Data.gov, USASpending.gov, the IT Dashboard and other federal data transparency and government accountability programs are facing a massive budget cut, despite only being a tiny fraction of the national budget. Help save the data and make sure that Congress doesn’t leave the American people in the dark.

Sunlight Foundation – Stop Transparency Cutbacks.

“Broadband access supports our economy, attracts businesses, and enables Indiana to be globally competitive.  It improves the quality of life for Hoosiers through better communication and learning,” says Jim Sparks Indiana Geographic Information Officer regarding Indiana’s participation.

The mapping portion of the program intends to identify areas that are underserved and ideally expand access to those areas. Indiana is an active participant in the program, and rightly so – several areas of the state and key demographics are currently underserved. From an user interface perspective, personally I find the national broadband availability maps (different from the IndianaMap) leave something to be desired. I find them generally too technical to communicate much to the average consumer, though they surely are packed with information that will assist at the national program level. Be sure to look at the “Show Gallery” link at the bottom of the page for some nice perspectives (it is easily missed). As a work in progress, it is also worth keeping in mind that the maps may over-represent some areas and under-represent other areas based on individual states’ current participation in the mapping program.

Lest we underestimate the potential impact of the broadband program in Indiana, let us look at the current “state of the state” according to another source, PatchworkNation.org:

Wow, Indiana really stands out.

01 Transportation

For trains, planes and automobiles there are numerous government agencies, surveying and engineering firms, and community organizations who use the IndianaMap for proposed transportation routes, environmental assessments, infrastructure management, airport and roadway improvements, maintenance, accident locations, new facilities, emergency response and evacuation, state and federal reporting requirements, and system-wide transportation management

02 Utilities

Public and private utilities use the IndianaMap in their customer billing systems, routing meter-reading and inspections, load-testing, infrastructure planning and improvement, “call before you dig” locations, and emergency response

03 Natural Resources

Public, private, and non-profit organizations use the IndianaMap on a daily basis to protect endangered species and habitat, manage natural resource exploration and exploitation, protect the public from natural hazards such as flooding and earthquakes, manage wildlife for hunting and fishing, maintain parks and facilities, and manage forests, fish and wildlife for the benefit of all Hoosiers

04 Economic Development

We may not know when the next major corporation is looking at Indiana for their new home, but with the IndianaMap they can quickly see why the Hoosier state stands out; Indiana’s economic developers use the IndianaMap to locate sites for potential development, plan tax incentive zones, clear regulatory requirements, help existing businesses, and attract new business for a growing economy

05 Engineering/Surveying

Whether used for preliminary survey work, evaluating impacts to home owners, or managing construction phases, the IndianaMap saves hundreds of thousands of dollars when new developments are planned, bridges built, levees are constructed, pipelines are routed, and much, much more

06 Planning/Land Use

Communities and planning organizations use the IndianaMap to visualize land use patterns and trends, zoning, plan developments, acquire state and federal grants, and improve quality of life factors as part of “smart growth” initiatives; developers, assessors, and real estate professionals use it to look at current the landscape and changes over time

07 Infrastructure

From bridges to telecommunications, communities use the IndianaMap to assess and maintain their infrastructure, including Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) reporting requirements

08 Environmental

Government agencies entrusted with the responsibility of protecting our environment use the IndianaMap to track and manage regulated facilities and on-the-ground hazards, improve the environment through remediation, conservation, and preservation, and to communicate with citizens; private and non-profit organizations use the same consistent map information for conservation and preservation, and to assure environmental compliance within areas of new development, existing sites, and areas of concern

09 Wastewater/Stormwater

From flooding, to community growth, to modernizing outdated sewer overflows and protecting public health, utilities and communities use the IndianaMap to see where the water goes and manage the impact of that flow

10 Public Safety

The IndianaMap saves lives—it helps quickly get emergency responders to where they need to go; as an interoperable communications tool it is used for community preparedness, examining locations of shelters, warning sirens, population concentrations, critical infrastructure, and local resources; it is used by police, fire, hospital, health departments, Indiana National Guard, homeland security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Civil Air Patrol, the Red Cross, and others for all phases of disaster response and recovery; it is used daily as police patrol our streets and fight crime; it is used by corrections personnel to track geographic-restrictions and compliance of sex and violent offenders.

For more information, view the complete report (3.4MB PDF).

With the heavily damaged or destroyed infrastructure, the situation was especially challenging for aid agencies arriving on the ground. Where are the areas most in need of assistance, how do we get there, where are people trapped under buildings, which roads are blocked? This information is essential to rescue and recovery efforts – and this “where” information is embodied in good map data. In many areas around the world, there is a lack of good mapping data and particularly after a crisis, when up-to-date information is critical to managing events as they evolve.

Enter OpenStreetMap, the wiki map of the world, CrisisMappers and an impromptu community of volunteers who collaborated to produce the most authoritative map of Haiti in existence. Within hours of the event people were adding detail to the map, but on January 14th high resolution sattelite imagery of Haiti was made freely available and the Crisis Mapping community were able to trace roads, damaged buildings, and enter camps of displaced people into OpenStreetMap.

The following video describes how they did it – at Where 2.0 2010: Jeffrey Johnson, John Crowley and Schuyler Erle, “Haiti: CrisisMapping…” present a remarkable story of GIS map volunteerism, coordination, and collaboration that saved lives on the ground.

Their presentation (~14min) describes OpenStreetMap, the workflow and data used to develop the crisis maps, how the maps were used, and includes an animation illustrates the rapid improvement of Haïti coverage in Openstreetmap following the January 2010 earthquake. Important questions are raised regarding sustainability of such efforts and a call for an Ethical Code of Conduct for OSM.

excerpts from itoworld

“Ask average, ordinary stressed-out GIS managers about their day and the likely response will be a litany of grievances about servers, networks, licenses and unhappy users of Web applications. Note that most of the above have little to do with the traditional responsibilities of GIS departments such as maintaining positional accuracy of spatial data, spatial analysis and cartographic production. Instead, much energy is devoted to maintaining the complex choreography of connectivity between desktop applications, databases, servers and Web portals. With budgetary pressures showing little sign of abating, shops are forced to make difficult trade offs in managing their mix of IT and personnel expenses.  The costs of this complexity are significant in ways that are both explicitly financial but also somewhat psychological, as industry veterans lose their enthusiasm under the burden of IT management responsibilities that hold little intrinsic interest.”

While Brian suggests that cloud computing might offer a solution to this and other ills, I’m not so sure. The cloud is certainly already playing a positive role in the geospatial technology field, and indeed might ease GIS/IT administrative pressures. However, security concerns such as Google hacks from China, its own technology management needs, and even internal data access policies are likely to be major obstacles for enterprise operations to embrace the cloud (and have it replace existing operations). Nonetheless, identifying the problems is a big part of defining the solution. Cloud computing or not, I applaud Brian for succinctly putting his finger on this button. More exploration may reveal: Why are we here today? What is the source of these problems? What are other potential solutions?

With more open dialog like this we might all breath better.