1:00 PM, Thursday, January 12, 2005
Main Auditorium, Nebraska Department of Roads

Minutes

Roll Call Present were (authorized to vote *):

Complete Meeting Agenda

MAJOR MEETING TOPICS

ROLL CALL:  Chair John Miyoshi called the meeting to order and requested a roll of members present.  Ten duly authorized members were present and therefore the Steering Committee had a quorum of its members present and could conduct business. 

NOTICE OF MEETING: A public notice of the meeting, pursuant to Section 84-1411 R.R. S. 1943, had been published in the Lincoln Journal Star on January 11, 2005.

INVITATION FOR PUBLIC COMMENT FROM ATTENDEES:  John announced the open period available for public comment from those non-members attending the meeting.  No comments were offered from non-members.

APPROVAL OF 7/1/04 MINUTES:  Steve Schafer moved and Jim Langtry seconded the motion to approve the minutes of the October 28, 2004 GIS Steering Committee meeting as they were distributed.  The motion carried  unanimously.

MOVE OF LARRY ZINK, STEERING COMMITTEE COORDINATOR:  Larry Zink and Steve Schafer gave a brief report on organizational changes that are occurring within DAS information technology-related divisions.  Larry has been moved administratively from the DAS Information Management Systems (IMServices) Division to the DAS Division of Communications.  Larry office is still in the 501 S. 14th Street Bldg., but has been moved to the second floor.

NEBRASKA GIS SYMPOSIUM CO-SPONSORSHIP:  Larry Zink provided the background information on this issue and requested the Steering Committee's support for Benefactor Co-sponsorship and an Exhibitor's Booth at the 2005 Nebraska GIS Symposium to be held at the Cornhusker Hotel on May 24th thru 26th.  The costs would be $500.  Steve Schafer made a motion that the GIS Steering Committee be a Benefactor Co-sponsors and have an Exhibitor's Booth at the 2005 GIS Symposium, at a cost of $500.  Paul Yamamoto seconded the motion.  In discussion, the question was raised as to whether there was sufficient funds available to the Steering Committee.  Larry indicated that he was pretty sure that funding was available from the previous $9,000 that the Professional Surveyors Association contributed following an earlier Symposium.  Larry indicated that do in part to the IT organizational shuffle, he was not able to provide the Steering Committee with exact figure on how much of that funding was still available.  The motion was amended to authorize the co-sponsorship and exhibitors booth, if sufficient funding was available.  The motion passed unanimously.

LAND RECORDS MODERNIZATION:  

Update on Land Record Modernization Legislative Initiatives .  Larry, Steve Schafer, John Miyoshi and John Erickson reported on efforts to reach a compromise merging of last year’s Register of Deeds bill and the Land Records Information bill because they were both going after the same funds and were both related to land records.  It was reported that most of the parties appear to be willing to support the concepts outlined in conceptual paper entitled, "Key Points of Proposed Nebraska Land Information System Program Legislative Concept DRAFT Version XI", which was available at the meeting.  It was originally hoped that actual proposed legislative language would be available for the Steering Committee's review, but at the time of the meeting it was not quite ready.

Larry provided a brief overview of the agreed upon concepts:

Two Revenue Sources Proposed. Two revenue increases that are been proposed are a $5.00 recording fee increase and a $0.50/1000 increase in the documentary stamp tax.  For the first five years, the funds generated by the $5 recording fee increase would be allocated to the Register of Deeds for records preservation and modernization, as proposed in last year’s LB 232. 

Shift After Five Years. After five years, the revenue generated by the $5 recording fee increase would be shifted to a fund dedicated to supporting local government’s participation in the broader NLISP.  Local Register of Deeds would continue to be eligible to receive funding from the recording fees used to support the local efforts of NLISP, but their funding request would need to be endorsed by local/regional NLISP coordinating committees. 

Funds received by counties under the NLISP Act shall be used solely for land record preservation and the collaborative development and maintenance of automated land information systems.

Funding available to the NLISP would be allocated into three funds:

NLISP Formula Distribution Fund.  Fifty percent would be distributed, using a defined distribution formula, to counties with qualifying local/regional NLISP programs.

NLISP Grant Fund.  Twenty-five percent of the available funds would be allocated to a fund to be distributed via grants to qualifying Regional Information Service Units, county Boards, state agencies, or other political subdivisions.

NLISP State Program Fund. Twenty-five percent of the available funds will go to a state NLISP Stare Program Fund, administered by the State’s Chief Information Officer, in coordination with the Nebraska GIS Steering Committee, to be used for state-level NLISP-related activities such as statewide data integration and related system and application development, local government technical assistance, data acquisition, training, and overall program administration.

Motion to Endorse Conceptual Legislation.  In the absence of actual draft legislative language, Duane Stott made the following motion and it was seconded by Jim Langtry.  The Nebraska GIS Steering Committee expresses its support for the program concepts outlined in the “Key Points of Proposed Nebraska Land Information System Program Legislative Concept, Draft Version XI" and recommends that legislation be drafted and enacted to implement a Nebraska Land Information System Program consist with this conceptual outline.  The motion passed unanimously.

 Advisory Committee on Land Record Standards.  Larry reported that this Advisory Committee continues to meet and has developed several rough draft standards that it believes should be seriously considered if some type of Nebraska Land Information System Program is ultimately enacted by the Legislature. The latest version of these standards are available online. The Advisory Committee is focusing on the minimum standards needed to develop a useable statewide property parcel mapping system based on integrating property parcels from 93 counties.  At this point the Advisory Committee is focusing on the mapping component of the data, but also sees the attribute data as something it will consider.  The attribute data will be consider in close coordination with the Department of Property Assessment and Taxation (NPAT).  The most recent Advisory Committee meeting involved Kathy Lang and several folks from the J.D. Edwards Program at the University who are working with NPAT to review their attribute data needs. 

GIS STEERING COMMITTEE ANNUAL REPORT AND STRATEGIC PLAN:  Larry gave a powerpoint presentation of the highlights of the 2004 GIS Steering Committee Annual Report and Strategic Plan.  The report had been available online for advance Steering Committee review.  Larry noted that over the past year, several multi-year data development projects had been completed and others were moving forward and are on track.  Increasingly the Steering Committee's data development efforts are focusing more on local government data (street centerline-addresses and land records) and less on statewide data that can be developed and maintained by a state agency.  Larry also noted that the report notes the continuing evolution of partnership models for acquiring spatial data.  Larry also called to the Steering Committee's attention the recommendation in the Strategic Plan that it is timely for the Steering Committee to undertake a review of its structures and procedures, with the goal of making recommendations that might be considered by policy makers.

Jim Langtry moved and Steve Schafer seconded that the Steering Committee approve the draft 2004 Annual Report and Strategic Plan (subject to minor editorial suggestions).  The motion passed unanimously

RESCHEDULE GIS STEERING COMMITTEE MEETINGS:  Larry suggested that the Steering Committee meeting originally scheduled for May 5th should be held on May 26th, so it could be held in conjunction with the GIS Symposium.  It was also suggested that an I-Team meeting originally scheduled for May 4th be moved to May 23rd and have a focus on state-local government coordination of GIS initiatives.  Both changes received verbal support and no motion was felt necessary.

NEBRASKA GEOSPATIAL DATA CENTER:  Larry Zink noted that about  1-1/2 years the Steering Committee adopted recommendations from an Advisory Committee on Facilitating Data Sharing that among other things recommended the development of an enterprise-wide Nebraska Geospatial Data Center to be hosted by the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.  Over the last couple months, NDNR has done a lot of work to enhance the capabilities of the Nebraska Geospatial Data Center and Clearinghouse.  The challenge now is to get other agencies to document their geospatial data with metadata and publish it to the clearinghouse.

Clearinghouse.  Kim Menke, NDNR reported that right now the only data listing in the Data Center's clearinghouse is NDNR data.  Kim noted that the search functions in the Clearinghouse rely on formalized metadata about geospatial dataset.  The Data Center provides two ways to enter metadata into the Clearinghouse catalogue.  If an agency has existing metadata, it can upload that metadata to the Clearinghouse catalogue.  As part of the upload process, a parser will check the metadata and provide an error report if there are problems with the metadata attempting to be uploaded.  The other methodology for get metadata about an agency's geospatial data listing on the Clearinghouse is to use a metadata-lite online entry form that NDNR developed as part of the State Records Board grant.  This online entry form only asks for information related to a minimum subset of the full FGDC metadata.  As part of this metadata-lite online entry form, information is only requested relative to type of data, geographic area the data covers, information related to the data developer, and how one gets access to the data.  This minimum subset of the full metadata, allows the dataset to be listed and searched for in the Clearinghouse.

GIS Steering Committee Metadata Policy. Larry also called the Str. Cmte.'s attention to Kim's report that at the present time only NDNR data is currently listed in the Data Center's Clearinghouse.  Larry suggested that the real challenge now is to get agencies to do the work of documenting their existing data and listing it in the Data Center's Clearinghouse.  Larry called the Str. Cmte.'s attention to a metadata policy statement that the Str. Cmte. endorsed back in 2000.  The metadata policy calls on agencies to develop metadata for new geospatial datasets and for existing datasets as resources allow.  Larry noted that the policy statement indicates that the policy was approved for submission to the Nebraska Information Technology Commission, but that formal submission never occurred.  Larry also reported that Steve Schafer indicated that before this metadata policy could be successfully submitted to the NITC, it would need to be fleshed out more.  Larry shared with the Steering Committee a draft conceptual metadata policy and raised some of the possible variations and nuances that could be considered.   The draft conceptual policy that Larry presented was a follows.    

 "Preserving Public Investment in Geospatial Data by Documenting. To preserve public investments in geospatial data, to document and maintain the background information basis for making and implementing public policy decisions, and to save public resources by facilitate appropriate data sharing, all public agencies acquiring or developing geospatial databases should insure that each geospatial database is fully documented with FGDC-compliant metadata." 

The options for possible variations and nuances that Larry raised for the Steering Committee's consideration included the following:

1. State funds involved only versus all geospatial data

2. Internal agency data versus data available for sharing

3. New data versus existing data

4. Immediate versus staggered timeline for completion

5. Full FGDC-metadata versus metadata-lite

6. Definition of geospatial data

7. Data developed/purchased by a given agency versus data acquired by the agency from another entity, but used by the agency on policy matters.

Larry also provided the following conceptual policy standard on listing geospatial data on the clearinghouse for the Steering Committee's consideration.

"Documenting and Listing in Clearinghouse. To encourage and facilitate geospatial data sharing and to seek the maximum return on public resources invested in geospatial data development, all public agencies with geospatial data which is subject to the public records law shall document those geospatial datasets with at least the minimum metadata-lite information and use that metadata information to list each dataset in Nebraska Geospatial Data Center Clearinghouse, which will enable other potential users to search for and determine how to access this data."

Following a discussion of the draft conceptual policies and the possible variations and nuances, Larry was urged to develop a draft standard(s) and bring them to the next Steering Committee meeting for consideration.

Metadata Development Plan - UNL Libraries.  Larry reported that UNL Libraries has added a GIS staff person who it now appears will also be available to help with metadata development on a limited basis.  As an initial focus the UNL Library folks are working with updating metadata developed several years ago by the UNL Conservation and Survey Division.  This process is moving much slower than most folks hoped.

MAJOR CITIES IMAGERY:  Chris Chalmers, HHSS, gave brief report on the effort to develop a partnership between local cities/counties and HHSS to purchase high-resolution imagery (6 inch resolution) for several of Nebraska's cities.  At this point, it appears that in addition to HHSS, the following cities/counties are likely to be interested in such a partnership:  Lincoln, Lancaster County, Scottsbluff, Scotts Bluff County, Norfolk, Hastings, Grand Island, and Kearney.  We developed a four-person ad hoc committee to find out what needs to be pressed forward and what issues need to be resolved before we put out a final RFP to the vendors.  The USGS stepped up and offered to produce an RFP.  As it looks now, USGS is willing to fund 100% of the project with letters of intent from the municipalities with funding when it becomes available.  Chris indicated that he has six formal proposals in my office, at this point.  Bidders want to know who has up-to-date DEM.

Larry pointed out that there are still a lot of issues to be worked out in a pretty short timeline and unfortunately the ad hoc committee does not include anyone with much in the way of expertise in some of these areas.  However, the potential cost-savings and data rewards from this evolving partnership are pretty compelling and argue for trying to work something out.  

The Steering Committee urged Larry to continue assisting with facilitating the project as he can.

COORDINATION OF INTERNET MAP SERVER IMPLEMENTATION:  Larry reported there are several state agencies, as well as local and regional entities, that are moving to adopt Internet Map Server (IMS) technology.  One of the questions for state government, is whether every interested state agency should develop their own capability in this area or should we pool our needs and resources and develop a collaborative approach to implementing these applications and this technology?  This technology also offers the possibility for some newly interest agencies to develop initial, limited GIS applications without making a major investment in GIS.  There was general agreement that this is an area in which the Steering Committee should take the lead in exploring alternatives.  Steve Schafer moved and Paul Yamamoto seconded the following motion, which passed unanimously. 

Motion.  In response to the growing interest in Internet Mapping Service technology and the potential for multiple state and local agencies to use and invest in this technology, the GIS Steering Committee authorizes the reactivation of an Advisory Committee on Interactive Internet Mapping and charges that committee with updating its earlier recommendations and with a specific charge to research and develop recommendations related to possible collaborative mechanisms for implementing and utilizing Internet Map Server technology.

Nebraska GIS/LIS Association:  Jim Langtry reported that the GIS/LIS Association has mainly been focusing its efforts on planning for the 2005 Nebraska GIS Symposium to be held in Lincoln at the Cornhusker Hotel on May 24, 25, 26th.  

REPORT ON GIS ACTIVITIES FROM MEMBER AGENCIES:  

Sonya Sebree - USGS:  We are moving our offices.  We are moving South of Highway 2.  The address is 5231 South 19th Street.  February 18th will be the Open House.

Chris Chalmers - HHSS:  One of the major things that HHSS has going on and just completed was a Comprehensive Schools database.  It is readily available.  Also, we were able to vaccinate all of the high-risk citizens of Nebraska and were the first state to do that.  Every week, Brooke is working on a Comprehensive Lakes dataset.  She is updating that constantly.  We are working on locating our Emergency Medical Service with GPS location.

 Duane Stott - Scottsbluff:  We are trying a new approach for making data available using Publisher and an FTP site located on our web page.

 John Miyoshi - LPNNRD:  We are moving forward with Internet mapping and will be purchasing licenses from IMS.  We hope it will be available soon on our website.

 Kim Menke - NDNR:  We received a grant for work on the National Map and another for hardware.

"P"=present, "A"=absent, "+"=voting for, "-"=voting against, "NV"=not voting