Department of the Interior

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Office of the Secretary


For Immediate Release:
February 16, 2006
Contact:
Joan Moody
202-208-6416

Interior Wins One of Five Excellence.Gov Awards For Geospatial One-Stop Leadership


The Department of the Interior and its U.S. Geological Survey won one of five coveted Excellence.Gov awards, out of a field of 80 applicants. Sponsored by the American Council for Technology, the Feb. 15 award recognized Interior's leadership on the Geospatial One-Stop e-Government initiative.

Geospatial One-Stop provides thousands of federal, state and local government partners with access to geospatial data and other services in one convenient geodata.gov portal.

The Industry Advisory Council, established by the American Council on Technology to bring government and industry together, made the announcement at a luncheon held on Feb. 15 in Washington, D.C.

A panel of 23 judges, representing both industry and government selected Interior and the other winners for demonstrating best practices in information sharing for federally led IT program implementations.

Accepting the award for the department was Scott Cameron, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management and Budget and Managing Partner of Geospatial One Stop. Cameron previously announced the launch of the new Geospatial One-Stop portal at the 2005 Annual Conference of the National Association of Counties.

The faster, more efficient www.geodata.gov is an online tool for combining thousands of geospatial resources from federal, state, local, tribal and private sources. The portal enables decision-makers to access geospatial resources and respond more quickly during an emergency to protect lives, property and basic services.

"There is no doubt that www.geodata.gov serves as a critical information resource during emergencies," Cameron said. "After Hurricane Katrina hit, for example, Federal and state agencies began turning to geodata.gov for the information they needed."

Geodata.gov featured information from thousands of sources on a new Hurricane Katrina community. Updated topographic maps highlighting geographic features and a National Map for the Gulf providing seamless digital information were posted to the geodata.gov and available to be printed, downloaded, or emailed to those responsible for emergency operations. The second Gulf hurricane hit Texas and Louisiana as the Hurricane Katrina community came online. so a new community for Hurricane Rita was added to the portal.

The value of geodata.gov as a "one-stop" source of geospatial information led to an innovative partnership to create an integrated database of all the impacted areas and a "GIS for the Gulf" that includes more than 50 different types of information gathered from Federal, state and local governments and the private sector. USGS, the Department of Homeland Security and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, working with the Geospatial One-Stop contractor ESRI, delivered the combined database to almost 100 users through a password protected site.

In addition to Cameron, other Geospatial One-Stop partners honored at the awards ceremony were Hank Garie, Executive Director of Geospatial One Stop; Karen Siderelis and Leslie Wollack of USGS; Pat Cummens of ESRI; Bert Jarreau of the National Association of Counties; and Bill Burgess, National States Geographic Information Council.

The other four Excellence.gov award winners included the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs for the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange; the Department of State for the Interagency Data Exchange Application; the Department of Justice for the National Sex Offender Public Registry; and the Department of the Army for the Radio Frequency In-Transit Visibility system.

For more information on the awards, see www.act.org. For more information on Geospatial One-Stop, please see www.geodata.gov