August 21, 1997 Meeting Minutes

Introductions, Tom Nolan, WAGIC Chair

Department of Fish & Wildlife update on the awarded NSDI grant for the development of a Biological Clearinghouse Node, Jim Eby, Dept. of Fish & Wildlife

ESRI Introduction and Product Update, Eric Bishop, ESRI Representative

• Jeff Holm said he would put a link on the WAGIC Homepage to the NW Arch Info User Group Conference sight for anyone who wants to learn more about the conference.
• Tom Nolan said the SDE seminars are very good idea, but he recommended expanding the conferences to some of the other WAGIC sites in Washington (possibly Pasco or Mount Vernon).
• Don Eginton (Snohomish County) said he appreciated that Eric came to Snohomish County and introduced himself. Snohomish County is concerned about getting enough software maintenance support from ESRI. They would appreciate it if Eric can continue to come to the different sites and provide his support.
• Larry Sugarbaker (Dept. of Natural Resources) mentioned that DNR likes that ESRI keeps coming out with new products. But because ESRI is continually developing new products the issue of migration is a large concern for many people. Larry suggested that ESRI answer the question ‘what migration strategies do people need in order to move forward with the new technologies that keep coming out?’, at the conferences. Larry also added that SDE is a big move for many of ESRI’s customers.
• Eric commented that ESRI a paper topic for the NW Users Group Conference is focused on the issue of migration. This topic will cover migration of new technologies as well as migration from Unix to NT or how customers integrate traditional AML applications into the new environment. Eric said ESRI is addressing this issue, but what he heard at this WAGIC Council meeting is that people would like a specific seminar focused on the issue of ‘where are we going and how do all these technologies fit together’. Tom Nolan said this statement is correct. People would like to hear specifically from ESRI how all these technologies fit together.
• Ian Von Essen (Spokane) said when he attended the San Diego conference he was surprised by all the 3rd party vendors developing products. He would like to see some of these 3rd party developers participate as vendors at the NW Users Group Conference. Eric is trying to get representation of these vendors at the conference and he is really trying to make people aware of the 3rd party vendors.

Discuss ideas on how to continue to improve the Local Government Workgroup (LGW) meetings, Tom Nolan and Jeff Holm

• Don Eginton asked what the goals and objectives are for this group. Don spoke with Betty Marshall from the URISA organization, and Betty said URISA is beginning to focus more on local and regional government issues pertaining to GIS information across the state. Don mentioned that there may be an opportunity for the WAGIC to partner with URISA to work on the regional and local issue and with the GIS technology.
• Randy Mills (Pasco) said he likes the idea of moving the LGW meetings around the state. Randy would like a committee representative (either the chair or a workgroup member) present at all the meetings as an outreach from the WAGIC.
• Tom Nolan stated he heard in this discussion that the meeting topics should be connected to the larger WAGIC topics in order to maintain a regional approach in connection to the federal issues. Plus, the Council would like to have one individual who is present at all the LGW meetings so this person can provide consistency to the meetings.
• Tom asked what the frequency of the meetings should be.
• • Randy Mills said that in the past they have had one meeting a year at each location (4 meetings total). Tom thought that four meeting a year was probably the most realistic.
  • A comment was made in Mount Vernon that most of the people in Mount Vernon have not had a lot of experience with the LGW. They like the idea of having a meeting in Everett so more people from Mount Vernon can attend and get involved in the workgroup.
  • Ian Von Essen stated that the council has 2 choices: 1) Continue traveling around the state and look at funding the traveling or 2) set aside part of the WAGIC meetings to do a round table discussion. Each region has there own agenda so he thinks the traveling is an important component, but if traveling is not feasible the Council should have round table discussions at the WAGIC meetings.
  • Tom Nolan liked the idea of having the LGW participate at the bi-monthly WAGIC meetings in a round table forum, and he would like to see this happen more than once a year.

• Jeff Holm mentioned that he has been working with David Read and Andrew Kinney to resurrect the Peninsula Regional Workgroup. Jeff has been pleased with the attendance at the quarterly meetings. These meetings have been a nice forum for people to exchange information about how they are resolving technical problems and share the applications they develop. Jeff would like to try to integrate the Peninsula workgroup with the larger WAGIC council and the LGW. Jeff recognized that traveling was an important component of the LGW meetings, and he reinforced the idea of using a part of the bi-monthly WAGIC meetings for LGW discussions.

GIC '98 Conference Possibilities, Tom Nolan

1. Should the Council have a WAGIC conference in the Spring of ‘98?
2. Should the WAGIC work with WA State URISA to run a Spring ‘98 conference?
3. Where should the WAGIC conference be held?

• An individual from Mount Vernon said they found the conference last year very useful. They like the idea of combining the WAGIC and URISA into one conference because it would be difficult attending both a WAGIC and URISA conference in one year. Plus, it would help spread the workload out for both groups.
• Randy Mills said the members in Pasco would like to see the WAGIC hold a conference next year. But, he doesn’t think Pasco will be able to help support the conference.

• Randy stated he would like to see what agencies in the state doing with GIS and what the status of GIS is in Washington. He did not think the conference should be specifically education oriented. Tom agreed that the conference should not be just education oriented, though education still is an important aspect of GIS and the conference.
• Larry Sugarbaker mentioned he would like to see another GIS conference and he recommended that the WAGIC work with URISA to put on the conference because the two groups have the same interest. He made the point that Spring ‘98 is coming up very soon, so we should meet with URISA within the month to see what their interest is in having the conference. If it is a go a sight must be secured as soon as possible. Jeff Holm said he would contact Betty Marshall from NW URISA to arrange a meeting. Jeff reminded people that the WAGIC needs commitment and support from agencies in order to put this conference together. The commitments can come in the form of confirming a sight, putting together a theme, arranging for speakers, making presentations, etc. DIS is interested in participating in the conference, but not to the extent they did in the previous conference. Jeff will try to schedule the meeting with URISA for the 2nd week of September.
• Ian Von Essen stated that there currently are a lot of GIS conferences. The focus of this conference should be in getting more people involved with GIS in the state of Washington and educating the people. He thought Spring ‘98 might be a little too early to put on a successful conference, so the Council might consider a Spring ‘99 conference.
• A comment was made in Seattle that URISA is already planning a Spring ‘98 conference, whether WAGIC joins them or not. A couple of people said they agree with Ian that Spring ‘98 might be too soon to put together a successful conference.
• Tom Nolan commented that everyone is in agreement that a joint conference is the way to go.

Project Coordination with the Dept. of Community, Trade & Economic Development (CTED), Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR), and Interagency Committee for Outdoor Recreation (IAC), Kitty Wiseman (IAC)

• Jeff Holm asked what the timeframe is for collecting the data. Kitty said that all the departments have different timeframes. IAC was asked by the legislature to do this project in two phases, which will last approximately two years. DNR and CTED want to gather the growth management information as soon as possible. Plus, DNR is working on the cadastral project and is interested in gathering data related to this on a much longer time frame.
• Tom Nolan asked what type of information they are looking for. Kitty said that in the first phase the IAC is looking for the location acreage and primary use of public land by counties, cities, tribal lands, state and federal land. Once they gather this information they will develop it into a database. In the second phase IAC will gather data on state owned recreation and habit lands, and then improve the information they already have.
• Ian Von Essen told Kitty that public land is tax exempt so it is sometimes difficult to find out what state agency actually owns the land. Kitty said they are not planning on getting the federal, state, and tribal information from local government assessors and WAGIC databases. They want to gather the local data from local governments and the federal, state and tribal information from federal and state databases.

Cadastral Framework Activities, Larry Sugarbaker, Dept. of Natural Resources

• Larry said that DNR has named a Cadastre Framework Project Manager, Carrie Wolf, and that they are about to move into the requirements phase of the project. DNR is the recipient of a FGDC Framework Demonstration grant for the cadastral project. They now have $250 thousand for the project, and the estimated cost for the project is between $532 thousand and $940 thousand. The Puget Sound Regional Council also received a grant to work on developing the Transportation requirements in the Puget Sound Region. The Dept. of Ecology also has funds to begin their Hydrology framework project.

Washington State Geospatial Clearinghouse Initiative, Jeff Holm, WAGIC Coordinator

• NSDI existed in concept since the inception of the FGDC in 1990.
• Was officially kicked-off through the Executive Order 12906 in June 1994 for federal agencies and their partners.
• Is an umbrella enterprise under which we seek to promote geospatial information.
• NSDI has created software, guidelines and an infrastructure that the WAGIC can use to let people know what spatial data and information exists for Washington State.
• Metadata:
• • Provides documentation of existing internal geospatial data that organizations have.
  • Serves as a basis for advertising the data that organizations have.
  • Permits structured searches and comparisons of spatial data.
  • Metadata is important because it is built on the data descriptions, not the data itself. People query the data descriptions.
• Framework activities are a major component of the clearinghouse. The goal is to have geospatial data reside on the clearinghouse. Currently, just the metadata resides on the clearinghouse, the geospatial data does not.
• Another component to the NSDI is ‘standards’. The federal Framework Group is working with development standards, and standards are being developed to support various initiatives. Thematic subcommittees develop standards, which go through a 90-day public review period, and are eventually published as FGDC standards.
• If anyone would like to learn more about this they can go to FGDC’s website.

• Partnership building extends organizations capabilities.

The Clearinghouse & it’s Architecture:

• The clearinghouse is focused on information discovery. It is a centralized location for the collection and dissemination of information. The NSDI clearinghouse is web-based so people use their web browser to access the information (they need internet access). The FGDC is working on another access mechanism that will allow people to get to this information using a CD-ROM. Currently, people need a web browser, the clearinghouses need to be hooked up to the internet, and people need an agent that is aware of the various clearinghouses. This is all done through a common gateway or a centralized entry point into the clearinghouse network.
• GIC metadata is available in two modes: Browse vs. Search
• • Browse mode- this approach works alright if there is a small amount of data holdings (like there currently is). As these numbers increase using the browse mode will be more difficult.
• The key to the clearinghouse approach is the metadata. The spatial data sets do not reside on the clearinghouse nodes, the descriptions of the data sets reside there. These descriptions are available through the metadata. Organization can have spatial data and the metadata associated with it registered with the clearinghouses. When a person generates a query they use the data descriptions and generate all the data related to the description.

• The Washington State Clearinghouse Node currently resides (temporarily) on University of Washington Geography Department server. Kathryn Womble (UW Maps Collection Librarian) and Jeff have been working on a proposal to find a permanent home for the WA State clearinghouse node at the University.

• Ian VonEssen asked about the status of the MS Access program that DIS developed for metadata. Jeff mentioned that Ian is referring to the Geospatial Metadata Management System (GMMS), which is a stand-alone metadata collection tool. This is available for people that have an Access 2.0 environment. This tool is available in Access 2.0 and in a run time module, but it will not co-exist with Access 6.0, 7.0, etc. Anyone interested in gaining a copy of this tool can contact Jeff Holm.

Closing Site Roundtable, Council

Meeting Adjourned: 12:00 p.m., next meeting October 16, 1997 at 10:00 a.m.