Historically, the federal government has been a primary provider of authoritative geospatial information, but some argue that consumer demand for spatial information has triggered a major shift toward local government and commercial providers. The federal government has shifted, with some important exceptions, to consuming rather than providing geospatial information from a variety of sources. As a result, the federal government's role has shifted as well toward coordinating and managing geospatial data and facilitating partnerships among the producers and consumers of geospatial information in government, the private sector, and academia. The challenges to coordinating how geospatial data are acquired and used—collecting duplicative data sets, for example—at the local, state, and federal levels, in collaboration with the private sector, are long-standing and not yet resolved. In 2003 and 2004 the Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations, and the Census, part of the House Committee on Government Reform, held two hearings on the nation's geospatial information infrastructure. A common theme to both hearings was the challenge of coordinating and sharing geospatial data between the local, county, state, and national levels. Quantifying the cost of geospatial information to the federal government has also been an ongoing concern for Congress. At the hearing in 2003, Representative Adam Putnam stated: We need to understand what programs exist across the government, how much we're spending on those programs, where we're spending that money, how efficiently, or perhaps inefficiently, we share data across Federal agency boundaries, how we separate security-sensitive geospatial data from those open for public use, and how we efficiently, or perhaps inefficiently, coordinate with State and local governments and tribes. The explosion of geospatial data acquired at the local and state levels, for their own purposes and in conjunction with the private sector, underscores the long-recognized need for better coordination between the federal government and local and state authorities. At the same time, coordinating, managing, and facilitating the production and use of geospatial information from different sources, of different quality, and which was collected with specific objectives in mind has been a challenge. The federal government has recognized this challenge since at least 1990, when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) revised Circular A-16 to establish the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) and to promote the coordinated use, sharing, and dissemination of geospatial data nationwide. Executive Order 12906, issued in 1994, was intended to "strengthen and enhance" the general policies in Circular A-16. Executive Order 12906 specified that the FGDC shall coordinate the federal government's development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI). Further, EO12906 called for the establishment of a National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse to address data standardization, make geospatial data publically available, and address redundancy and incompatibility of geospatial information. Circular A-16 was itself revised in 2002, adding the Deputy Director of Management at OMB as the vice-chair of the FGDC to serve with the Secretary of the Interior, who chairs the committee. The high-level leadership and broad membership of the FGDC—10 cabinet-level departments and 9 other federal agencies—highlights the importance of geospatial information to the federal government. In fact, supplemental guidance to Circular A-16, issued by Federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra on November 10, 2010, referred to federal geospatial data as a capital asset . Questions remain, however, about how effectively the FGDC is fulfilling its mission. Has this organizational structure worked? Can the federal government account for the costs of acquiring, coordinating, and managing geospatial information? How well is the federal government coordinating with state and local entities that increasingly rely on geospatial information? What is the role of the private sector? In its oversight capacity, the 112 th Congress may consider these questions from the viewpoint of reducing duplication and costs to the federal government. This report discusses issues that may be of interest to Congress—managing, sharing, and coordinating geospatial information—and includes examples of legislation. This report also summarizes a diverse set of recommendations and proposals from different non-governmental organizations for how to improve the coordination and management of geospatial information at the federal and state levels. A separate report, CRS Report R41825, Geospatial Information and Geographic Information Systems (GIS): An Overview for Congress , discusses geospatial information and GIS; provides several examples of their use; and describes the FGDC, NSDI, and their various activities and programs. This report is limited to discussions of non-classified geospatial information. Producing floodplain maps; conducting the Census; planning ecosystem restoration; and assessing vulnerability and responding to natural hazards such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are examples of how federal agencies use GIS and geospatial information to meet national needs. Some view federal government data as inherently geospatial. According to the Department of the Interior, the amount of government information that has a geospatial component—such as address or other reference to a physical location—is as much as 80%. Given the ubiquity of geospatial information throughout the federal government, and despite the long history of efforts to manage and coordinate such data articulated in OMB Circular A-16 and its antecedents (see Appendix for a history of Circular A-16 and its federal policy lineage), ongoing challenges to handling federal geospatial information can generally be divided into three overarching questions: What is the best way to organize and manage the vast array of geospatial information that is acquired at many levels and that has a variety of potential uses? What is the best way to share data, particularly among local, state, and federal stakeholders, each of whom may have a need for the same or similar data? What is the best way to coordinate among federal agencies, such as the administration and management by different agencies of all the federal lands in the United States? It could be argued that some level of duplication of effort, and of inefficiency in the management and sharing of geospatial information, will always exist across a vast federal bureaucracy in which a majority of government information has some geospatial component. It could also be argued that the size of the federal bureaucracy is only one contributing factor. Surveying and mapping activities themselves are prone to duplication of effort among the different missions and goals of the executive branch. The need to organize and manage geospatial data among federal agencies and among the federal government, local and state authorities, the private sector, and academia is a recurring theme. It recurs, in part, because it is widely recognized that collecting data multiple times for the same purpose is wasteful and inefficient, yet it continues to occur. Alternatively, geospatial data could be collected once to meet the requirements of several users. For example, geospatial data gathered by a local government could be made useful to the state or federal government if the data meet a set of basic and consistent guidelines and protocols. Organizational structures exist at the federal and state levels to identify and promulgate the efficient sharing, transfer, and use of geospatial information, but arguably they have not fully achieved the goal of seamlessly coordinating disparate types of geospatial data. Ideally, these efforts would produce a national spatial data infrastructure, or NSDI, and that appears to have been the intent of EO12906 and the subsequent revisions to Circular A-16 in 2002. In one sense, the FGDC exists to foster development and implementation of the NSDI. The NSDI includes the processes and relationships that facilitate data sharing across all levels of government, academia, and the private sector. Ultimately, it is intended to be the base resource and structure among geospatial data providers and users at the national, state, and local level. Yet, some members of the geospatial community have indicated that the past efforts to create a national spatial data infrastructure have not met expectations, and have called for a new effort to build a "national GIS" or a "NSDI 2.0." (See section below: " A National GIS? ") In addition to promoting the efficiency and interoperability of such a national system, some promote NSDI as "digital infrastructure" on par with other parts of the nation's critical infrastructure—such as roads, pipelines, and telecommunications—and underscore its role in the national economy and in national security. When Circular A-16 was issued in 1953, it aimed to avoid duplication of effort, and included details about coordinating federal mapping activities. As digital geospatial data became more widespread, revisions to Circular A-16 in 1990 and 2002 extended coordination of federal efforts to include digital data, and broadened the mandate to coordinate federal geospatial activities. These efforts to improve management and coordination continue: on March 3, 2006, OMB issued a memorandum asking selected departments and agencies to each designate a senior agency official to take authority and responsibility for geospatial information issues. The memorandum emphasized that "through further coordination, we will maximize our buying and maintaining of geospatial investments instead of independently investing in potentially duplicative and costly data and capabilities." The March 3, 2006, memorandum identified 15 departments and 12 independent agencies that should designate an official at the Assistant Secretary or equivalent level. Most recently, OMB issued supplementary guidance to Circular A-16 on November 10, 2010 (discussed in the next section). On November 10, 2010, the Obama Administration issued a memorandum providing supplemental guidance to the implementation of OMB Circular A-16. The supplemental guidance labels geospatial data as a capital asset, and refers to its acquisition and management in terms analogous to financial assets.