Thus coordination is primarily provided through creation of a networked system or infrastructure that governments, businesses and individuals may tie into and through provision of standards. Federal agencies continue to collect spatial data in support of their missions as defined by legislative mandates and are making more of that data accessible through clearinghouse nodes. The FGDC in collaboration with Federal agencies has coordinated the NSDI Competitive Cooperative Agreements Program to help start collaborative projects among local governments, state governments, academic institutions, non-profit groups and others willing to collect and make spatial data available through NSDI clearinghouse nodes. The government provides a critical mass of nodes and the more nodes that are added over time the more useful the system becomes to everyone. The commercial sector is free to establish any conditions and prices it chooses for the spatial data it sells or licenses.
Spatial data supplied by federal agencies is made available at the cost of dissemination or less.
The cost of dissemination may often approach zero when Internet delivery mechanisms are used. The law or policies of many local and state governments in the US are the same but some local and state governments are charging at higher than the cost of dissemination. We plan that the commercial firms will share the expenses required to create elements of the NSDI and will cover their expenses according to special conditions of the NSDI data use. The goal is that responsibility for generating, maintaining, and distributing spatial data will be widely shared by different levels of government and the private sector. Federal government agencies use private companies to meet their spatial data needs where there is a capacity by the private sector to do so at competitive prices.