Spatial groups within the federal community

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Permalink Reply by David G. Smith on February 21, 2009 at 9:42am

I'd be interested in getting more information about the IAC Spatial Committee, please share anything on this.

The ESRI FedUC has been good at getting cross-agency dialogs going through networking and sessions, along cross-agency communities of practice, such as climate change, energy, emergency response. However, this interaction tends to be more ad-hoc, and connections made are more a function of serentipity than focus.

I have only just recently gotten involved in the Spatial Ontology Community of Practice (SOCOP) and would encourage others to look at it, however it does tend to have very specific technical focus: http://www.socop.org/ - and unfortunately their last meeting overlapped with ESRI FedUC and the NC GIS Conference.

I think it might be helpful to advertise and promote GIS workgroups within agencies - at EPA, they have a GIS workgroup that meets monthly by phone and biannually in person - http://www.gisworkgroup.org/ - they do welcome visitors from other agencies. Harvey Simon is the point of contact: simon.harvey@epa.gov - Harvey also chairs the Emergency Response subgroup.

Perhaps as a function of this group, I will start a collection of links and contacts for some of these, and would encourage others to contribute as well.

Permalink Reply by Joi Grieg on March 8, 2009 at 9:50pm

The chair of the IAC Spatial Committee is "Wendy Henry" . I pass your note on to her. She's pulling together a Kick-Off meeting in March. Joi

Permalink Reply by Drew Pilant on November 14, 2009 at 8:11am

Is there a Federal users group for free and open source geospatial software and data? FedFOSS4G. Thanks.