The National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) is a nationwide GIS coordination organization whose membership, among others, includes GIS managers and point persons from all 50 states. NSGIC meetings take place twice a year and provide an excellent opportunity for the exchange of state level GIS strategy, the sharing of success stories, and the building of successful advocacy efforts to promote the effective use of GIS at all levels of government.

The 2008 Fall NSGIC conference, held this week in Keystone Colorado, has over 300 participants from state government, federal agencies, and vendor sponsors.

2008 NSGIC, Major Topics 

Here is a list of major topics presented and discussed at the NSGIC conference (to be updated as needed throughout the week):

• Imagery For the Nation (IFTN) , a program to coordinate and fund regular, sustainable and flexible digital imagery acquisition to meet the needs of local, state, regional, tribal and federal agencies.
• Other For the Nation (FTN) initiatives seeking federated plans for data acquisition and maintenance in the areas of Transportation, Addressing, Cadastral, and Elevation data, modelled on the success of IFTN.
• The 50 States Initiative state-level strategic planning for GIS coordination and projects--the Utah Geographic Infrastructure (UGI) strategic plan, to be released later this week, was developed under the auspices of this initiative.
• The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) , a blueprint for a nationwide GIS spatial data and services framework. The NSDI has been a focus for many years now and NSGIC'ers are anxious to see this concept actualized. One component of the NSDI that is operational and being increasing utilized is the National GIS Inventory (formerly known as RAMONA). Its primary purpose is to track the status of GIS in US state and local government to aid the planning and building of Spatial Data Infrastructures.
  
• The need for an inventory of high speed internet (broadband) service access across the country and other technology related advocacy.
• Continued FGDC partnership grant funding for innovative projects that contribute to the building of the NSDI.

Utah Roll Call Report

The first plenary session of NSGIC features a state by state "roll call" wherein each state has two minutes to highlight recent GIS activity. Matt Peters presented Utah's list with his usual style and grace. His list included:

• Completion of the Utah Geospatial Infrastructure strategic plan
• 350+  vector data layers and over a dozen image services in the Utah SGID 
• The development and utilization of geospatial web services at mapserv.utah.gov.
  
• A spatial data archiving pilot project with the Utah State Archives to include continuity of operations improvements.
  
• Distribution of $400,000 to rural counties for cadastral data activities (total to date of $3.25 million)
• AGRC continues to implement centerline/address data improvements in support of E911 response through a 1 cent/month cell phone tax
• The Utah Reference Network (TURN), a base station network to support survey grade GPS data collection, now contains 42 sites including partnering sites in Colorado and Arizona. The coverage area in now approximately 85% of the state
• Legislative and executive staff are utilizing GIS as a resource for growth analysis, voter information, and renewable energy projects
• Local government continues to make great progress in GIS utilization and innovation
• 2009 aerial imagery acquisition partnership with USGS and local partners

NSGIC Fall 2008 Agenda (xls format)

NSGIC Fall 2008 Presentations