March 19, 2008 Meeting Minutes and Agenda
AGENDA
1. Approval of the February 20th meeting minutes – Chair
2. CAT 3 Grant Update
3. Subcommittee Reports
• Financial – Larry Harwood
• Policy & Marketing – Marilyn Lutz
• Technical
• Orthoimagery Project /Parcel grants – Larry Harwood
• Status on the GEOPortal – Christopher Kroot
MEETING MINUTES
Present
Dan Coker, Co-Chair
James Page
Marilyn Lutz
Gretchen Heldmann
Elizabeth Hertz
Christopher Kroot
Nancy Armentrout
Ken Murchison
Mike Smith
Greg Copeland
Staff
Larry Harwood
Visitors
Dave Blocher, Office Information Technology (OIT)
Dan Walters, US Geological Survey (USGS)
Bruce Oswald, Oswald Associates
Richard Thompson, Chief Information Officer (CIO)
Diane Godin, Somerset County Registry of Deeds
The meeting was called to order at 10:00 a.m., Dan Coker, Co-Chair
presiding.
USGS Award
After introductions, the Chair suspended the agenda for a special
award ceremony. Mark Myers, Director of the USGS presented a commemorative
Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey benchmark to the
Office of Information Technology “…to recognize the leadership
OIT has provided for geospatial programs in Maine.” and to recognize
“…your organization’s importance as a key partner
in the ongoing development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure
(NSDI) including The National Map.”
In his remarks Mr. Myers noted the rapid development of digital spatial
data by OIT, helping USGS to move away from paper maps into a national
Geographic Information System. Richard Thompson, Chief Information
Officer accepted the award on behalf of OIT. In his acceptance remarks
Mr. Thompson thanked all the staff and technicians of OIT for their
efforts resulting in this award.
The full letter of citation is attached to the back these minutes.
1. Approval of the February 20th, 2008 meeting minutes
The Chair entertained a motion to approve the minutes. One correction
was noted: page 9, last paragraph, first sentence changed to “On
the second motion the Board voted seven in favor, 2 abstentions 1
opposed.” Marilyn Lutz moved to approve the minutes as amended.
Ken Murchison seconded. The Board voted 9 in favor, none opposed.
The motion carried. (NOTE: unless otherwise indicated the Chair abstains
from voting)
2. CAT 3 Grant Update
Announcements.
Nancy Armentrout announced that Will Mitchell, Mitchell Geographics,
had been selected to be the Project Manager for the Fifty States Project.
He has already started working on the project.
Jim Page in his capacity as CEO of the James W. Sewall Company announced
that Bruce Oswald was leaving Sewall to start his own consulting company,
Oswald Associates LLC. Jim handed out copies of a letter from himself
to William Hanson, Board Chair explaining the new situation. He stressed
that for the Geolibrary Strategic Planning Process there will be no
change. Bruce will continue in day-to-day operational control. Sewall
will continue to manage the contract and will be responsible for all
contract issues. “Other than some address and phone changes,
the Board should not notice anything different in how the project
is executed .” Bruce will retain the same e-mail for the time
being.
Report
Bruce Oswald gave his report on the project to date. He thanked everyone
on the Board in general and Nancy Armentrout in particular for their
work on the project. He also noted that Will Mitchell has already
spent many hours in project management.
The Maine Municipal Association Technology Conference session on
the Fifty States Project was very successful with 146 people in attendance,
literally standing room only. There was great interest in the land
records part of the session. He and Rich Sutton are working on a survey
to forward to the attendees that registered. He also asked the Board
members to turn in their surveys as soon as possible.
There is a Fifty States project page up on the Geolibrary website
now with a registration link for people wanting information. There
are 3 public forums planned in the very near future in Portland, Bangor
and Lewiston plus a forum specifically for state workers in Augusta.
There is also need for one or more listservers. This prompted some
discussion about existing state listservers and e-mail distribution
lists. Marilyn Lutz agreed to try setting up a new Geolibrary listserver
for a statewide audience. Nancy Armentrout agreed to pull together
the various disparate listings such as the MEGIS listings, Geolibrary
stakeholders, orthoimage survery respondents and so on. Greg Copeland
noted that the Maine GIS Users Group would also be very interested
in such a ‘master list’ of those interested in GIS and
spatial data.
Developing ‘champions’ as outlined in the project description
will depend on what the needs are. In this regard, it will be important
for the Board members to get in touch with their constituencies on
a regular basis. Everyone should think about ideas for getting back
to constituencies.
Q: What will be the agenda for these forums?
A: Basically a brief overview of the project, introductions, questions,
gathering input, looking for ideas on champions, funding and so on.
A lot will depend upon the groups, they will be diverse.
Q: Have we considered the “political potholes” in these
forums.
A: Of course we will plan in advance as much as possible.
Q: What is the target audience for the forums?
A: Wide open actually, real estate interests, surveyors, politicians,
state agencies, other stakeholders.
Q: There will be difficulty in bringing together the town governments
and county governments. More importantly, how will you sell the land
records plan to the county commissioners and the registrars? You should
involve the Association County Commissioners and the Registrars Association
at the start.
A: Obviously we will have to point to some sort of financial benefit
to all these groups.
Bruce wrapped up by giving the Board “some more homework”.
He had another evaluation exercise for the Board members.
Sidebar: Membership. Visitor Diane Godin, Somerset County Registrar
of Deeds, was suggested as a Board member representing counties. It
was recalled that the recently appointed county representative had
a conflict and could not attend the regular meetings. Diane was not
averse to the suggestion but made no definite commitment; staff will
investigate the possibility.
3. Subcommittee Reports
Financial
Due to GeoPortal allocation votes at the last meeting, $22,000 was
encumbered for web mapping services (WMS), $6,000 for metadata loading
and $13,000 for the purchase of 2 servers. This leaves $57,164 in
funds unencumbered.
Q: What is the “Standards conformity/data validation tools”
item?
A: Originally it was thought that the MEGIS staff would need an application
to help in doing the quality assurance/quality control of incoming
data, especially parcel data. Nothing was ever created and in the
event QAQC has not been a problem without it.
Jim Page moved to return $25,000 from the standards conformity/data
validation tools item to the unallocated funds. Greg Copeland seconded.
The Board voted 9 in favor, none opposed. The motion carried.
Policy & Marketing
Marilyn Lutz reported that the latest policy on data acceptance had
been sent out and some comments had come back. She would like to have
any additional comments back as soon as possible. There was considerable
discussion of “state agency data” vs. “general data”
and how the Geolibrary fits into that model:
• Data of interest to state agencies will always be stored
on state servers and reviewed by state staff, including metadata creation,
if not by MEGIS then by one or more other agencies.
• We need a major re-write the Data Acceptance Policy if the
University Of Southern Maine, Research Computing Group (USM RCG),
is storing Geolibrary data for us.
• We need to accept USM’s storage offer because we have
no funding to store data on a long term basis.
• Perhaps we should alter the Data Acceptance Policy to deal
with data purchased by the Geolibrary, not all data.
• The Geolibrary was after all created to advance GIS beyond
just state government.
• The GeoPortal’s role in all this – we don’t
know yet. There may be uses we have not even thought of yet.
In the interest of time, the Chair asked that discussion wrap up.
The Chair’s charge to the Policy Committee was to take all these
points into account and try to write a new Data Acceptance Policy
for review at the next meeting.
Technical
Orthoimagery & Parcel Grants
There was nothing new to report. The orthos are expected soon.
GeoPortal
The “out of the box” installation of the portal should
be completed as soon as this Friday. The plan is to send around the
URL to the Board members for review. Certainly it should be ready
by the end of April. There should also be help files in PDF format
available.
Metadata loading by USM should be taking place fairly soon. The Board
and OIT will be earmarking which metadata sets will be loaded. In
addition USM has agreed to store up to 40 gigabytes of vector data
at no charge as part of their agreement. Suggestions for non-state
agency data to be stored can sent to Christopher Kroot or MEGIS.
There was some discussion of the state data holdings. Some, perhaps
most, of state agency data is not published. Almost all of the 147
data layers published by MEGIS cannot be viewed directly; a few are
available as Web Mapping Services (WMS). The Board might want to see
which data should be available as WMS thru the USM RCG initiative.
Graphics
Gretchen Heldmann had been making new graphics for the GeoPortal and
a new logo for the Geolibrary. Screen displays allowed the Board to
view her creations. There were two versions of the GeoPortal headline
graphic. In discussion they acquired the nicknames “Katahdin
logo” and “pictures logo” based on their appearance.
Both were well received.
Christopher Kroot moved to accept the “Katahdin logo”
with the option to add pictures later. Ken Murchison seconded. The
Board voted 9 in favor, none opposed. The motion carried.
Gretchen’s logo creation was examined in detail by passing
the laptop around. It was very well received and many uses for it
were suggested.
Mike Smith moved to accept the new logo for the Geolibrary. Greg
Copeland seconded. The Board voted 9 in favor, none opposed. The motion
carried.
The meeting adjourned at 12:30
Text of the letter of citation for the USGS commemorative benchmark.
March 19, 2008
Mr. Richard B. Thompson, CIO
Office of the Chief Information Officer
Maine Office of Information Technology
State House Station
Augusta, Maine
Dear Richard,
It is with great pleasure that I present a commemorative Department
of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey benchmark to the Maine Office
of Information Technology (OIT). This benchmark is offered to recognize
the leadership OIT has provided for geospatial programs in Maine that
support vital local, state and national services. The benchmark is
symbolic of the USGS history in geospatial science and technology,
and the commemorative award to OIT recognizes your organization’s
importance as a key partner in the ongoing development of the National
Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) including The National Map.
Maine has collaborated with USGS to build framework layers for The
National Map and to deliver services that allow people in Maine, and
around the country, to discover and view geospatial assets through
Geospatial One-Stop. Of particular significance to me is that these
data and services also support USGS-led science programs focused on
issues of national significance including the effects of climate change.
I appreciate your unwavering support of the Maine Library of Geographic
Information (i.e., Geo-Library) and Maine Office of GIS (MEGIS). These
organizations have been instrumental in our success as partners and
have contributed significantly to our ability to achieve both state
and national goals related to the NSDI. The Geo-Library and MEGIS
play key roles in Maine's successful statewide coordination efforts
which have led to improved data quality, content and coverage. Maine
statewide coordination has reduced duplication of effort and as a
result our geospatial dollars have been spent more wisely.
We look forward to continued coordination with Maine toward our common
goals for the NSDI. Achieving these goals is important to Maine, and
the Nation.
Best regards,
Mark Myers, Director
US Geological Survey
cc Steven King
Thomas Connolly
Dan Walters
