MEETING NOTES Geospatial Architecture Committee MN Governor s Council on Geographic Information

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1 MEETING NOTES Geospatial Architecture Committee MN Governor s Council on Geographic Information Meeting Date: April 26, 2006 Participants: Carrie Bartz MN Pollution Control Agency David Bitner Municipal Airports Commission Chris Cialek Administration; OGDA; LMIC (Co-Chair) Pat Cummens ESRI Mark Kotz Metropolitan Council Steve Lime MN DNR Fred Logman Administration; OGDA Susanne Maeder Administration; OGDA; LMIC Robert Maki MN DNR (Chair) Glenn Radde MN DNR Dan Ross MN DOT Gerry Sjerven NRRI Alison Slaats Metropolitan Council David Yapel Arrowhead RDC HYDROLOGIC UNITS CODING STANDARD Agenda Item: Review revision of the Hydrologic Units Coding Standard being advanced by the GCGI Hydrography Committee Discussion: The description of this new standard (handout) has been rewritten and is currently under review by the GSA Committee. Suggestions to finalize this document included: Move the explicit description of the standard (Standard Requirements) from page 4 to page 1 immediately following Purpose of this standard. Follow that with the Compliance section. Move Definitions and Table 2 into Background section. Add DNR major watershed numbers to Table 2. Place Background section after Compliance. The actual codes that comprise this standard will not be contained in this write-up, as they are too voluminous to make that practical. Major Watershed codes are listed on the GCGI website; a link will be provided. Minor Watershed codes and Lakeshed numbers will be dealt with later, most likely presented in a queryable online mapping service.

2 Motion: With these changes the Committee approves this standard be brought forward to the full Council: on May 24, for an informational presentation and on June 21, for a ratification vote to determine if it should be forwarded to the OET with the recommendation of including it in the Statewide Architecture as an endorsed state standard. Action Items: Maeder will reorganize the standards language in accordance with the suggestions made at this meeting. (Done 5/2/06) Maeder will submit the reorganized standards language to Jim Solstad and Joe Gibson (GCGI Hydrography Committee and DNR Waters) asking that they review the reorganized standard and check the change of designation from lakeshed to hydrologic unit for the third piece of the coding string. (Done 5/2/06) Cialek and Maki will do a final review of the reorganized standard (after review by Solstad and Gibson) for the Geospatial Architecture Committee. Solstad and Gibson will review and respond. Maki and Cialek will reorganize the document as described above. Cialek will ask Nancy Rader to include time on both of the next two Council agendas. PLACE NAME CODES Agenda Item: Update on developments regarding federal place name coding standards. Discussion: Kotz described the progress made toward implementing a federal decision to abandon the FIPS55 Place Code standard in favor of a USGS-supported GNIS Feature Identifier code. FIPS55 was the code underlying this Committee s previous efforts to promote a municipality coding standard referred to as the CTU Code (City, Township and Unorganized Territory). On January 1, 2006 the GNIS codes superseded FIPS55. The new codes represent an improvement because, unlike their FIPS counterparts, they are unique nationally and persistent (i.e. they will never change for a specific place/time). Problems with the implementation of GNIS Feature Identifiers have been brought to the attention of the USGS by Kotz on behalf of the GCGI and include: 1) ambiguity created due to the practice of two codes currently existing for each city (a civil code and a populated place code) and, 2) uncertainty as to how federal agencies plan to facilitate the concatenation of FIPS6-4 3-digit County Codes with Feature Identifier Codes when both are required to describe a discrete portion of a municipality. The USGS and Bureau of the Census have both been contacted about these questions, have acknowledged them as issues in need of resolution and are seeking solutions.

3 SERVICE ARCHITECTURE PROTOTYPE PROPOSAL Agenda Item: Review David Bitner s proposal to the MetroGIS. Discussion: Bitner provided an overview of his response to a MetroGIS RFP for 2006 Regional GIS Projects (handout). His proposal provides for the development of a suite of services to assist MetroGIS participants: a. Find and gain access to application code of broad interest to the GIS community; b. Use a centralized service that provides facilities to host some subset of these applications; and c. Take advantage of an environment that promotes the collaborative development of new application code, ideally in an open source framework. Maki explained that the reason the proposal has been put on our agenda is because Committee members may want to discuss if it may: a. Act as an implementation testbed to prototype the Conceptual GIS Enterprise Architecture we have developed and are promoting, and b. Relate to and provide additional in-kind support for the recently awarded CAP grant to Richland County, ND and Dakota County, MN (Creating sustainable client applications for framework data; Bartels & Knippel). Are OGC Catalog Services the right solution to provide discovery and access functionality? Lime suggested that yes, they appear to be the right technology for part b. of the proposal. But, implementations of both part a. and c. are not new and exist elsewhere. Whose project would this be? Bitner said the MAC does not have the resources or the business needs to act as sole project participant. What work needs to be done? Developing metadata content template for services (although an entirely new metadata standard may not be necessary FGDC may be able to provide examples of service metadata used for GOS); identifying server custodian; investigate if part c. could be brought under the CAP grant project. Does this committee want to get behind this proposal? The MetroGIS requires final proposal submission by June 9, Ross suggested that perhaps the proposal offers an implementation plan before a detailed scope has been developed. He proposed that the project s author consider refining it to provide a scope of work description for providing a service architecture for GIS applications (essentially, part b.) that would detail the work to be done and resources required. This project plan would then act as the blueprint to implement a GIS Applications Central Server (essentially, the Service Coordinator described in GCGI s Conceptual GIS Architecture). Action Items: A subgroup will convene to flesh out this idea and offer further recommendations. That group will consist of: Ross, Maki, Cialek, Bitner, Lime, Logman. Bitner will set up the group s first meeting.

4 SIMPLIFIED SERVICE ARCHITECTURE WHITE PAPER Agenda Item: Develop strategies for completing work on the simplified services architecture white paper developed to more broadly explain the ideas promoted in the Minnesota State GIS Enterprise Architecture Design. Discussion: Maki introduced the new draft document entitled, The Case for a Minnesota State GIS Enterprise. This document was intended to be released at the same time the Committee completed its architectural design white paper last year, but was delayed due to busy schedules and the search for an illustrative business case example. This document attempts to describe in simple terms why an enterprise wide service architecture would benefit Minnesota s GIS community and how it could be organized. The business process example included involves MnDOT right-of-way selection procedures. Maki suggests that the Committee finalize this document in its current form and scope and then move on to add supporting materials to strengthen the argument. For example, real property management is a topic OET is currently focusing on and seems to tie in directly with geospatial data management, sharing and access. Ross suggested that the example used, while appropriate, was not entirely correct. He offered to revamp portions of it and return that rewrite to Maki. Ross also provided other suggestions: The document should include reference to OET s federated model of information technology service (IT services classified by: utility, shared, or agency-specific) and explain how it complies. (See also OET-MnDOT partnership agreement announcement: e=editorial&hpage=true&agency=oet ) The document identifies that one of the main advantages to agencies is to bring them closer to the FGDC. Perhaps a better example would be how agencies have shared data in the past and now this architecture promises to facilitate service sharing. Cummens added that the idea that the architecture promises to help tie GIS across departments is contained in the document, but could be more strongly emphasized. Also more emphasis ought to placed on the fact that business processes of individual organizations are more readily shared through the adoption of this architectural model. Some reference ought to be made regarding security that security issues for data in need of protection are being considered in the proposed architecture. Ross asked if the Service Coordinator was a passive or active agent. Maki replied that it was passive. Ross suggested this might be a worthwhile point to add to the document. Cialek noted that the section labeled Building the System emphasizes staff numbers necessary to facilitate this plan without any real supporting analysis. Would it be more appropriate to list the broad categories of tasks that will need to be addressed to make the plan a reality, such as: technical communications standards, cataloging databases, infrastructure, data, cooperative agreements, and staffing roles? The group felt that listing the number of FTEs required might be premature. Instead, the paper would better conclude by identifying general levels of effort and categories of development that will be required to show success.

5 Action Items: Ross will revamp the MnDOT example and send to Maki. Maki will make modifications to draft document reflecting group suggestions and reissue an update. Final version will be distributed at the full Council meeting in June. ANNOUNCEMENTS OET Executive Committee Logman announced that he and David Arbeit are scheduled to meet with OET s Executive Committee on Monday May 8, 2006 regarding GCGI issues, particularly: Further refinement of the MSDI Strategic Plan currently underway The future of the Minnesota Enterprise Technical Architecture Discuss using the Council and LMIC as OET s resource for geospatial issues, including standards, enterprise architecture, infrastructure, identification of centers of excellence and implementation of shared services Real Property Group Cummens updated the Committee on OET s Property Management Initiative, a Drive to Excellence program designed to inventory and manage state property. An RFP was issued earlier this year requesting proposals for the purpose of implementing a web-enabled, shared technology tool that will meet information reporting needs as well as assist enterprisewide real property portfolio management. The RFP closed late last month. Proposals are currently being evaluated; award and project initiation are expected no later than July 1, The RFP specifies a requirement to integrate with GIS and CAD and expresses the state s desire to move in a direction of shared services. This project has the potential to demonstrate how spatial data can be effectively integrated with another business system (i.e. property management) to improve services. It is unclear whether the selection committee understands the potential benefits of this type of implementation. For more information, see: sc3=null&sc2=null&id= &agency=excellence

6 NEXT MEETING Sometime in July after the Council s work season is completed. Handouts Watershed/Hydrologic Unit Standard description documentation; S. Maeder 2006 Regional GIS Project Proposal; Memo from David Bitner to MetroGIS The Case for a Minnesota State GIS Enterprise; April 26, 2006 Draft Prepared by Chris Cialek May 9, 2006