council and the area that you really
    didn't talk about is the private sector. I have seen where
    utility companies have joined in partnerships--PG&E in
    Baltimore, Commonwealth Edison in New York--in these regional
    studies and are quite willing to participate with money and
    efforts, and I would also say that many of the vendors are
    putting out pilot projects to get people started in using
    digital spatial data at no cost to get local governments to
    understand the benefits. So, I think the idea of a national
    council where the private sector is at the table is going to
    bring a lot of assets that you hadn't thought about before.
        Mr. Kanjorski. This is an interesting technology that it
    has so much private involvement at this point. Usually, the
    Government goes out and manufacturers something or starts
    something or creates something that takes many more years
    before--it seems to have a tremendous amount of private sector
    involvement at this time and helpfully--we live by these damn
    things.
        Rather than try and squeeze any more questions, I am going
    to head over, and I just wanted to say, again, thank all of you
    on the panel for coming forward. I think you are doing a great
    service for this whole idea and this whole technology, and even
    though a lot of colleagues are not present today, do not be
    surprised, because they never are. These subcommittee hearings
    are usually one or two people, and, very often, just the
    chairman, if I may say. He has indefatigable abilities to spend
    time in doing issues like this, but a lot of this material does
    get read. It gets highlighted, and the staff people turn it
    over, and the thought process is started. I would say you have
    made an invasion in the Washington city, and that is good. Now,
    you can help me, and you can help my other colleagues that will
    become interested in this in asking at least the questions.
    Just keep calling and say, ``Do you remember, Congressman, did
    you take care of that GIS yet?'' He will think it is a disease
    or something. [Laughter.]
        I will prep the attending position, and then he will reform
    over to us, and we will have him caught. So, you can be very
    helpful that way, and I know so many people who are with the
    conference are here. It is just great to see you here.
        With that, I am going to recess the Chair subject to the
    return of the chairman so I can go and vote. Thank you.
        [Recess.]
        Mr. Horn. The Subcommittee on Government Management,
    Information, and Technology will reassemble, and we will swear
    in the third panel.
        Panel three come forward. It is Mr. Jack Dangermond,
    president, Environmental Systems Research; Mr. Jerry Miller,
    senior vice president, chief information officer, Sears Roebuck
    & Co.; Mr. Bruce Cahan, president, Urban Logic, Inc., and Mr.
    Jack Pellicci, vice president, Global Public Sector, Oracle,
    based in Reston. And I have a feeling that I might have
    murdered your name, so correct me.
        Mr. Pellicci. Pellicci.
        Mr. Horn. Pellicci, yes. You can see I didn't learn
    phonetics very well.
        All right. I think you have been here, so you see what
    other panels have done. When we introduce you, your full
    statement is automatically in the record, and we are going to
    swear you in, because we swear all witnesses in.
        So, if you would stand and raise your right hands, we will
    do that.
        [Witnesses sworn.]
        Mr. Horn. The clerk will note all four witnesses affirmed
    the oath.
        And we will start just on the way it is on my agenda, which
    begins with Mr. Jack Dangermond, president, Environmental
    Systems Research Institute, Inc. We are glad to see you here.

    STATEMENTS OF JACK DANGERMOND, PRESIDENT, ENVIRONMENTAL SYSTEMS
     RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.; JERRY MILLER, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT
       AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, SEARS ROEBUCK & CO.; BRUCE
     CAHAN, PRESIDENT, URBAN LOGIC, INC.; AND JACK PELLICCI, VICE
                PRESIDENT, GLOBAL PUBLIC SECTOR, ORACLE

        Mr. Dangermond. Chairman Horn, thank you very much, and I
    appreciate the chance to talk with you for a few moments. I
    also want to thank you and your committee members for
    recognizing the importance of GIS and geography in governing.
        I have a few comments, the first of which will be on the
    industrial applications of GIS and the GIS industry in general,
    and then a few comments on the compelling reasons in public
    sector and also in the university research community of why
    this is an important technology, and then I will conclude with
    a few comments about notions of Federal policy that I would
    like you to consider.
        I am head of an organization that is about 30 years old. We
    build software. We have about 100,000 users. We are a small
    company relative to the software world; we are about $300
    million, but that business drives about $10 billion of value
    added data software, hardware, application work, et cetera.
        My comments that I want to make first are about the GIS
    industry. This is a growing industry, about 20 percent a year,
    and in that sense it is an American industry--almost 95 percent
    of it is American-based technology--and it drives not only
    these roughly $10 billion of expenditures around the world each
    year, tools, and value added business, but it also has an
    enormous impact on business and also the public sector, and it
    is starting to show evidence of having an impact on the
    university and the research education community.
        There is about 2,000 maybe 2,500 businesses in America, and
    they are located in almost every State that engage activity in
    what we would call GIS business. There is also about 2,000
    community colleges and universities who are preparing America's
    work force for the use of GIS or the embedding of GIS in their
    work practices, and so it is a vital, growing effort.
        Mr. Horn. Amazing figure, because there is about 3,000
    institutions, and you are saying two-thirds are really involved
    in this?
        Mr. Dangermond. Yes.
        Mr. Horn. Well, that is good news.
        Mr. Dangermond. It is really good news.
        Mr. Horn. Then we just have to deal with the other 1,000.
        Mr. Dangermond. Yes.
        Mr. Horn. Interesting. Go ahead.
        Mr. Dangermond. Or not.
        The compelling reasons for the use of GIS in the public
    sector have been already articulated by my colleagues that
    presented earlier, but, generally speaking, they result in
    better decisionmaking, sometimes better policy, certainly
    better communication between the public sector and the
    community that they serve in the form of a visual language, and
    I like that idea, the idea that Government can be linked with
    the public they serve through this visual language called maps
    and geography.
        I have come to the conclusion that GIS is a kind of social
    capital much like highway infrastructure, and I think it is
    useful to consider it in that context when we talk about
    building and investing it. It is a kind of social capital that
    actually all levels of government develop and work with and
    use, and this social capital is interesting because it is so
    shareable and has the implication of coordinating different
    levels of government in their work but also overlapping
    government on the private sector and also on the university
    research and education community to get sort of three for one
    but actually thousands for one investment in the data. In other
    words, it can be highly leveraged, and that, perhaps, is why
    there is such an enthusiastic following in the use of these
    tools and kind of visioning of what it might mean for our
    society. We will certainly have a great role to play in the
    global society, and it will show up quite strongly as the
    information society emerges.
        In the private sector, I would like to make a couple of
    comments. My colleagues in the other firms will also reinforce
    some of these notions, I am sure. Currently, about half of the
    software that is being acquired in this field is by the private
    firms--oil companies, forestry companies, transportation
    companies--for improving their operations and also improving
    their decisions. They are able to cite locations of public and
    private facilities; they have made massive improvements in
    delivery systems, supply chain automation across geography;
    improved marketing so that the right products are being
    delivered to the right audiences; facility planning, natural
    resource management, and so on and a new one in agriculture--
    this is very valuable.
        American business is becoming more competitive, one might
    say, because of the investments not only in the technology but
    also in these data sets, and the linkage between Federal data
    and many of these businesses in agriculture and transportation
    will be better articulated by some of my colleagues, but they
    are showing up as resulting in, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent
    greater efficiency that brings money back to the Federal
    Government and better tax rates or more tax collections, but it
    also improves much of the other public agenda items, like less
    transportation problems and so on, because of the adoption of
    these tools in the private sector.
        Finally, I would like to conclude with a couple of comments
    about suggestions for a Federal program. Obviously, Federal
    mapping programs matter for the organizations and the
    institutions that build this infrastructure, at least at the
    Federal level. In evidence of them being cut back or problems
    with them or in the public press in Kosovo, that is a public
    one that the same kind of disasters or lack of investment in
    this infrastructure are showing up in lots of other ways; we
    are just not conscious of that.
        So, my first point is, please, as the Napa study suggested,
    continue to invest in this investment; it has profound effects.
    Second, this should be a multi-department and multi-use and
    multi-mission coordinated effort, not simply one application.
    Third, there should be changing in the mapping programs'
    philosophies from mapping to data bases which are continually
    updated and used and shared. Fourth, Federal data must be
    continuing to be freely available, because it is a backbone
    for--this social capital is not only a backbone for other
    levels of government but also for the private sector and the
    university community. Fifth, we have invested roughly $1
    million or $1.5 million through NSF in the last few years, for
    the last 15 years, as we have witnessed the growth of this
    industry from $50 billion to $10 billion. It is a pittance, a
    million or two a year. We need to increase the academic
    research funding maybe to $50 million or $100 million a year.
    Imagine the results that would happen, not only in the public
    sector but also in the private sector. This I encourage you to
    consider, and the support of the cooperative programs, like we
    have already heard, brings real results, and that should be
    done in a deliberate way supporting initially demonstration
    projects leading to more infrastructure development as it
    evolves.
        Thank you, Chairman Horn.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Dangermond follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you. I appreciate your perspective on
    this.
        Mr. Miller, the senior vice president, chief information
    officer, Sears Roebuck & Co.
        Mr. Miller. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I would like to say
    that I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this very
    beneficial technology.
        Sears Roebuck & Co. is not a GIS company. We are a
    retailer, but not unlike most companies in this country, we do
    have objectives to reduce costs and improve customer service,
    and when you find a technology that enables you to do both
    simultaneously, you have a real win. And that is what we have
    found with this technology, and I am going to reserve my
    comments to address what Sears Roebuck has done with this
    technology.
        We used it primarily to address our home delivery. We do
    sell quite a few appliances in this country, and most of those
    are delivered to the home--about 20,000 to 25,000 a day--and
    several years ago, we set out to try to not only reduce our
    costs in that endeavor but also improve our customer service
    ratings. At the time, we had about 43 different distribution
    centers that we used to deliver this merchandise to our
    customers, and we had not the best customer satisfaction in
    terms of our ability to deliver on time. With the use of this
    technology over the last couple of years, we have been able to
    reduce the number of distribution centers from 43 to 14, and we
    have been able to increase our customer ratings significantly.
    In fact, they continue to go up, and they are at an all-time
    high.
        With the use of this technology, we have been able to
    increase the number of stops per vehicle, per truck. We have
    been able to route these trucks more efficiently. We have been
    able to decrease the number of miles per stop, and, as I
    mentioned, we have been able to significantly increase our
    customer satisfaction. Where before we were delivering--at
    least we were trying to deliver--within a 4-hour window, we are
    now delivering 95 percent of the time within a 2-hour window in
    82 percent of the markets that we service. The fact that we
    were able to reduce our distribution centers from 43 to 14
    enabled us to save tens of millions of dollars. Of course, that
    obviously increased our profit picture. It also enabled us to
    pay a little more in taxes back to our Government.
        In addition to the application of increasing our
    performance in home delivery, we have also used the technology
    in our warehouse to improve the productivity of our warehouse.
    If you can imagine taking off the top of a warehouse and
    looking down from above, what you would see is not unlike the
    grids of a community, and we use the aisles as streets and the
    locations of inventory as addresses, and, again, we use the
    technology to increase our productivity of our picking in these
    warehouses. Sears is a large company. If we can increase the
    number of picks per person by one, we save $500,000 a year, and
    we have been able to increase the number of picks
    significantly, because we have been able to route the forklifts
    better in the warehouse. In our business, an empty forklift is
    bad business. The idea is to try to maximize the use of your
    forklifts, and with this technology we have been able to do
    that.
        I do feel a little humbled after listening to a number of
    the people here talking about some of the very significant uses
    of this technology in terms of applications to prevent teen
    pregnancy and improve the water and whatnot. In fact, all we
    were trying to do is get Mrs. Jones' refrigerator to her on
    time. [Laughter.]
        But it is a very significant technology, and we are very
    happy that we have found it, and, again, appreciate the
    opportunity to talk about it.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Miller follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Well, thank you. That 2 hours is impressive, I
    must say. I was wondering, had you put the Mayfair on top of
    the----
        Mr. Miller. The Maytag repairman? [Laughter.]
        Mr. Horn. Maytag, whatever it is.
        Mr. Miller. No, he really doesn't do a whole lot as the ad
    says.
        Mr. Horn. OK, we will give them equal time someday, too.
    [Laughter.]
        Go ahead, Mr. Cahan, the president of the Urban Logic, Inc.
    Tell us a little bit about that.
        Mr. Cahan. Sure. Urban Logic was started when I was living
    in a building in New York that was the subject of an explosion
    of a steam pipe in 1989. That steam pipe was wrapped in 220
    pounds of asbestos. It showered a historic neighborhood just
    north of Greenwich Village with that asbestos. As a result of
    that experience, I wondered, ``Well, who knows what is down
    underneath the city.'' I thought I would bring you this, the
    World's Fair 1939 edition of Fortune magazine. In it you will
    see an article describing ``Under The Asphalt of New York.'' If
    I could just read from that 1939 edition, it says, ``New York
    is a maze of pipes, conduits, tunnels, sub-basements, swamps,
    and vaults. The guts, nerves, and arteries of a great human
    organism for which there exists no map.'' It is still true.
        Mr. Horn. That is amazing. What is that copy worth in the
    rare book market? [Laughter.]
        Mr. Cahan. I will pass it around after the hearing.
        I thought I would highlight my testimony instead of read
    it, Mr. Chairman.
        First of all, you had a thought that it would be a good
    idea if Congress had their own geographer, and I was told
    yesterday at the Geodata Forum that in the 1830's and 1840's,
    it did and that his name was David Burr. I think the same
    function existed back then as you might be suggesting.
        Mr. Horn. Was that with the Library of Congress?
        Mr. Cahan. Yes. That was actually suggested to me by a
    cartographer of the Library.
        Second, although it doesn't, perhaps, in scale reflect what
    Tillamook County is investing, New York City, to my knowledge,
    is investing a minimum of $5 million for parcel maps. So, we
    are talking large sums of money that are being invested as a
    foundation for the future now. So, you must act now to
    capitalize on those investments. I would impress the urgency of
    that facet. And that $5 million doesn't include applications;
    it is just to capture the digital data.
        If I could turn to some recommendations. Certainly, the
    regional development of spatial data makes the most sense for
    local, regional, because with that high velocity of use, reuse
    and cleaning of this data--which is what you have heard in the
    prior panels--you are getting a lot of value added. It is the
    constant use of this data that creates its new value. We would
    recommend that since Federal agencies have mandates for data
    collection--you should think about the fact that you already
    have hundreds, probably thousands--we are trying to inventory
    them for you and staff--of data mandates--some of which can be
    performed using spatial data and are being performed using
    spatial data. So, we are talking about aligning investment
    patterns as much as new mandates. We are talking about how to
    satisfy your existing set of Federal requirements as a customer
    from locally-generated data.
        Five capacities, I would suggest, would help, and they
    would need national support: developing Internet portals for
    citizen participation, so they can truly gain access to these
    tools without having to go through the learning curve that we
    all had to go through; finance strategies such that Federal
    dollars are pooled--such as the C/FIP represents--so that you
    can actually see that 1 to 10 leverage; system quality
    standards and system quality strategies through the whole arena
    of development of this data and use of this data--public,
    private, and non-profit. A lot of the community service
    organizations use this data to treat and administer health and
    human services programs; procurement strategies at the local
    level that don't distinguish between buying a stapler and
    buying technology and working through those procurement
    channels.
        And then some legal strategies--Mr. Ayers talked about
    that; others have. We need to look at common privacy,
    copyright, liability, security. Again, if it helps the
    subcommittee, this is from the President's Commission on
    Crucial Infrastructure Protection--and now I think the Crucial
    Infrastructure Assurance Office of the President--and they have
    looked at the issue, not only of how to protect against misuse
    of this kind of information, they are also looking at how this
    information helps to contain and remediate other threats to our
    urban environment. That it is implicit in the responsibility we
    have for dealing with this technology.
        Finally, I would ask that we study the economics at work at
    play in this technology and the aligning of investment patterns
    that I have urged you to consider. Those economics are
    different in every State. Each State has a different freedom of
    information law; it has a different political climate for those
    economics and data recapture charges for data collection. You
    might want to come up with model licensing and model approaches
    that reflect your own policies here in Washington.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Cahan follows:]

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        Mr. Horn. Thank you very much.
        Our last witness on this panel is Mr. Jack Pellicci, the
    vice president of Global Public Sector for Oracle, based in
    Reston, VA.
        Mr. Pellicci. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman
    Kanjorski, for this opportunity to share Oracle's views with
    you on this very important topic.
        GIS data, GS spatial data, and, as we call it, spatial
    data, must be readily available to citizens, to governments,
    industry, and academia in order for us to, at the national
    level, the local level, and globally contribute to economic
    growth, the overall competitiveness of the Nation, and then the
    quality of life in our communities.
        A little bit about Oracle--Oracle is the world's second
    largest software company. We are the largest data base company
    with about 45,000 employees in about 145 countries with over $9
    billion in revenues. Over 55 percent of the world's relational
    data is in Oracle data bases. We invest about $1 billion a year
    in R&D, and over the past several years, we have been investing
    significantly in managing spatial data seamlessly with other
    types of data.
        Now, it is estimated that 80 percent of the information in
    the world has a spatial component, and a critical success
    factor in managing the spatial component of that information is
    that it must be done the same way as the other data types, such
    as relational data, image, audio, and even video in order for
    it to be user-friendly, to be more easily accessible, and to be
    more cost-effective.
        We like to say our job is to ensure that spatial is not
    special. Data formatting standards are important but so are
    information management standards which allow the integration of
    that data with other data types for processing, manipulation,
    and distribution. Oracle has been a pioneer in the standards
    for relational data bases, and today we are supporting the
    development of interoperability standards in geospatial and GIS
    as part of the Open GIS Consortium, which is made up of both
    industry and Government representatives, and we are also active
    in a number of other forums which promote ease of access and
    ease of processing all types of data.
        Now, many of the initiatives you are being asked to support
    will improve the access to and the delivery of community
    services for citizens. What I like to call spatially enabled
    communities are critical to our national competitiveness, and
    Oracle strongly supports the adoption of the interagency
    proposal to advance the national spatial data infrastructure.
        Oracle believes that the Internet changes everything. We
    are in a new era with a new economy emerging quickly. Spatial
    data has to be available on the web and over the Internet. Much
    work is being done in this area today, and the web integration
    test bed at the Open GIS Consortium is putting a lot of
    attention on this aspect of providing access through a web
    browser. As we standardize the data, we must also extend the
    data architectures. It is not just about data formatting; it is
    not just about data standards; it is about the architectures
    that support the users, and that architecture must be a self-
    service architecture.
        Over the last several years, I have been working to support
    as an advisor for the National Performance Review and the
    National Partnership on Reinventing Government, and I have told
    Vice President Gore, who we have worked with and talked to,
    that it can no longer be about service to the citizen; it is
    about service by the citizen. It is about empowering citizens
    to do it themselves. In this age of declining budgets, in this
    age of streamlining, when you have got people who want to do
    it, empower them to do it. And the new metric is now citizen or
    customer self-satisfaction, not just citizen satisfaction;
    grading ourselves on how well we allow citizens and customers
    to do it themselves. So, with the half-life of technology
    approaching 3 weeks and time being measured in Internet years,
    which are 3 months, hopefully, this committee will push for
    rapid adoption of the FGDC initiative.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Horn. Thank you very much.
        One of the things that we have heard today is many groups
    seem to be promoting the idea of making greater use of
    partnerships to work on common problems and issues. What will
    it take from your perspective, the perspective of everybody on
    this panel, to make such partnerships work between the public
    and the private sector? Mr. Dangermond, any thoughts on that?
        Mr. Dangermond. The first thing that occurs to me is that
    the partnership between the Federal Government and Sears is
    rather intriguing. It is an unconscious relationship. These
    tens of millions of dollars that Mr. Miller talked about saving
    a year result in actually tens of millions of dollars of new
    tax money coming back to the Federal Government to help pay for
    and subsidize the investments that they made in the development
    of the Street Centerline File for America, the first and,
    perhaps, best-known geographic infrastructure investment that
    we have made as a public investment. This is a partnership; it
    is a financial partnership. It is one that actually works. It
    is not one that is directed by Congress, but it is amazing, and
    it rides on the fundamental policy that Government data is free
    so that we don't look at the little economics of charging
    toward disks or simple copies of data but we look at the big
    economic implications of developing a spatially literate
    society that is economically more efficient and saves money and
    time. What Mr. Miller did not mention is that by saving 15
    percent of the traffic drive time, which was off the bottom
    line, he also cuts traffic in cities by 15 percent; he cuts
    economic expenditures by our society in energy by 15 percent;
    he also cuts air pollution by 15 percent, and so on. This kind
    of an intriguing connection of partnership, perhaps not what
    you asked for, Mr. Horn, but it is one that I really buy into
    that almost volunteering partnerships, there are countless
    numbers of them like this that have emerged.
        In a more proactive way, what can we actually--what can you
    actually do to direct partnerships? I like to use the metaphor
    of footprints. Footprints are very important, and when I talked
    about the idea of funding some small demonstration projects
    that show the value case or the benefit case as the Vice
    President is doing through this Federal and local government,
    and as you heard the previous panel talk about, I think these
    are extremely important, because if the value case is there, it
    will take off like fire, and, by the way, it is. It is
    happening in the public sector and also in the private sector
    where the--it is almost like a group of volunteers who have a
    common interest. So, you need to just catalyze it by throwing a
    few seeds out there, the true--what is this on the back of a
    rudder--Trimtab. Throw a little Trimtab and the rudder moves a
    big steamship moves. These Trimtabs of partnerships and
    demonstration projects have phenomenal interest.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Miller.
        Mr. Miller. I never really thought that Sears Roebuck had a
    partnership with the Federal Government, but I suppose we do.
        Mr. Horn. We are your friendly Government. We are here to
    help.
        Mr. Miller. Yes, you are. I guess the only comment that I
    would have is that whatever the Federal Government has to do to
    continue to embrace this technology and support the development
    of it, work on developing standards with this technology and
    keeping the costs down. Obviously, Sears is a very large
    company, and we, perhaps, can afford to do some things that
    other companies cannot. I supposed if this technology was more
    expensive, a number of companies would not be able to utilize
    it; in fact, we may not even have elected to use it. So,
    anything that the Federal Government can do to keep the costs
    down would be something that we would certainly support.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Cahan.
        Mr. Cahan. Mr. Chairman, you asked what makes partnerships
    work? And, if I could, I would refer you to some charts on
    pages 17, 18, and 19 of my written testimony. Basically, the
    first chart--if I can hold it up for you--I apologize for
    this--talks about the 17 flavors of data is takes to run the
    city of New York--based on a study the city started and we
    completed. Yet it would appear that the agencies--and this was
    30 city agencies and some utilities--go every day to 150
    different places to get the 17 different flavors of data it
    takes--data they need--data that is very embedded in the
    Framework that has been proposed by FGDC. You have got streets
    data and buildings data and services districts and people/
    demographics data, ultimately.
        There is a curious thing about this chart. First, a third
    of this supply chart for data in New York comes from five key
    agencies--environmental, city planning, transportation,
    buildings, finance--the tax group, as citizens know--and then
    there is this very long tail, and that means that the tail says
    this is like ``data soup.'' It is like an herb that you have to
    throw into your data mix when you are trying to make sure you
    covered all your bases from liability or a policymaking point
    of view; that I have gone out and I have recaptured what has
    changed about these very small sets of data.
        And then we found that there are a couple of drivers: the
    data is not smart enough to ask for itself. Applications are
    driving, functions are driving this appetite for data, and the
    main function, it turned out, was to explain to somebody else,
    for you to explain to your constituents--a business to explain
    to you--what the context for those decisions that you are
    making--that they are making--is all about.
        So, I think if you consider our evidence from the New York
    study, you will realize that standards have a role as
    underwriting or investment criteria in aligning multi-sectoral
    investments in spatial data.
        Just one example that may crystalize for you why it matters
    in Washington if New York gets its GIS house in order or any
    other city. Assume that you send us some transportation money
    very often and that our subways are built with your money. A
    majority of the capital costs is from you. Well, 1 percent of
    those budgets goes to planning, and that planning is all about
    using GIS, and if we don't have the right data to do that plan,
    then the project is delayed. You can't put two people on the
    express and local track flagging down traffic the same day. So,
    then the cost spirals and the cost goes up, and they come back
    here to you, and, ultimately, some part of the cost for missing
    data or the poor data that didn't show up that day comes out of
    the Federal Treasury. I can't tell you how much, but it is
    implicit, and so you do have a great stake in using local data,
    both for the benefit of the local community as well as the
    fiscally responsible functions that I think you perform.
        Mr. Horn. Mr. Pellicci.
        Mr. Pellicci. Yes. Oracle's largest customer in the world
    is the U.S. Federal Government, and I would like to think that
    we do have a very strong strategic partnership, a public-
    private partnership with the Federal Government, and I have
    been with Oracle 8 years and for 30 years before that, I was a
    senior leader in DOD, and from both sides, now, I have worked
    very hard at what is a very difficult thing and that is to make
    public-private partnerships work. They are like marriage; they
    are very tough. You have got to work at them continuously, and
    I would say that one of the largest factors is the overall
    element of trust, confidence that each element has in one
    another, a shared interest, the understanding of what is trying
    to be done, and there needs to be incentives for both sides,
    and, above all, there has to be metrics placed on these public-
    private partnerships, so somebody is measuring them and there
    is feedback as to whether or not they are working.
        The most overused words in some of the vocabularies I see
    are ``strategic partnership,'' and they use if kind of
    nonchalantly, and it cannot be used nonchalantly, and the forum
    in which these partnerships occur are direct public-private
    partnerships like Oracle dealing with the Government or U.S.
    DOD or with IRS or whoever, but also there are other elements
    of partnership where we are dealing with NGO's, non-
    governmental organizations, whether it is Oracle and counties
    and States working through NAACO or Oracle and Intergraph and
    other companies working through OGC, the Open GIS Consortium.
    So, in achieving the goals and objectives that we are trying to
    do here with the GIS and geospatial data, public-private
    partnerships are absolutely essential.
        Mr. Horn. In their testimony, the representative of the
    National Academy of Public Administration recommended a series
    of studies to be conducted to identify the best practices for
    effective data sharing, licensing, pricing relationships among
    public and private data producers. Now, do you agree that such
    an effort would be worthwhile? Or would--Mr. Pellicci, that be
    in line with what Oracle would be interested in?
        Mr. Pellicci. Yes, sir. I think best practices are
    certainly things that we are very familiar with. On a global
    basis, we try to find the best practices, whether it is in the
    GIS arena, geospatial arena, or any other data management arena
    and then share those best practices within the company to the
    benefit of our customers around the world. But I think best
    practices allow us to deliver better, faster, and cheaper and
    do it in a way that makes a lot of sense.
        Mr. Horn. In addition, the National Academy of Public
    Administration recommended that reconciling different laws,
    policies, and regulations might impede effective data sharing.
    Do you see this as necessary or is there a worry there in any
    way?
        Mr. Cahan. If I could respond, Mr. Chairman?
        Mr. Horn. Sure, Mr. Cahan.
        Mr. Cahan. Yes, in a study that we are finishing, that the
    FGDC was good enough to fund, we list some of those
    inconsistencies in the law, and there are different derivations
    of Federal activity, some of which are very good.
        Mr. Horn. Is this data sharing between Federal agencies?
        Mr. Cahan. You have got the Paperwork Reduction Act; you
    have the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act; you have Government
    Performance Review Act; you have Clinger-Cohen; you have all
    these acts. When you look at the ubiquity of GIS, you have a
    special challenge to channel all of that efficiency activity in
    the right way so that it can reinforce the building of data at
    the local level and the Federal agencies' ability to partner as
    real meaningful partners in that local activity. So, yes, it
    would help.
        Mr. Horn. Yes. I brought up the privacy question in another
    panel, and in going over to vote, two of our most senior
    statesmen around here--one Republican, one Democrat; their
    names will go nameless to protect the innocent or the guilty as
    the case may be--and they got on privacy, on another subject.
    Maybe this is privacy day on the Hill, I don't know, but they
    got onto that, and they were sort of outraged that data would
    be available to someone beyond, say, your house, and I
    mentioned what my colleague from Pennsylvania had mentioned on
    the sale of unemployment compensation data. So, I just wonder
    if you have any thoughts on the privacy thing?
        We have a bill up in the Senate today in markup which
    started out really in hospital privacy. This subcommittee has
    jurisdiction on the Government reform side, and we held
    extensive hearings, oh, 6 years ago--Mr. Condit's bill--and
    then we haven't really done much since, although we had Mr.
    Leahy before us, and he has a bill over there, and you have the
    Bennett bill and you a whole series of the Jeffords bill.
        So, privacy is something that, obviously, politicians get
    very exercised over, because the clientele gets very exercised
    over it, and we have had some horrible cases of people's files
    being gone into, mayors' files, Congress Members' files,
    Senators' files; it ends up in the newspaper. There is no
    privacy, apparently, for public officials, but you have got a
    disgruntled employee you fire in a doctor's office and they
    just--there is a xerox machine over the lunch hour, and you
    just get your file xeroxed and next you see it in the, sort of,
    Fat City Press or something or the Skinny City Press. But do
    you have any concerns as to where the line needs to be drawn on
    what types of data that goes beyond a point? Any thoughts on
    that?
        Mr. Cahan. I participated in the Governor's Task Force on
    GIS in New York, and this has come up in our legal subgroup.
        Mr. Horn. I am sorry, I missed that part. Speak into the
    microphone a little.
        Mr. Cahan. This issue of privacy has come up before the
    Legal Working Group in New York. There are some data
    stewardship principles, and I have heard them most eloquently
    announced by the Department of Health for the State of New York
    where they say, first, ``You don't know, but when your twin
    boys were born 6\1/2\ years ago, there was data captured you
    are not even aware of for epidemiological and other studies. We
    feel we are the stewards of that data.'' Well, that stewardship
    ethic and ethical practice is something that GIS, which was
    dealing with environmental and dealing with AM/FM--which is
    automated mapping to fix the sewers--there was no person down
    there that you really cared about. Now, we are talking about
    people's rights, and we are talking about massive abilities to
    blend data bases.
        Some of us attending the forum before this hearing were
    cautioned by the GIS Intertribal Council of Indians. They said
    the Tribes make no big decision without thinking about the
    decision's effect for seven generations. So, when you think
    about privacy, at least that is the hat I am going to wear from
    now on, and it is a good metaphor.
        Mr. Horn. I think there is some bureaucracy tribes in this
    town that unconsciously have had a seven generation bit of
    input versus output. [Laughter.]
        Mr. Miller.
        Mr. Cahan. The other thing I would add--I apologize----
        Mr. Horn. No, go ahead.
        Mr. Cahan [continuing]. Is sometimes privacy is a ruse.
    Sometimes privacy is an excuse for not sharing data, and that
    is why I say there has got to be some principles that can guide
    the decision.
        Mr. Horn. Yes. Mr. Miller.
        Mr. Miller. This issue of privacy has come up a number of
    times within Sears. Sears has been around for 113 years, and,
    as such, we have collected an awful lot of information in those
    years. And now that we are in the information age and many of
    our transactions are handled by credit cards, obviously, we
    have a good deal of information. We think we probably have one
    of the largest customer data bases in the world. One of the
    true assets that the company has is the trust of the American
    people. People trust Sears. They let us into their homes. We go
    into about 15 million American homes a year, and the fact that
    we have this information, we guard it religiously. We do not
    let anyone have access to it. In fact, as the CIO of the
    company, one of my main jobs is to protect that data, and I
    have to report to the board of directors on a regular basis
    about what we are doing to secure that data, so it is a very
    important issue, I think, obviously, to Sears and also to
    corporate America.
        Mr. Horn. Well said. Mr Dangermond.
        Mr. Dangermond. The only thought that comes up for me is
    this notion of blending. If you look at data in abstract, there
    are certain privacy issues. When we deal with GIS data, there
    is a unique ability to blend, what we call an overlay,
    different data sets from different sources. Take, for example,
    the census data which is purposely disguised from being in
    individual reporting to census tracks or census blocks. But
    when we overlay that data or blend it with other customer
    information which is freely available in the open market, you
    can begin to subdivide or intersect by map overlay and define
    further clusters of information about an individual such that
    you can target people and find out about their behavior or
    about their demographics or about their characteristics or
    their behavior, basically.
        This is something that the GIS community, frankly, is
    uncomfortable with and is not addressing effectively. I see no
    major research initiatives in our academic world that have
    taken this on as a subsection, and, again, it goes back to
    something that I would like to--I recognize this is not an
    Appropriation Committee but recognize as someone who oversees
    governing--highlight this, because it is not just privacy in
    abstract. We are talking about privacy uniquely with geographic
    information and Geographic Information Systems which can sort
    of untangle and further define and invade--if we want to use
    that bad word.
        Mr. Horn. In the case that was mentioned, one example where
    you had children that were adopted, you had some very difficult
    competing values there. Friends of mine have been in that
    situation where the parents were not told what the real medical
    health condition was of these children. They could have been
    much more helpful to them if they knew that, but the welfare
    bureaucracy, which I guess knows no bounds in terms of
    sometimes just sitting on things, didn't use common sense. So,
    the result was they didn't know what was happening when certain
    behavior appeared. Was it environmental? Or whatever was it?
    And those are the tough questions. I think, in this day and
    age, the parents die and the adoptive family dies, and the
    children want to know, ``Well, who was our real mother and
    father?'' And those get to be very tough questions, and I know
    there is a lot of State law that you probably have to deal with
    in one way or the other. Mr. Cahan, do you have any thoughts on
    that question in particular?
        Mr. Cahan. Only having friends in the same situation on
    both sides of that and internationally on both sides of that. I
    think it comes down to--I analogize it to negligence and
    prudent man and those kinds of principles. Mr. Chairman, we
    don't have a body of law, as Mr. Dangermond said, that tells us
    what we need to know for GIS. It tells us for other kinds of
    data but not for GIS. It is this recombinant, this ability to
    recombine data sets that have been purposely for the privacy
    purposes excised of their identifying characteristics that we
    responsibly say to you, ``Yes, we are concerned that the
    recombining and the automated recombining can undo whatever
    privacy locks you thought you had built in to the system, and
    we need some principles.''
        Mr. Horn. Yes, that is a good point.
        The gentleman from Pennsylvania is free to begin and end
    the questioning.
        Mr. Kanjorski. I will start off with Mr. Dangermond,
    because you have been in this area probably as long as anyone
    else. If we do nothing from the standpoint of the Federal
    Government and the Congress, what is your projection 10 or 20
    years from now where this technology will be? Then, on the
    other hand, if we have an ideal partnership and respond to this
    technology every way we can to facilitate, what would the
    difference be in a 10 or 20-year period?
        Mr. Dangermond. Well, if you ask me to look 20 years out, I
    have a particular vision, and, for me, the vision is
    inevitable, whether there is close cooperation or not, in our
    minds at this point. The vision is basically one of a society
    that is based on more geographic and spatial literacy; one that
    is able to look into these vast data bases which will become
    basically the automation of all movement and all reality, and
    those applications that dip into that will serve kids in school
    to learn about and discover their world. It will serve us in
    improving the way we govern; it will improve coordinated
    workflow, allow us to do more productive agriculture, more
    efficient business; the list is countless. It will also be a
    data base which people look into for consumer applications at
    the individual level that make their lives better--finding
    places to work; finding safe places to live; avoiding
    environmental problems in their own life, because they will
    have the knowledge and the information to guide them, and,
    obviously, privacy must be acknowledged as an issue.
        Whether we do this now or whether we do this later is
    simply an economic issue from my perspective. We can start to
    coordinate more effectively now, and FGDC has made amazing
    contributions in that area. I would have not guessed that they
    could have accomplished as much as they have in this decade a
    decade ago, but they have done it, and it is a process, not an
    event. So, for this, I would like to acknowledge all of those
    people that have worked hard in this but also point out that
    there is a huge gap of work yet to be done in two fields. The
    first is, our national mapping efforts as well as State and
    local map and silos. Soil people map soils independent of the
    geologists' topic who map geology independent in some respects
    of the water people who map water independent of people who map
    roads. Actually, roads are mapped at--roads in this country are
    mapped maybe four or five times--the feds, the States, the
    local governments, the counties, and the cities--and, actually,
    they are all the same road. So, when we overlay these and
    combine them in various ways, which GIS is a beautiful tool to
    do, we get this whole mess, and it is not the interoperable,
    technical standards that aren't working; it is our content
    standards and organizational issues that sort out, ``Let us map
    the road once and here is the common standard for it, and, by
    the way, it is not a feature in isolation. It is also a feature
    which is related to other features.'' Congressman Horn, soils
    have something to do with geology, morphed out of it. It has
    something to do with vegetation which grows out of it, and this
    country, one of the concerns that I have is at the Federal
    level we map all these phenomena separately, because we
    administrate budgets separately, so some people map vegetation
    independent of soils yet we know that they are co-related and
    similarly with geology and similarly with all of it.
        So, with the good work of the framework studies that our
    mapping committees and so forth have come forth with, we have
    got better clarity on what the features are that we should
    have, and those are good standard efforts. But what still
    troubles me is that we will then all go out and map
    independently rather than map in an integrated way.
        Our colleagues in China don't map independently; they map
    holistically. They have a different integrated mapping approach
    the way they map at the Federal level and similarly in
    Australia and Holland and a number of Latin American countries.
    They map using integrated techniques, and this is something I
    think your committee should probably look at. The idea that the
    NAPA study came out with is the bringing together, as the
    Secretary mentioned, of the geodetic mapping, but that is only
    the base and the beginning.
        I think we need to really rethink the way American maps map
    its reality and does it holistically at the Federal level so
    that we look at the systems that we are mapping, not the parts,
    and we do that in a different organizational framework, and,
    similarly, the relationship between mapping at the Federal
    level and the State level, we have parametricized this rather
    than approaching it as an integrated approach. And, as a
    result, our approach to land management and open space and
    integrated thinking and planning and land management suffers.
    In fact, one of the reasons why GIS even came out was to try to
    bring these data sets together rather than approaching it
    holistically.
        We see this sort of in the popular press and in the popular
    politics with people saying we should have water management. We
    should approach things on a place-based basis, which brings it
    all together instead of the bits and governing and so on. So, I
    think I am on to something with this notion of rethinking the
    way that we actually begin to measure all of it as an
    integrated whole.
        Mr. Horn. Yes. I would like you to, if I might, just ask a
    10-second question here, but I would like to hear more with a
    few examples as to the Australians and the Chinese versus us,
    and I completely understand what you are saying on the
    different bureaucracies having used the map as a way to meet
    their goals----
        Mr. Dangermond. Sectorial goals.
        Mr. Horn. Yes, and that budget--I am thinking of soil
    conservation; I grew up on a ranch, and you go into Hollister,
    CA, the County Seat, and there are the files and out come the
    photographs, and they can sort of make decisions, as they sit
    around the table, do they give you a loan or don't they? So,
    that is one use of photography.
        Mr. Dangermond. Well, the photo is one of the bases for the
    compilation of the soil map, and the investment of soil mapping
    in this country was largely done to help the farmer, the Farm
    Service, and so on, and then we discovered that we could
    actually predict other things from it especially if we
    automated the maps. And in something like doing suitability
    mapping for a new town or for urban development, the concept is
    we really want to take soils as a factor and all of its
    predictive capabilities and overlay it with geology and slope.
    Say, ``these areas we shouldn't build on, and these areas, we
    should.'' It is a multi-factor analysis, and, unfortunately,
    when we do that overlay--if you overlaid plastic maps, you
    might just imagine it in your mind--the lines which define a
    geological separation between two geologic type should actually
    be the same lines that are associated with the definitions of
    soils, which exhibit the characteristics of their original
    material, but they are not, because these different phenomena
    are mapped at different scales, very different scales, and they
    are mapped with, in one case, crayolas; in the other case, high
    precision pencils, and they are mapped with different standards
    of resolution and accuracy. So, the problem for land managers
    in the Forest Service or in BLM or other local and State
    agencies who use this data is to sort of homogenize all of
    these data sets that have been stovepipe collected at different
    times, at different scales, with different standards, and it is
    a mess.
        From a science standpoint, it is even a bigger mess as we
    have homogenized our reality in these little polygon areas
    function that if you overlay them all together and you add
    their characteristics, you can actually derive predictable
    results. Some of the science suggests that that isn't so; that
    you are making a mess out of this parametric approach for
    mapping, and if mapping is the foundation for creating the
    future, which I believe it is--mapped information and
    geographic information--and if we assume that its
    homogenization and coming together provides us a foundation for
    decisionmaking, which I think we have heard plenty of testimony
    that it is, then we had better get the fundamental measurement
    methodologies integrated in the first place, not just automate
    the stovepipes. We need to really rethink that. Sorry,
    Congressman.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Well, do you see an effect on the future as
    you look out 10 or 20 years?
        Mr. Dangermond. What I guess I wanted to say--excuse me, I
    didn't conclude this--is, ultimately, this is going to be
    figured out and figured out in a variety of ways. We could do
    this more deliberately if we just realized it and got real with
    respect to the data and its quality now rather than sort of
    mushing around about it; addressed it with the right Science
    Committee that would really bring it together and demonstrate
    what I am talking about.
        What is happening, actually, in the GIS community is it is
    really fantastic. This technology is fantastic. I have lived it
    for 35 years. I love it. I love this technology. What is
    happening, however, is that the popularity of it and its
    demonstrated effectiveness and results are outstripping some of
    the science understanding of the fundamental information
    underneath it. I called before for more funding in the academic
    area to understand GI and how it ought to be integrated and
    work with it. As I mentioned before, we are throwing a pittance
    of $1 million a year, $1.5 million a year, maybe $2 million or
    $3 million, if I really stretch it with NEMA and the other--
    into the academic funding.
        I am not an academic, so I feel comfortable I can speak on
    this matter that we throw hundreds of millions to more
    fundamental work in various areas. This is an area that, if it
    is indeed the foundation for decision support for creating the
    future, we really believe that, and I do, then what the hell
    are we doing not investing like crazy in this technology and
    the information sets that are associated with it?
        Mr. Kanjorski. You are indicating there an academic
    investment?
        Mr. Dangermond. I am asking that one of the pieces that is
    troubling me, at least, is that we are not funding academic
    research into the GI and GIS foundations. We are doing it at a
    pittance level.
        So, back to your question about the future: How is the
    future going to turn out? We can either pay now to do that
    fundamental work and then look at remodernizing and integrating
    some of our mapping programs now or we will do it later, and
    then we will pay by redoing all of our mapping so that it works
    in an integrated mode. So, should we do it now or should we do
    it later? If we do it later, we are going to have to redo it.
    We are going to have to rebuild these data sets, and it will be
    troublesome. I think that is----
        Mr. Kanjorski. So, potentially, we are looking at a problem
    that left alone and not addressed could be expensive.
        Mr. Dangermond. Yes, right now, we are spending billions--
    you are spending billions at the Federal level in automating
    data, in parametrically defined data sets that don't actually
    work very well together, and we are talking about how you make
    them interoperable at the technical level as if that would
    really create some impact on the integration of science and
    geography. It is a scary thought, and we sort of breeze over
    that as a community--my colleagues and I; I am guilty of it, as
    well--but this is actually the thing that troubles me most.
        Mr. Kanjorski. So, we have a Y2K problem that----
        Mr. Dangermond. We have a Y2K problem that is not as
    serious in terms of dramatic an event at 2000. It is more of a
    process of further commitment into these stovepipe systems
    without the integrated thinking and the mapping area. This is
    not about technology; it is about the way we organize to
    collect our measurements of reality.
        Mr. Horn. If the gentleman would yield a minute, I am
    curious, are there any experiments going on in the Federal
    Government that brings people from different bureaucracies that
    have been doing things different ways together? Has any of that
    occurred on a pilot project basis without asking us for money?
        Mr. Dangermond. There is lots of experimentation. Actually,
    the Forest Service is a good example.
        Mr. Horn. What have we learned from that?
        Mr. Dangermond. We have learned that in order to build
    integrated mapping to do range management in the Forest
    Service, what we do is take all the parametric maps from
    different agencies, and then we actually spend a lot of time
    reworking the data, so we can actually use it for
    decisionmaking in a real world. And, so there is lots of
    evidence to suggest that this chaos that we are sort of
    cruising over is actually there, and the evidence suggests that
    you spend a lot of money rebuilding your data sets when you
    actually do something real with respect to decisionmaking on
    geography. And that is also happening in the local governments.
    They will often get Federal data sets and then spend a whole
    bunch of time trying to standardize it to make it work. I am
    getting down to the dirt and technical aspects of this, but I
    think it is actually important that you understand this and
    that we acknowledge it as a problem so we can actually work on
    it. To be able to solve that problem, it starts with
    fundamental research and prototyping, but we do have lots of
    evidence that the problem recurs in most people who are trying
    to bring the data sets together.
        Do you understand what I am talking about?
        Mr. Kanjorski. Yes, I understand. You are saying rather
    than starting with a diseased plant, cure the disease and start
    with a good plant.
        Mr. Dangermond. Right. It will take a little time and some
    major pain and some downhyping of it all working out.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Are you suggesting that we need sort of a
    Federal convention on mapping or we just do not have the
    academic backgrounds to begin to determine what maps should be
    used, and we should go back to the fundamental academic world
    and ask them to catch up to speed, so then we could have a
    convention?
        Mr. Dangermond. If you ask the vegetation people about
    their mapping, they will think it is pretty damn good, and we
    are making better investments and evolving that methodology
    very well; same with the geologists and the soil people. What I
    guess I am pointing out is that we have a flawed way in the way
    that the Federal Government approaches mapping, which is, I
    would call it, parametric mapping versus integrated mapping.
        There is some controversy in this in the scientific
    community, and there is certainly a lot of controversy in the
    agencies about ``Well, I know how to map soils. I have my
    mission, which is agriculture. I know how to make soils and
    never mind the fact that soils are best conceived in a holistic
    way.'' So, there is some controversy about that.
        You are asking me what to do? The first thing that we need
    to do is actually hold a convening session which reveals this
    problem that is underpinning a lot of the hype of GIS and its
    application that drill into it. There have been national
    committees on mapping that have gone on for years, but it is
    all about getting clear on the features that go on maps and
    then separately mapping these and not doing as much
    coordination as I would like.
        I am absolutely sure that I am exaggerating the point to
    make a point. I will bet there are many fine efforts in the map
    homogenization and coordination going on. Nevertheless, this is
    a little problem that is there that is going to be an obstacle
    for us to create this future I was suggesting is going to
    happen in 20 years. So, it might as well come out now; I have
    done it. Excuse me. My colleagues--some of them agree and don't
    agree.
        Mr. Kanjorski. Mr. Miller, it is interesting that you
    testified about your contribution to Sears & Roebuck and the
    amount of moneys you were able to save reducing delivery
    windows to 2-hours and mapping warehouse worker movement. I see
    that incentive there for the private sector, because there is a
    response back to the shareholder--it flows out to management
    and then to the shareholder.
        A problem in Government, I look at this tool as probably
    our greatest opportunity for increasing productivity in the
    public sector, and, actually, I want to put in the record and
    call the chairman's interest, because it raises the question of
    winners and losers. As this technology gets applied in the
    private sector, you are using less gasoline, less tires, et
    cetera, but you are paying for those tires, and you are making
    the decision you want to do those things. In the governmental
    side, I often find that there are interest groups that even
    when confronted with logic and efficiency, look at it as a
    threat to their own well-being. An example would be the control
    at one time of the airlines. The Postal Service helped
    subsidize the activity of airplanes, private airlines.
        Not too long ago--about 6 years ago--a very bright colonel,
    full colonel from the Pentagon, called me up and came over and
    met with me, and he wanted to indicate to me that he could save
    anywhere from $200 million to $400 million a year immediately
    for the U.S. Government, and so he came by with his computer,
    and it wasn't too dissimilar to what I see in GIS sometimes in
    that he had structured the military airlines, the American
    Military Airline Club--it is the largest airline in the world--
    that we could probably transport 75 to 80 percent of Government
    civil employees if we just coordinated their schedule with the
    military airline schedule on drop-off points. There is
    something like 1,400 planes a day in the sky that were
    federally owned, paid for, and were going there regardless.
    Rather than putting someone on a commercial flight from
    Washington to L.A., you could put them on a military flight and
    get them there and save all of the money. But it was
    interesting. The pressure that was brought on him and that
    whole program was from the private sector. They said, ``No,
    that is our passenger; you have to pay for him.''
        So, at that time, there wasn't the drive, but now, as I
    look around and I see the failure of having passengers stopped
    at some of our major airports on the east coast and the west
    coast, maybe we will go back and reinvestigate the possibility
    of bringing this type of efficiency to Government. But that is
    an example, I think, of--your example in private industry, the
    example that colonel brought to me, and so many areas, whether
    on a local governmental level, State, or Federal, that for the
    first time in our economy we have a tool available for
    efficiency and increase in productivity; not probably as
    gigantic as it will be in some private matters, but certainly
    far more than we have ever experienced in recent times in
    Government, and I would think that is why we probably should
    have bipartisanship on this, because, to my knowledge, there is
    no one, whether they are on one side of the aisle or the other,
    who is against efficiency and effectiveness, saving money, and
    getting the job done more effectively, and, clearly, we all
    represent the same constituents out there, and that is why I
    was so pleased about having this hearing.
        I am sure my friend, the chairman, is very much aware of
    the changes to GIS, but I think he will agree with me that not
    many of our colleagues are, and I hope that the hearing we have
    had today will be able to draw this out, and I know we have had
    the experts, this panel of senior executives, Mr. Chairman. So,
    the fact that they sat here all afternoon and gave of their
    time to this and listening to the broad perspective, I think it
    has been certainly enlightening to me. I hope it has been for
    you.
        Mr. Horn. Absolutely.
        Mr. Kanjorski. This transcript may enlighten our other
    colleagues and maybe we can move the Congress to get something
    done in a bipartisan way.
        Mr. Horn. Well, this is a small building block, but I think
    it has been a long step, and I particularly want to visit that
    Reston facility that was mentioned by some of you. So, if you
    could give me that information, I would like to go out there
    with any members that Mr. Kanjorski and I can find within the
    building and maybe go out on a Friday afternoon or a Friday
    morning when we are not doing much. But I would like to see
    what is happening there.
        So, do you have any more questions?
        Mr. Kanjorski. No.
        Mr. Horn. Well, I think you ended this hearing on a good
    note, and we do respect and thank you for the talent that you
    bring to this problem, and I know there is a lot of interested
    people out there. Usually, when the cabinet officer is here,
    the place is full. As soon as the cabinet officer leaves,
    everybody else leaves, and there is 10 faithful souls or
    something. Well, you have had about 50 to 150 souls today.
        So, I know there is a lot of talent out there, and all I
    can say if there are things you would have liked to say, just
    write me, care of this subcommittee: chairman of the Government
    Management, Information, and Technology Subcommittee, room
    2331, Rayburn House Office Building. We will turn it over to
    staff to integrate it in the report, and we welcome any ideas,
    and I thank you again for all of you that have participated and
    those of you that have sat nicely and we are sorry that our
    colleagues are in the Defense authorization floor today. That
    is what we are missing on both sides of the aisle.
        So, thank you again, and, with that, this hearing is
    adjourned. Oh, I do have the staff list here somewhere, so let
    me just say Russell George, staff director, chief counsel--
    don't know if he is here--Matthew Ebert, to my left, your
    right, is the policy advisor on this hearing; Bonnie Heald is
    seated back there, director of communications; Grant Newman,
    staff assistant; Paul Wicker, intern; Justin Schlueter, intern,
    and for the minority, Faith Weiss, minority counsel; Earley
    Green, minority staff assistant, and we had more than one court
    reporter, I believe, didn't we? Oh, just Ron Claxton. Well, you
    are a brave soul, and you ought to get hazard pay for something
    like that.
        But, with that, we are adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 4:36 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
        [Additional information submitted for the hearing record
    follows:]

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