Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
The New Plot to Hijack GIS and Mapping
A bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate could effectively exclude everyone but licensed architects, engineers, and surveyors from federal government contracts for GIS and mapping services of all kinds — not just those services traditionally provided by surveyors.
The Geospatial Data Act (GDA) of 2017 (S.1253) would set up a system of exclusionary procurement that would prevent most companies and organizations in the dynamic and rapidly growing GIS and mapping sector from receiving federal contracts for a very wide range of activities, including GPS field data collection, GIS, internet mapping, geospatial analysis, location based services, remote sensing, academic research involving maps, and digital or manual map making or cartography of almost any type.
Not only would this bill limit competition, innovation and free-market approaches for a crucial high-growth information technology (IT) sector of the U.S. economy, it also would cripple the current vibrant GIS industry and damage U.S. geographic information science, research capacity, and competitiveness. The proposed bill would also shackle government agencies, all of which depend upon the productivity, talent, scientific and technical skills, and the creativity and innovation that characterize the vast majority of the existing GIS and mapping workforce.
The GDA bill focuses on a 1972 federal procurement law called the Brooks Act that reasonably limits federal contracts for specific, traditional architectural and engineering services to licensed A&E firms. We have no problem with that. However, if S.1253 were enacted, the purpose of the Brooks Act would be radically altered and its scope dramatically expanded by also including all mapping and GIS services as “A&E services” which henceforth would be required to be procured under the exclusionary Brooks Act (accessible only to A&E firms) to the great detriment of the huge existing GIS IT sector and all other related companies and organizations which have long been engaged in cutting-edge GIS and mapping.
The list of new “geospatial data” services proposed for restrictive procurement open only to licensed A&E firms by the GDA (see section 2 of the bill for the full laundry list) is wildly broad and encompasses data such as:
“all information tied to a location on Earth”;
nearly all GIS, mapping, cartography, and imagery data;
data that is represented by points, lines, and polygons;
data depicting the distribution of natural or cultural resources, features, or phenomena;
“any data used by a Federal agency”;
data used to create general maps prepared for… an atlas as an educational tool or reference publication; or “for use in the curriculum of any course of study”;
data used by law enforcement or the military;
any data that may be derived from, among other things, remote sensing, mapping, and surveying technologies;
and much more.
http://news.aag.org/2017/06/the-new-plot-to-hijack-gis-and-mapping/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork
The Geospatial Data Act (GDA) of 2017 (S.1253) would set up a system of exclusionary procurement that would prevent most companies and organizations in the dynamic and rapidly growing GIS and mapping sector from receiving federal contracts for a very wide range of activities, including GPS field data collection, GIS, internet mapping, geospatial analysis, location based services, remote sensing, academic research involving maps, and digital or manual map making or cartography of almost any type.
Not only would this bill limit competition, innovation and free-market approaches for a crucial high-growth information technology (IT) sector of the U.S. economy, it also would cripple the current vibrant GIS industry and damage U.S. geographic information science, research capacity, and competitiveness. The proposed bill would also shackle government agencies, all of which depend upon the productivity, talent, scientific and technical skills, and the creativity and innovation that characterize the vast majority of the existing GIS and mapping workforce.
The GDA bill focuses on a 1972 federal procurement law called the Brooks Act that reasonably limits federal contracts for specific, traditional architectural and engineering services to licensed A&E firms. We have no problem with that. However, if S.1253 were enacted, the purpose of the Brooks Act would be radically altered and its scope dramatically expanded by also including all mapping and GIS services as “A&E services” which henceforth would be required to be procured under the exclusionary Brooks Act (accessible only to A&E firms) to the great detriment of the huge existing GIS IT sector and all other related companies and organizations which have long been engaged in cutting-edge GIS and mapping.
The list of new “geospatial data” services proposed for restrictive procurement open only to licensed A&E firms by the GDA (see section 2 of the bill for the full laundry list) is wildly broad and encompasses data such as:
“all information tied to a location on Earth”;
nearly all GIS, mapping, cartography, and imagery data;
data that is represented by points, lines, and polygons;
data depicting the distribution of natural or cultural resources, features, or phenomena;
“any data used by a Federal agency”;
data used to create general maps prepared for… an atlas as an educational tool or reference publication; or “for use in the curriculum of any course of study”;
data used by law enforcement or the military;
any data that may be derived from, among other things, remote sensing, mapping, and surveying technologies;
and much more.
http://news.aag.org/2017/06/the-new-plot-to-hijack-gis-and-mapping/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork
Filed under Really Bad Ideas that will probably happen when no one is looking.
