U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

63–008 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

DAVID M. MCINTOSH, Indiana

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas

LEE TERRY, Nebraska

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California

HELEN CHENOWETH, Idaho

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

ROBERT E. WISE, JR., West Virginia

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

HAROLD E. FORD, JR., Tennessee

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

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

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

GREG WALDEN, Oregon

DOUG OSE, California

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin

JIM TURNER, Texas

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

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

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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

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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

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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 wellknown 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

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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?

31

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.

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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

33

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

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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 beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:23 Jul 21, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63008.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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come 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 61⁄2 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.

43

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.

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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 techVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:23 Jul 21, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63008.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nology, 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.

46

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,

52

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

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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 21⁄2 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-inprogress. 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.

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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 timberbased 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 reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:23 Jul 21, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00139 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63008.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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sults. 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

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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.

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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

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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?

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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—sameday 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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 inkind 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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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 61⁄2

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 purVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:23 Jul 21, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00222 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63008.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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posely 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

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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

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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

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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 reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:23 Jul 21, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00226 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\63008.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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search 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

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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.

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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.

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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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