There is a much excitement in the location community since the Geospatial Data Act (GDA) 2018 becoming a law. Beyond codifying the committees, processes, and tools used to develop, drive and manage the US National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), the GDA represents a formal recognition of the essential role of geospatial data and technology in understanding and managing our world.

As a shared interest on behalf of their memberships, OGC and NSGIC took a closer look at a clause in the GDA that is related to standards compliance. We noticed a lack of clarity on the standards that need to be followed, had difficulty of determining what should be complied with, and noticed a lack of partnership with state and local stakeholders and their counterparts in the private sector on collection, integration, maintenance and preservation of geospatial data - amongst other issues.

Based on the research put in by OGC and NSGIC, the GDA implementation felt like it is in its early stages, with much work to be done on the data acquisition, standards, and collaboration/partnership fronts - areas that the joint geospatial community can champion, support and help clarify. This has already led to an ongoing collaboration between OGC and NSGIC to host a series of community workshops, the first of which occurred on June 24. The objective is to host a dialog on how the community can capitalize on the GDA and to identify opportunities to accelerate making geospatial information FAIR (Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable) by (1) identifying/advancing the development and adoption of the appropriate standards, (2) nurturing the right public private partnerships to best serve the US citizens and decision makers, and (3) addressing common compliance and interoperability challenges.

This session is critical to continuing the community dialog led by the OGC-NSGIC partnership.