February 3, 2004

The state agency GIS Technical Committee met on Tuesday, February 3 to discuss state internet mapping issues. The purpose of this and subsequent meetings is to identify and work on issues that will improve collaboration in the development of state IMS projects. This meeting focused on a review of IMS applications that are either in production or in development. A one page survey was distributed before the meeting and results were shared on Tuesday in the form of a document and agency presentations. After the presentations, the subcommittee members identified a number of issues that require further investigation. A subcommittee was set up to look into these and related issues. The issues identified at this meeting included:

standardized cartography
applications should draw on the most up-to-date spatial data
WAN applications should be promoted to extend GIS capabilities to more state employees
a Gulf of Maine base map IMS service is needed
HTML vs. Java based applications
data published in IMS should also be published with metadata at MeGIS clearinghouse
complexity of public interfaces
limited printing capability
building library of reusable code
standards for work contracted out including ownership of code developed and development methods
OpenGIS standards
advanced IMS development training
improve availability of information about who is developing IMS applications and the infrastructure available for use by agencies
common security application
models for collaboration/ centers of expertise
how do we interface with local government given lack of expertise at local level

Subcommittee members who volunteered to work on IMS issues are listed below. They will report back to the full GIS Technical Committee in April.

Andy Tolman, DHS
Laura Livingston, DMR
Don Katnik, IF&W
Greg Miller, DOC
Cindy Owings, DOT
Amy Spelke, PUC
Dave Kirouac, MeGIS
Bob Bistrais, MeGIS
Matt Howe, MeGIS
Janet Parker, DEP