EPA Geospatial Blueprint
(2010 Edition)
September 2010
I. Background
In June of 2003, EPA released its first "Geospatial Blueprint," an ambitious document that
defined the EPA's National Geospatial Program and established a concrete series of goals and
metrics with a timeline for rapidly advancing the state of geospatial technology at the Agency.
This document was a follow-up to the 2001 "Geospatial Baseline" that outlined the current state
of geospatial technology in the Agency at that point in time. Together, these documents, along
with the recently developed Geospatial Segment Enterprise Architecture have shaped the
direction of the Agency's growing geospatial program. It is clear that over the years that have
passed since the development of the 2003 Blueprint, EPA has made huge strides forward in the
organizational and technical infrastructures that support the use of geospatial technology and its
use in many business processes across the Agency.
Since the development of the 2003 Blueprint, the geospatial technology landscape has changed
drastically, as has the way these technologies are leveraged in support of the regulatory, research
and public outreach programs of the EPA. In the 1990's, advances in the geospatial community
were largely driven by the public sector — federal, state and local governments working together
with varying degrees of success towards the advancement of the National Spatial Data
Infrastructure (NSDI), an ambitious undertaking that seeks to organize and make widely
available framework geospatial data collected at all levels of government. As the public sector
embarked upon development of the NSDI, remarkable advances in computing power, the
emergence of open standards and open systems, and the increasing use of the Internet as a
distributed computing platform shaped the technology landscape for the sea of change that came
abruptly with the new century as software matured and high quality data became available across
the Internet primarily through newly implemented state and federal clearinghouses.
No one could have predicted the incredible growth in the geospatial marketplace that began with
the dawn of the 21st century. Factors leading to this growth certainly included ArcIMS
applications early in decade punctuated by the July 2005 release of Google Earth to the public,
allowing millions of consumers to quickly and easily visualize terabytes of high resolution
geospatial information, and to use this as a platform for sharing geographically referenced
content of all kinds. At the same time, an explosion in the availability of low cost integrated
GPS devices, and the rapid growth in the availability location based services that followed have
drastically changed the geospatial marketplace. In fact, the Geospatial Information and
Technology Association recently reported that the Geospatial Information Technology (GIT)
sector has recently been growing by 35% per year, with the commercial side growing at an
incredible rate of 100% annually. And as such, the US Department of Labor recently named the
geospatial technology sector as one of the three technology areas that would create the greatest
number of new jobs over the next decade. There is no denying that GIS and now GIT are
advancing more rapidly than ever.
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II. The Challenge Ahead
These explosive growth trends show no sign of changing in the near term, as technology leaders
like Microsoft, Google, Apple and Nokia have all adopted location based services as critical
components of their business strategies. All of this change in the consumer marketplace, and the
growing visibility of geospatial technology across all sectors of the economy and throughout the
world have led many in the public sector to re-evaluate their geospatial investments to meet the
needs of newly geospatial savvy information consumers. Expectations are changing rapidly.
More and more, citizens expect government to provide data to them in their specific geographic
"area of interest" (AOI) context. In many cases, citizens want to know what is happening in
their neighborhood?
Perhaps nothing is more indicative of the opportunities that lie ahead for geospatial technology in
the federal sector than the ambitious technology agenda that has been laid out by the Obama
Administration. The August 11, 2009 memo from the White House emphasizing the
"Developing Effective Place Based Policies for the FY 2011 Budget" underlines the concern
about the "where" aspect of data for enhanced decision-making. Consumers of government
information want to see data that is meaningful in their neighborhood or area of interest, and for
the first time, the work of the professional geospatial community is highly visible in the public
eye, and demand for geospatial information is arguably at an all time high. This is emphasized by
the June 2009 report by Congressional Research Service, titled "Geospatial Information and
Geographic Information Systems (GIS): Current Issues and Future Challenges." There are now
many players in the GIS arena and they are all struggling with how to move ahead together in a
enterprise way, to build once, use many, to continue the successes of the National Spatial Data
Infrastructure, and to build applications that serve their agency needs, their clients needs, and the
needs of the citizens.
With all of this rapid change underway, now is an ideal time to revisit the goals, objectives and
plans outlined in the EPA Geospatial Blueprint and to re-envision the Agency's geospatial
program in light of the current state of technology and the maturity of the geospatial industry,
and to create an action agenda that will guide our shared efforts in the short and medium term. It
is important to emphasize that the goals and actions described in what follows are intentionally
focused on the next two years. Because of the extremely rapid rate of change in the geospatial
technology space, it would be imprudent to make specific plans looking too far into the future.
This version of the Blueprint, then, should be considered a living document that will be updated
on an approximately annual basis to reflect changes in technology and the changing use of GIT
at the Agency and among our partners.
EPA's Office of Environmental Information (OEI) has completed a crosswalk of the key aspects
of President Obama's technology goals and vision with our own Agency's strategic technology
goals, and many of these are highly relevant to the goals and near term action plan for the
geospatial program. In fact, virtually all of the OEI goals and objectives (Figure 1) are supported
by components of the strategic plan for the geospatial program presented here.
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EPA's Information Vision.
READILY A VAIL ABLE INFORMATION SERVES AS A STRATEGIC
RESOURCE FOR PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT
O Ur Mission: Connecting people with information to advance environmental protection andhuman health
Achieving the Mission: OEI's Goals and Objectives
Promote and Facilitate Transparency
• Publish EPA information in common formats;
• Where appropriate, make source code,
documentation, and data readily ava ila ble;
• Arm citizens with cross-government
envi ron men tal i nfo rmat ion;
• Architect systems to work with other systems or
prod ucts wi tho ut s pe d a I ef f o rt or p ri or
communication
Coordinate and DeliverAccess toHigh Quality
Information
• Make the 'pedigree' of information transparent;
• Improve enterprise search capabilities;
• Promote, facilitate, and showcase effective use of
environmental information by EPA and others;
• Create a single point of presence on epa.gov for
syndicated data of all types;
• Explore ways to optimize and improve Agency
access to interna I data and data held by our
partners;
• Implement the quality policy.
Champion Collaboration and Participation
Provision new collaboration workspaces with dear
polides about acceptable use;
Promote crowd-sou re ing to engage more people in the
wo rk of th e Ag ency;
Facilitate the organization and tagging of
environmental in form atio n to improve reuse;
Experiment with use of sodal networking technology;
Broke r ente rp rise access to d ata ou tside o ur n etwork.
Ma intainan Agile and Secure Infrastructure
Develop strategy for delivering services that leverage
best of breed consumer technologies;
Source new cap abilities from wherever ma kes the
most sense, balancing security / risk / eff id ency;
Ensure a solid and capable platform for rapid
prototyping and testing of new technologies;
Deliver per son-centric computing experiences to
employees.
I Howdoweget there? Re-tool for 21st Century Challenges, Champ fan Information and Broker Data, Inspire with Infrastructure I
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Current Use of Geospatial Technologies at EPA
Introduction
Geospatial technologies are now broadly used across the full range of the Agency's programs. In
fact, it is difficult to think of an EPA program that does not utilize geospatial data and
applications in at least a limited way to carry out their critical functions. Moreover, it is now
frequently the case that a wide range of users in each organization has access to and gains
business value from using these types of resources - ranging from GIS Professionals that
develop and produce data, high quality cartographic products, spatial models and complex web
applications to Senior Managers who utilize these derived products in user friendly visualization
environments to facilitate environmental decision making and communications. A small
sampling of typical applications of geospatial technology at the Agency would include the
following:
Program Offices
• Protecting drinking water supplies
• Conducting analyses to help manage urban growth
• Responding to oil spills and other emergency situations
• Identifying sources of pollution for source water protection
• Examining and allocating regional acid precipitation allowances
• Conducting ecological and human health risk assessments
• Modeling the distributions of invasive species
• Identifying priority sites for cleanup and enforcement action
Regional Offices
• Developing Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) assessments for water bodies
• Tracking storage and transport of toxic substances
• Cleaning up and monitoring Superfund sites
• Monitoring water quality
• Assessing children's health
• Analyzing environmental justice issues
• Evaluating air emissions and ambient air conditions
• Modeling watersheds and storm water drainage systems
Office of Research and Development
• Conducting habitat assessments
• Detecting and evaluating landscape patterns and changes
• Conducting real-time environmental monitoring
• Studying the effects of urbanization at multiple spatial and temporal scales
• Developing accuracy assessment protocols
• Creating 3D visualizations of specific sites
• Analyzing the relationship between human health and environmental contamination
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Assessment of Near Term Opportunities for Improvement and Growth
While the use of geospatial technology, and more generally, the application of place-based
approaches have grown at the EPA over the past several years, there is room for improvement in
and expansion of the National Geospatial Program (NGP). In reviewing the 2003 Geospatial
Blueprint "Time Frames for Geospatial Program Activities," it is clear that most of the originally
defined short and long term goals for the NGP have been achieved. Based on changes in the
nature of geospatial technology, and the expanding use of these resources throughout the public
sector, it is now appropriate to evaluate the NGP as a mature program, and to define its current
strengths, weaknesses and potential opportunities as part of the effort to re-define our shared
programmatic goals and objectives. The strengths, weaknesses and opportunities listed below
are in no particular order. Each should be considered to be of equal significance with all other
items in the respective lists.
Strengths
• Agency GIS Workgroup: The GIS WG now plays an integral, well defined role in the
governance process for the NGP, and sets priorities for the use of central acquisitions and
programmatic strategies. The GIS WG has been an integral component to the success of
coordinating geospatial activities across the Agency, and serves as a model for other
similar distributed technology programs at the EPA and throughout the federal
government.
• Central Support Team and XB Funding: Establishment and refinement of the Working
Capital Fund "XB" has greatly advanced the ability of the GIS WG to define and
implement key components of the shared core geospatial architecture, and has created a
stable pool of shared funds that can be applied for the good of the Agency as a whole.
The Central GIS Support Team at the NCC is enabled by these funds, and staff
throughout the Agency benefit from their skills and expertise in assisting with a wide
range of geospatial issues.
• Enterprise Geospatial Software and Data Licensing: Likewise, pooling Agency funds to
leverage the buying power of all users of geospatial data and software has been highly
beneficial to the EPA and our partners. This includes a wide range of Enterprise License
Agreements (ELAs) with ESRI, Google, Microsoft, TeleAtlas and others. Our ELA
arrangements have saved the Agency millions of dollars in outright expenditures and
countless hours of FTE effort by streamlining and centralizing these critical functions.
• EPA 's Partnership With the FGDC: As of 2010, EPA is an extremely active participant
in the work of the Federal Geographic Data Committee as well as the OMB Geospatial
Line of Business (GeoLOB) activities. With representation on the Executive Steering
Committee, the National Geospatial Advisory Committee FACA, the Steering
Committee, and a leadership role in the work of the Coordination Committee, EPA has
made a major investment in time to the FGDC, and the benefits of this engagement are
now coming to fruition (see items below).
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• Potential for Geospatial SmartBuy: One of the major, EPA-led activities of the GeoLOB
has been the development and upcoming release of a GSA "SmartBuy" procurement
package for geospatial data and software. This effort has the potential to further drive
down costs to EPA for acquiring data and software that we need to carry out our business
efficiently and effectively, and to introduce new technology to the Agency that would
have been prohibitively expensive in the past due to relatively small purchase volume at
EPA. By leveraging the purchasing power of the entire federal government, the
Geospatial SmartBuy has great potential for advancing the state of the geospatial program
at EPA considerably in the near future.
• Clarity in Roles and Responsibilities under OMB Circular A-16: As a huge consumer of
geodata produced by other federal agencies, it is critical to EPA that all of our partners
understand and fulfill their roles and responsibilities for development of critical data
layers under the rubric of OMB Circular A-16. EPA led the GeoLOB effort to develop
comprehensive Supplemental Guidance to help agencies better implement the
requirements of Circular A-16, and this effort will pay off tremendously for the Agency
in the coming months and years.
• Growing interest in and awareness of geospatial technology: Most generally, it is
abundantly clear that staff at all levels of government, and stakeholders from all sectors
of the economy are utilizing geospatial technology more and more frequently on a daily
basis. The availability of GIT has become commonplace, and mapping and location
based services are expected by our information consumers. This is an important moment
in time for the federal geospatial community, who must work together to develop systems
and programs that meet or exceed these high expectations, and must take advantage of
the burgeoning interest in what was once a niche discipline in which only a small cadre of
experts were able to participate.
Weaknesses
• Lack of an Agency-wide Enterprise Data Acquisition Strategy: While this issue is not
necessarily uniquely one of the NGP, it is a problem that EPA suffers from more than
most groups at the Agency. The Geospatial Community at EPA is often the originator of
requirements for relatively high cost data acquisition from private and public sector
enterprises. As such, there have been several highly successful data acquisitions led and
implemented by the geospatial team over the past several years including TeleAtlas
streets and points of interest data and the NatureServe sensitive species database.
However, many other data requirements have been raised, and there is no formal Agency-
wide process to evaluate these requirements in light of all of the other requests for
enterprise data that have not been fulfilled across the Agency, nor is there a mechanism to
identify priority purchases and to centrally fund these. We are also lacking a formal
policy for reaching out to other Agencies or states to partner in data development of
mutual interest. Instead, we tend to fund these efforts through ad-hoc "pass the hat"
mechanisms that are difficult to sustain or rely solely on other agencies to provide.
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• Source Code and Web Service Re-Use is Unnecessarily Limited. Many geospatial
applications are developed and used throughout the Agency each year. Generally
speaking, we have only a very limited sense of what is available through all of these
distributed efforts, and arguably none of the source code is made available for re-use in a
systematic and enterprise manner. This results in potentially redundant effort and
generally limits innovation that might otherwise be fostered by allowing new developers
access to well document source code. Similarly, developers generally "hard code"
analytical functionality and environmental models into monolithic code bases that can not
easily be shared and are expensive to deploy EPA needs to encourage the developer
community to move towards the creation of analytical components as re-usable web
services that are available to EPA and our trusted partners through a new enterprise
strategy.
• Legacy Applications Not Yet Upgraded to New Technology: While EPA was an early
innovator in the federal community with the release of many powerful and widely used
web mapping applications, many of these applications are now perceived as out-of-date
by our customers who are now used to using Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth and
Google Earth on a wide range of platforms including their mobile phones. EPA is
working to upgrade our public facing geospatial applications to more effectively leverage
this consumer technology, but there is work that remains ahead of us to migrate
functionality from all of the geospatial applications that exist at EPA into modern
environments. Again an enterprise strategy plan is required to implement this vision.
• Difficulty Keeping Up With the Pace of Change in GIT: The item above is a specific
example of a more generic problem that the EPA National Geospatial Program is faced
with. Introducing new technology into the federal computing enterprise is generally a
difficult and lengthy process. Some of this is for purposes of protecting federal computer
networks and ensuring that new technology can be safely integrated into a complex
enterprise. However, it is clear that if the federal government wishes to remain a leader
in the delivery of geospatial applications and data to the public, that we must learn how to
be more flexible in our approaches to ensure that we can take advantage of new
technology while it is still new and innovative. A first step in this direction would be the
direction of a near term geospatial technology roadmap, which this document will
address.
• Inability to Fully Leverage Partners to Achieve Shared Goals: While staff working
together in the EPA Geospatial Community has established a wide range of important
relationships with partners across many organizations in the public and private sectors,
our efforts are generally disorganized and at times we have worked across purposes. We
have worked as individuals as opposed to corporate agents for EPA. The important
problems the Geospatial Community is tackling can only be solved through integrated
efforts of many working together in concert. Partnerships are critical to our shared
success, and partnerships take time and effort to foster and then to fully leverage. By
focusing on GIS policy, standards and GIS implementation issues at Headquarters and by
more fully defining the relationships between the regions, and the regions and OEI
through the GIO, we as a Geospatial Community can achieve greater success overall
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internally and externally through partnerships. As such, providing for enhanced
coordination of activities internally and then with outside partners is an important focus
of the strategic plan activities outlined below in this document.
• Lack of Shared, Collaborative Computing Infrastructure Necessary to Foster Innovation:
As described in several sections above, we are truly in the midst of a geospatial
technology revolution. Yet we are not well positioned at EPA to quickly benefit from
this newly available technology in part because we have only a limited ability to bring
tools, software and services in to the enterprise in an environment that is designed for
testing, interactive and collaborative design, and rapid prototyping. This idea has been
proposed as "beta.epa.gov" as a potential activity resulting from the 2008 National
Dialogue on Access to Environmental Information, and availability of such a system
would be a tremendous step forward to foster greater innovation in the geospatial
community at EPA.
Opportunities
• Mobile Devices, Location Based Services and Applications: The availability of
inexpensive, extremely powerful mobile devices with integrated GPS receivers represents
a landmark moment in the history of the geospatial marketplace. In the coming years,
many of our employees, partners and stakeholders will be carrying consumer-grade
devices in their pockets that are more powerful than the dedicated workstations we used
to perform geospatial analysis only a decade ago. EPA needs to start delivering relevant,
location-based applications to our increasingly mobile consumers of information. This
will have benefits both in terms of making mobile EPA staff more productive when they
are away from a traditional office environment, as well as more broad benefits to the
"Text Messaging Generation," who are increasingly abandoning traditional workstation
and browser-based applications in favor of light mobile interfaces on cellular telephones
and other small and portable devices.
• Volunteered Geographic Information / "Citizens As Sensors": Aside from delivering
applications and data to mobile information consumers, EPA and our public sector
partners have a tremendous opportunity to leverage the power of mass collaboration in a
spatial context to advance the protection of human health and the environment.
Examples of the power of this approach include geo-tagged entries in Wikipedia,
Volunteer Water Monitoring individuals and NGOs, sites like OpenStreetMap that
support volunteer efforts to create public domain geospatial data layers, geo-tagged
photographs on Flickr and mashups with Google Earth, Google Maps and Microsoft
Virtual Earth. These efforts have demonstrated that interested and engaged citizens are
willing to contribute their time, energy and expertise into large scale collaborative
development of geospatial content. EPA should work with partners and explore the
potential opportunities in this area.
• Facilitating Geospatial Mashups: The explosion of geospatial web services on the
internet, and more specifically, the advancement of KML as a de facto standard for
sharing all kinds of geospatial information has created a strong community of volunteer
application developers that work to present government data in novel ways. In the past,
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releasing EPA data in ways that facilitate this type of community driven interpretation
and presentation of our information holdings presented both technological and
organizational challenges. There is now a growing movement in the Agency and among
our partners towards embracing this community of external analysts and developers, and
more programs are heeding the call to "set our data free" and to make it available for use
in geospatial mashups and other similar applications. The EPA GIS community should
embrace this movement and encourage decision makers in their organizations to be
moving in this direction.
• Publishing of Geospatial Analytical Services: The Agency has made great strides
towards publishing key environmental data as web services. However, we have not yet
begun to systematically publish geospatial web services for analytical purposes. The
potential benefits of this are wide ranging. Consider how many different programs at
EPA have a business requirement to capture demographic information around a spatial
feature (a facility, school, stream, wetland or watershed, for example). Re-creating this
analytical capability in every desktop, client/server and web application that we have
developed to facilitate these business processes is a tremendous waste of time and
resources. Yet this is what EPA and other large organizations have traditionally tended
to do. EPA already owns the back-office software enterprise applications that are
necessary to allow people from across the Agency to develop and publish re-usable
geoanalytical services that can be used and re-used throughout the enterprise. This is an
investment that we must begin to leverage more fully in the coming months and years.
EPA needs to address the overall strategy for data distribution as an enterprise that
includes services, mashups, downloads, searchable repositories, etc.
• Virtual Globes: As mentioned above, the public release of Google Earth in the summer
of 2005 was truly a watershed moment for the geospatial community. For the first time,
many of us in the geospatial practitioner community are able to quickly and easily
explain what we do for a living to our friends and colleagues outside of our tight group of
peers. Google Earth has been downloaded and installed hundreds of millions of times in
the past five years. EPA needs to take advantage of this widespread interest in GIT, and
this massive install base. With the upcoming release of EPA Earth, we will be taking the
first steps in this new direction.
• Geo-enablement of the Exchange Network: One of the major near term opportunities for
the NGP is to continue its efforts towards geo-enabling the National Environmental
Information Exchange Network (NEIN). There is a growing recognition inside the EPA
technology community and among our NEIN partners that we need to expand the
umbrella of the Exchange Network to bring in more partners with more diverse interests
and application requirements to fully utilize the power of the network. A major step
towards achieving this goal would be the adoption of an open geospatial standards
"layer" on the Exchange Network, whereby Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services
can be automatically produced from existing NEIN flows, and then consumed by clients
that have no knowledge of the Exchange Network itself. This model builds on the
successes of the NEIN community in creating the sophisticated and valuable exchange
schema to define many different types of environmental information, while opening the
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door to participation by individuals and organizations that are not conversant in the suite
of Exchange Network services and methods.
• Recovery Act Spending Tracking: The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009 is an unprecedented government spending package that seeks to enhance the US
economy through the execution of a number of diverse activities around the country.
EPA has received a significant portion of the Recovery Act funding, most of which will
be passed to different state programs as grantees who will share responsibility for
monitoring performance and results for all funded activities, and reporting back to EPA
and OMB with high frequency. Providing the public with easy to use and understand
web mapping applications that depict the spatial patterns of these allocations represents a
high profile, important and compelling use of geospatial technology to support the call
for transparency and efficiency in the expenditure of these funds. Moreover, the
opportunity exists to leverage our experience in developing geographic ARRA tracking
systems to expand the use of geospatial analysis and technology to the analysis of all
EPA assistance programs.
The Way Forward
By no means complete or comprehensive, these lists of NGP strengths, weaknesses and
opportunities will help define the path forward by forming the basis for specific goals and
activities that are presented below. It is important to note that completing activities in relation to
all of the broad ideas and notions laid out above would likely require several years. As discussed
earlier in this document, however, the rate of change in the geospatial technology sector is so
rapid at this time, it would not be prudent to form concrete action plans for work more than 2
years down the road.
The goals and proposed activities presented below, then, represent just that - a set of short to
medium term activities that will help move the program forward immediately, and that will serve
as the basis for a future revision to this planning document that will outline a concrete set of next
steps outlined in six major categories.
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III. Goals, Objectives and Actions
The goals, objectives and proposed actions presented below are organized by the same
framework as the Federal Enterprise Architecture: Business Processes, Data Architecture,
Applications Architecture, Technology Architecture and Governance Architecture, Outreach
This alignment is important in that it provides linkages to not only the Geospatial Segment EA
that was first submitted to OMB as an "in progress" Segment in 2008, but also provides
opportunities for linkages to EA artifacts being produced by our partners in the EPA Program
Offices and in other federal agencies.
Each of the enterprise components includes an overall goal with multiple objectives and action
items. Timelines under which to accomplish each of the specific activities will be established
after task leads and participants for each component of the work have been identified, however, a
general presentation of the highest priority activities is presented in Section IV: Conclusion and
Next Steps below.
Goal 1: Business Processes
Improve EPA decision making by incorporating place based approaches, data, tools and
intelligence into a widening range of EPA business processes.
Objectives and Action Items
1.1 Enhance the Agency-wide appreciation for locational data and analyses as key tools for
protecting human health and the environment.
• Action 1.1.1: Participate in EPA overarching Enterprise Architecture efforts to ensure the
incorporation of location-based approaches in the business planning of all EPA
organizations.
• Action 1.1.2: Engage the Agency geospatial community in the refinement and
maintenance of the EPA Geospatial Blueprint.
1.2 Assist EPA business owners in understanding how geospatial information and analytical
methods can support their specific business processes.
• Action 1.2.1: Select two major EPA business processes, and assign staff to work as
partners and enablers to document the business plan and therefore the enhanced role
geospatial technology can add to improving and streamlining the business process for that
particular program.
• Action 1.2.2: Lead the Agency's efforts towards including geographic information and
interactive mapping capabilities in support of http://www.epa.gov/recovery
• Action 1.2.3: Participate in one or more external Communities of Interest in a business
area that could benefit from geospatial approaches.
• Action 1.2.4: Participate in one or more Agency-sponsored programmatic conferences or
meetings, make presentation(s) about central geospatial capabilities at the Agency and
seek input on direction and most useful next steps.
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1.3 Improve the sharing of knowledge regarding the most effective uses of geospatial
technology across the Agency.
• Action 1.3.1: Using a collaborative computing environment, develop and maintain a
living reference document containing best practices for using geospatial data,
technologies and analytical methods to address EPA business requirements.
• Action 1.3.2: Seek input from programs concerning the enhancement and geospatial
automation of their business process with GIS data, tools and applications.
• Action 1.3.3: Create an Enterprise plan such that these enhancements are portable to
other regions and programs. Consider a process by which enhancements are vetted by the
GIS Workgroup.
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Goal 2: Data Architecture
Provide EPA staff, partners and stakeholders with the geospatial data they need to effectively
support sound, science based decision making.
Objectives and Action Items
2.1 Align and optimize centralized geodata holdings. For several years, the Agency's
Integrated GeoDatabase (IGD) has served as the primary repository of geospatial data
used by several enterprise applications and a handful of geospatial analysts using desktop
GIS software. For a variety of reasons, this solution has not yet evolved to become a true
central archive of Agency-wide "common use" geospatial data. The development and
maintenance of this archive is a critical function of the National Geospatial Program, as it
will minimize redundant work across the Agency and help ensure high quality, consistent
information is being used across the diverse programs of the Agency. A number of
specific actions pertaining to IGD and related assets are presented below.
• Action 2.1.1: Incorporate the Office of Pesticide Programs "Big Decisions" data into the
IGD.
• Action 2.1.2: Explore the possibility of including other key Agency geodata sets into the
IGD as well, including the Reach Address Database and the National Hydrography
Dataset.
• Action 2.1.3: Create FGDC compliant metadata records for each data layer in the IGD.
Publish these records in the GeoData Gateway.
• Action 2.1.4: Develop a short paper outlining options for using external geodata services,
both commercial and public sector, to replace or supplement some of the holdings of the
IGD.
• Action 2.1.5: Set and publish clear, enforceable maintenance schedules for all data layers
in the IGD.
• Action 2.1.6: Establish Change Control Board to inform users and developers of IGD
status and planned changes that may affect other use of the database.
• Action 2.1.7: Compare the layers held in the IGD (plus Big Decisions) with the existing
and planned holdings in EPA Earth. Report on redundancies or potential redundancies
between these systems.
• Action 2.1.8: Develop a brief data acquisition, maintenance and access plan that
incorporates the holdings of both IGD and EPA Earth. Release this plan to the GIS
Workgroup for feedback, and ultimately for communications with staff in offices across
the Agency.
• Action 2.1.9: Prepare a communications document with instructions and processes for
connecting to the modernized IGD, considering connections from both applications and
desktop client software and including clear guidance for submitting user feedback
• Action 2.1.10: Explore the option of hosting some IGD data layers in the cloud
environments like ESRI ArcGIS Online and the Dept. of Interior's Geospatial Platform.
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• Action 2.1.11: Propose a cost structure to upper management to maintain IGD as an
overhead charge (including both services and database storage).
• Action 2.1.12: Develop target IGD structure that includes OGC, KML, direct database,
and Clip-N-Ship access methods
2.2 Optimize enterprise license agreements for large commercial datasets
• Action 2.2.1: Re-evaluate EPA's use of Aerial and Satellite Imagery services and
implement the best value solution.
• Action 2.2.2: Re-evaluate EPA's use of Commercial Street Network data and implement
the best value solution.
• Action 2.2.3: Closely monitor EPA use of newly developed NatureServe web services to
build a costing model that can be capitalized in the Working Capital Fund in subsequent
project years.
2.3 Ensure that geospatial data are accurate, well documented and available to all users
• Action 2.3.1: Review and modify as appropriate the EPA Locational Data Policy.
Reaffirm or retire policy depending on current appropriateness and relevance.
• Action 2.3.2: Establish clear, transparent guidance for the collection and maintenance of
EPA locational data (e.g. the LRT of FRS) to better address Regional and Program Office
requirements.
2.4 Maintain and improve the master catalogs of geospatial information to facilitate use by
EPA and its partners
• Action 2.4.1: Release a public-facing version of the EPA GeoData Gateway (GDG).
• Action 2.4.2: Review and modify as appropriate the EPA policies and procedures
pertaining to geospatial metadata.
• Action 2.4.3: Upgrade the GDG to the most current release of ArcGIS Server software.
• Action 2.4.4: Continue to lead the multi-organizational ESRI GIS Portal Toolkit User
Group
• Action 2.4.5: Explore opportunities for virtualization of the GDG application to facilitate
efficient operation and potential re-use of the code by EPA business units and our
partners.
• Action 2.4.6: Release documented source code for the entirety of the GDG to the public
under a Creative Commons or similar license agreement.
2.5 Participate in efforts to improve the quality and accessibility of geospatial data
nationwide. Historically the National Spatial Data Infrastructure, although a well
intended concept, has never been never fully funded or implemented. Consequently, EPA
must advocate for improvements in the execution of this initiative to support the agency,
agency clients, the public and President Obama's' initiatives.
• Action 2.5.1: Increase and coordinate participation outside the agency in State and
national efforts that promote more effective use of geospatial data for environmental
decision making (e.g., NSGIC, FGDC, GeoLOB, Open Geospatial Consortium, GEOSS,
etc.)
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• Action 2.5.2: Coordinate with other Departments and Agencies as well as components of
the Executive Office of the President on geospatial issues that support major policy
initiatives. These issues includes the development and publication of quality geodata
needed for analysis of issues concerning, Urban Centers, the Mortgage Housing Crisis,
Coastal Flooding and Near Shore Resilient Communities, Rural Areas.
• Action 2.5.3: Establish a process for setting annual priorities with other partners for
entering into geospatial data acquisition, development or exchange partnerships to ensure
the availability of geospatial data that would be beneficial to EPA business.
• Action 2.5.4: Develop and implement standard grant and contract requirements to ensure
that environmental data collected or developed with EPA funds are consistently
compliant with the EPA Locational Data Policy, FGDC data and metadata standards, etc.
Explore flexibility in grants such that other agencies grants can be pooled for important
projects as mentioned in 2.5.2
• Action 2.5.5: Reassess the EPA strategy regarding Data.gov, Geospatial One Stop and the
National Map for data searching, retrieval viewing and download.
2.6 Assist the Office of Environmental Information and the QIC in their efforts to facilitate
Agency-wide data publishing.
• Action 2.6.1: Using the GDG as a platform, establish a simple geodata publishing
procedure that allows data holders to provide their data to OEI/OIC for storage on the
public facing GDG. Metadata records in GDG can then point to this public address for
data dissemination.
• Action 2.6.2: Work with OEI Senior Management to prototype a geospatial data
publishing capability. Capability will allow EPA staff to publish their data holdings as
GeoRSS / GML for use in mashups and related applications.
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Goal 3: Applications Architecture
Provide EPA staff, partners and stakeholders with applications and web services needed to
leverage the power of geospatial information and analysis to make better environmental
decisions
Objectives and Action Items
3.1 Align and optimize public facing web mapping applications. As described in detail
above, EPA was truly one of the original innovators in providing geospatial information to the
public through a series of well designed web applications. Several years have gone by since this
initial wave of innovation, and a diverse range of central applications have been produced that
fulfill a wide range of user needs. That said, there is some confusion among our stakeholders as
to what the preferred and authoritative mapping applications for the Agency are, particularly
given the overlaps in data holdings among EPA's public facing applications. Moreover, there
are differences in interface design and functionality among our many different public facing
mapping applications that could potentially benefit from standardization.
• Action 3.1.1: Establish the myEnvironment application as the central source for
publishing all OEI geospatial information in one internet-facing location.
• Action 3.1.2: Decommission the OEI Window to My Environment application and OEFs
EnviroMapper on a timetable that is expeditious, but minimally disruptive to any current
users of the application who must transition to myEnvironment.
• Action 3.1.3: Evaluate opportunities for consolidating the FRS LRT Viewer application
on a timetable that is expeditious, but minimally disruptive to any current users of the
application who must transition to myEnvironment.
• Action 3.1.4: Ensure that cross-linkages exist on myEnvironment and the public facing
GeoData Gateway to clearly establish these two sites as the authoritative central site for
access to data and services from the EPA National Geospatial Program.
• Action 3.1.5: Convene a working group of members from across the Agency with the
goal of establishing a core web mapping package with standard look, feel and navigation
elements.
3.2 Optimize and roll out virtual globe client software to EPA staff
• Action 3.2.1: Evaluate the best path forward for EPA use of Google Earth software,
considering the appropriate mixture of free, "Professional" and "Enterprise" versions of
the client.
• Action 3.2.2: Work with the CTS team to build Google Earth into a future version of the
Agency's standard desktop image.
• Action 3.2.3: Release "EPA Earth," and publicize the availability of the corporate Google
Earth server environment to the Agency as widely as possible.
• Action 3.2.4: Work with Senior Leadership from multiple Program Offices to define and
implement a funding strategy to support the Agency's investment in Google Earth for the
foreseeable future.
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3.3 Enhance documentation and sharing ofgeospatial application source code
• Action 3.3.1: Develop and assist with the issuance of a ClO-issued policy on application
source code documentation.
• Action 3.3.2: Develop OEI standard procedures and operating principles related to source
code documentation and Government open source.
• Action 3.3.3: Assist OEI Senior Leadership with the definition and initial implementation
of "EPA Forge," a central location for software code sharing built upon the SourceForge
open source model (and following the lead of the Department of Defense who recently
released forge.mil).
3.4 Facilitate innovation in the development of location-aware mobile applications across
EPA
• Action 3.4.1: Select one Program Office to partner with towards the development of
requirements for one or more mobile geospatial applications suitable for a wide range of
users.
• Action 3.4.2: Establish and lead a multi-organizational (public / private / not-for-profit)
team that works together to define shared requirements for mobile location-aware
applications in the environmental arena.
• Action 3.4.3: Engage Senior Leadership from one or more Program Offices to
demonstrate the potential benefits of mobile application development for helping the
Agency carry out its research and regulatory agenda.
3.5 Implement prioritization process for XB-funded central geospatial applications
• Action 3.5.1: Continue issuing quarterly reports of XB activities to the GIO and the GIS
Workgroup Steering Committee
• Action 3.5.2: With QIC approval, modify the GIS Workgroup Charter to codify the
process through which the GIS WG Steering Committee advises the GIO on strategic
planning for the expenditure of XB funds.
• Action 3.5.3: In the short term, support two long standing high-priority efforts using XB
funding: Map Tracker and the GIS / ER Subgroup requirements for an FTP server.
3.6 Increase Agency-wide awareness of and access to available geospatial tools to conduct
EPA business
• Action 3.6.1: Work in concert with the GIS Workgroup and the QIC to establish a
prioritization process for investments and enterprise licensing of key geospatial tools.
• Action 3.6.2: Establish and implement procedures and tools to document, inventory and
advertise all geospatial applications and services developed within EPA.
3.7 Promote better integrated geospatial data and technology in support of broad initiatives
on transparency and openness: It is imperative that the EPA continue to share data with clients,
the public and other interested parties in a transparent way that improves our shared capability
for environmental decision-making. EPA has several Internet applications that have served the
public well over the years but that may need upgrades to the applications architecture, or
redeployed in less costly off-the-shelf softwares. The EPA needs to take a fresh look at these
opportunities for increased service with cost containment.
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Action 3.7.1: Explore what other agencies or states have done in regard to this issue
of using easy to use, off the shelf software, to serve data rich applications on the
Intranet that can be leveraged for possible Internet deployment to clients and citizens,
These applications should be somewhat light weight, but have rich feature and data
report tables that allow users to get answers to common questions about water, air,
land use, what's in my neighborhood?
Action 3.7.2: Explore application frameworks and templates that are inexpensive, off-
the-shelf, require little custom code, provide GIS functionality, link to parametric
data/BI reports and are easy to deploy as new issues arise. Application(s) of this type
can be shared by regions and be large in terms of delivering geospatial data and
parametric data to EPA program users that are not geospatial experts
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Goal 4: Technology Architecture
Modernize and maintain an enterprise infrastructure that supports access, use, management
and delivery of distributed geospatial data, applications and web services in an efficient and
effective manner.
Objectives and Action Items
4.1 Finalize and adopt a formal strategy for the use of commercial mapping APIs across the
Agency
[[ TEXT REMOVED DUE TO PROCUREMENT SENSITIVITY, AVAILABLE TO EPA
EMPLOYEES UPON REQUEST ]]
4.2 Explore options for visualization
• Action 4.2.1: Develop use-cases/requirements for geospatial application, desktop, and
workstation virtualization.
• Action 4.2.2: Form team to characterize an emergency response specific implementation
of virtualization, including an SOP that considers resource requirements, contract
requirements, and benchmarking.
• Action 4.2.3: Engage with IRM chiefs on possibilities for implementing a virtualized or
distributed IGD (East/West replication).
4.3 Explore options for cloud computing
• Action 4.3.1: Establish a core work group to define a proposed shared workspace
environment for EPA, including the following key components:
• A common business case for the shared environment that broadcasts the long-term
benefits and savings of using the approach
• Standard contract language that will assist groups in consistently outlining
requirements for application code/components sharing.
• A cost structure that encourages participation; will not require additional costs for
those who do choose to participate.
• Includes a moderator who oversees postings and performs quality control on content.
• Is accessible to the extranet (should be in the DMZ)
• Requires that users subscribe or do something similar so that updates to code/services
can be broadcast to the community effectively.
• Considers the role of RCS
4.4 Expand geospatial capabilities of the Exchange Network
• Action 4.4.1 Consider a Challenge Grant to a successful GIS agency to explore how
the Exchange Network can be leveraged as a data repository for a wide variety of
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users. Work with the EN to be more visible through outreach to states and potential
consumers of data.
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Goal 5: Governance Architecture
Mature and refine an effective governance structure for setting priorities for geospatial
investments, coordinating geospatial efforts, and advocating for the effective use of geospatial
data and technologies throughout the Agency and outside the agency on a federal task force
level. Enhance outreach opportunities to clients and the public.
Objectives and Action Items
5.1. Enhance Geospatial Governance Framework. Governance, by definition, documents roles
and relationships of interested parties of like mind with action items that need to be addressed
and who want a louder voice in the geospatial debate. Governance then is a tool that successful
organizations, groups, interested parties in government use to govern the actions of themselves
and to influence the actions and decisions of others. Governance adds a level of credibility
beyond that of "people of like mind or interest." Therefore the EPA GIS Workgroup should
consider an enhanced governance model for themselves that adds legitimacy to their actions and
assists them in their effort to meet shared needs.
• Action 5.1.1: Enter into dialog with the QIC regarding the potential role of the EPA
GIS WG as an active entity with a charter and designated responsibilities within the
overall EPA IT governance framework.
• Action 5.1.2: Evaluate the GIS WG governance model that organizes relationships,
and key activities into a group initiative that can be recognized as having a key role in
larger issues based on the weight of the partners working together.
• Action 5.1.3: Develop a position paper on unmet governance requirements of the GIS
Workgroup. This paper should explore several issues, including: How does the
Workgroup evaluate a proposal for an application of another region. Is there a
standard that must be met? How do regional WG members organize their states?
Some of these issues may be organized in other documents as procedural.
• Action 5.1.4: The GIO will address the issue of governance as it relates to the re-
tooling of government committees that have been assigned geospatial initiatives in
the past but that have not proven to be successful nor meet the current vision of EPA
as defined in this document.
• Action 5.1.5: As part of governance for the Workgroup, the Regional GIS Leads
should look to have a voice in states governance models if possible. These actions
will encourage collaboration, trust, and ultimately improve relationships that fosters
good data, good data practices, shared applications and perhaps architecture, and
improve environmental decision -making, by making it more cross media, faster,
more insightful.
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• Action 5.1.6: The GIS Workgroup will convene a discussion on the relationship
between funds Regional offices receive from Headquarters and general roles and
responsibilities for regional GIS operations in support of national programs.
• Action 5.1.7: Leadership of the GIS Workgroup and the GIO will continually seek
opportunities to present findings and mission to groups both inside and outside of
EPA. By presenting success stories, EPA GIS initiatives will garner support from a
wide audience. This should include active participation in more Agency sponsored
programmatic conferences, regional and national GIS conferences, etc., where
feasible considering limited travel budgets across the Agency.
5.2. Enhance Geospatial Investment Management Framework. At the present time, the National
Geospatial Program CPIC is the primary mechanism through which Agency investment in
geospatial data and technology is managed. In addition to the CPIC, the NGP is also responsible
for irregular reporting to OMB on investments under the Geospatial Line of Business and
through requirements of our Geospatial Segment Enterprise Architecture. These different
reporting mechanisms have been implemented at various times over the history of the EPA
Geospatial Program and do not align well, nor do they necessarily reflect the current state of
geospatial investments across the Agency. The GEO CPIC, for instance, includes only OEI and
Regional investments in geospatial technology (and not headquarters program offices), while the
calls from OMB have generally been focused on data investments across all components of the
Agency. The GEO CPIC expires in BY 2012, and we now have an opportunity to align and
optimize different mechanisms for effectively and efficiently managing EPA's geospatial
investments.
• Action 5.2.1: Develop a geospatial investment management program that lays out a
proposed framework in light of OMB investment management requirements and
procedures, Geospatial Line of Business data calls, the EPA Geospatial budget
coding, and our experiences in managing the current GEO CPIC.
• Action 5.2.2: Present proposed investment management framework to QIC and other
EPA governance bodies as appropriate, establish final plan and implement new
management framework prior to closing date of current CPIC.
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IV. Conclusion and Next Steps
Clearly the EPA geospatial community faces many challenges ahead. Many of these challenges
are internal and can be addressed immediately. And some of the challenges are external,
involving the geospatial community at the federal level and subsequently, coordination with
states, tribes and other interested parties. Generally these challenges are more difficult.
Therefore, the EPA Geospatial Community at EPA should be focused on the internal issues of
organization that are necessary to ensure effectiveness. The issues of governance, enterprise
vision, cost containment, data creation and distribution, transparency and leveraged "build once
use many" internal applications and widgets can be addressed over the course of the next twelve
to eighteen months. This type of internal organizational structure will assist in EPA's ability to
continue to establish long lasting partnerships with other agencies and partners.
The recommendation for internal improvement then is to collect from the Geospatial Community
the concerns that each organization sees as critical and then to determine as a single entity, which
internal needs to address first. Subcommittees which have been assigned can then begin specific
work on creating plans, sharing the plan with the GIS Workgroup leadership and then
implementing the plan over an 18 month cycle. By the same token, some of the issues may be
tabled for action at a later date. The EPA Geospatial Community clearly cannot address all these
issues in an 18-24 month time period. The goal at the end of 24 months will be to have successes
in each category for internal initiatives. Each subcommittee can report on their progress during
the monthly GIS Workgroup meetings. Face to face meetings will give subcommittees more time
to presents findings, accomplishments, pitfalls, etc. and receive input from all attendees.
With regards to external coordination issues, the GIO will continue to lead EPA's federal
coordination efforts with the FGDC, OMB and other agencies. Regional Leads of the GIS
Workgroup will act as the defacto leads for coordination in collaboration with states and tribes
and other interested parties in their region.
At six month intervals, the GIO will receive brief status reports from the subcommittee chairs on
progress such that a report can be submitted to the CIO. It is through accomplishment of the
whole that the GIO can most effectively advocate for additional resources to help EPA better
serve their own programs, the states and tribes and the public as a whole.
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