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Council Accomplishments
Since its creation in 1991, the Governor's Council on Geographic
Information has worked to accomplish goals reflecting its guiding
principles. This webpage contains highlights of accomplishments since 1991.
To find the accomplishments for a specific year, see the council's
annual reports.
Help people get the data they need
- Identified priority data needs
through a statewide survey of GIS users.
- Developed plans to meet data needs in eight key areas: elevation,
geodetic control, hydrography, imagery, jurisdictional boundaries,
parcels, soils, and transportation.
- Identified need for new orthophotography, met by leveraging $250,000
of state agency funds to support a $1.5 million federal project to
produce color photography in 2003-04. Data is available at no cost to users through
the Minnesota Geographic Data Clearinghouse.
- Guided completion of the 1:24,000 National Hydrography Dataset.
- Helped secure funding for
research to correct distortions in published soil maps, meeting the
highest priority data need in the state. As of 2009, modern digital soil
data is complete for over 80 of Minnesota's counties and all counties have work in progress (see
NRCS status map).
- Established guidelines for a
Minnesota
Geographic Data
Clearinghouse, which now provides access to almost
20 sources that provide more than 6,900 data downloads a month.
Promote best practices and standards
- Developed strategic plans for the
organizational and
technical components of Minnesota’s Spatial Data Infrastructure.
- Recognizes exemplary projects
through an annual Governor’s Commendation program.
- Published guidelines for
digitizing county soil surveys and contributed to a published set of
guidelines for implementing a parcel-based GIS.
- Developed a process for establishing
official state standards. Minnesota standards now exist
for codes for states, counties, cities, townships, unorganized
territories, water basins, river reaches, and watersheds, and standards
exist for positional accuracy, metadata, coordinates, and the U.S.
National Grid.
- Documented unofficial standards
used by public agencies in Minnesota.
- Modified and annotated federal
standards to make them more useful to Minnesota users. Key examples are
the
Positional Accuracy Handbook and
Minnesota Geographic
Metadata Guidelines.
Provide information and training
- Publishes articles about key issues in
GIS/LIS
News, Minnesota Counties, and other stakeholder
newsletters.
- Works with the Minnesota GIS/LIS
Consortium to present training workshops on various issues around the
state.
- Develops and presents important
information at the consortium’s annual GIS conference.
Give policy and technical advice
- As a Cooperating
Partner of the Federal Geographic Data Committee, the council influences
federal policy and how federal agencies interact with state and local
government.
- Advises Minnesota organizations
on geographic information and technology. Organizations include: the
Office of the Governor, the Minnesota Office of Enterprise Technology,
the Land Management Information Center and the Minnesota GIS/LIS
Consortium.
- Helped get GIS and geography into the graduation
requirements for Minnesota schools by supporting efforts of the
Minnesota Alliance for Geographic Education. See
letters sent and links to the requirements.
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