[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:]
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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:]
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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:]
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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.]
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