Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC)

The Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC) is an interagency coordinating committee that promotes development of the policies, protocols, and technical specifications needed to ensure availability and accessibility of geospatial data and services within the United States. Primarily a federal governmental activity, the FGDC was chartered in 1990 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to coordinate geographic information development and exchange. The FGDC has official membership from most of the cabinetlevel departments and independent agencies and has established liaison arrangements with many state and local governmental organizations, professional organizations, academic institutions, native tribes, and the private sector. The FGDC is formally chaired by the secretary of the interior; the OMB deputy director for management holds the position of vice-chair.

The primary work of the FGDC is accomplished through its chartered working groups and subcommittees. Working groups are convened around issues of cross-cutting interest, whereas subcommittees provide domain-specific venues for the discussion and development of standards and common practices in a specific discipline or thematic area. The coordination group, composed of working group and subcommittee chairs from the various agencies and bureaus, meets monthly for information exchange and identification of cross-cutting issues. The FGDC is overseen by a steering committee that meets quarterly to set highlevel direction and consider approval of standards and policy-oriented recommendations. A secretariat, hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey, supports the committee.

The efforts of the FGDC are designed to define and realize the capabilities of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), a collaborative geospatial environment framed by common adoption of relevant standards, conceptual architecture, and policy framework. Standards developed by the FGDC include the specification of many data content standards and a national metadata standard. Data exchange and encoding standards have been promoted through the support of the FGDC to become American national standards. The National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse of over 150 domestic metadata collections is coordinated through the FGDC and provides the primary information base accessed by the publicly accessible Geospatial OneStop Portal as a community search facility for data and services. An assistance program known as the NSDI Cooperative Agreement Program (CAP), overseen by the FGDC secretariat, has provided funds since 1995 to stimulate the development, education, and organizational commitment to NSDI principles and adopted standards. The FGDC promotes international geospatial collaboration through active engagement in the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) and relevant committees of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and other voluntary consensus standards organizations.

In recent years, the FGDC has focused on the integration of geospatial capabilities into governmental business processes. It has cochaired the development of a geospatial profile of the Federal Enterprise Architecture, a guidance document for identifying [Page 146]geospatial aspects in business process design. In 2006, OMB began efforts to establish a Geospatial Line of Business to focus planning and acquisition efforts for common geospatial capabilities across government, coordinated through a project management office at the FGDC secretariat.