Westerman reveals geospatial data bill

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman unveiled a new version of the proposed Geospatial Data Act of 2017 Wednesday, legislation designed to help standardize the way government agencies acquire, organize, store and share this type of data.

The Republican from Hot Springs is teaming with U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and the measure has support from a long list of business and government groups.

Google, the National League of Cities and the American Association of Geographers were among roughly three dozen groups that quickly endorsed the measure.

Geospatial Data “identifies and depicts geographic locations, boundaries and characteristics of features on the surface of the earth,” the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service states. “Geospatial data includes geographic coordinates (e.g., Latitude and Longitude) to identify the location of earth’s features, and data associated to geographic locations; for example land survey data and land cover type data.”

The Congressional Research Service says that, if the legislation becomes law, “all geospatial data collected, directly or indirectly, by covered [government] agencies” will be more readily accessible. “Federal and local government agencies, businesses and other organizations would be able to access the information from a single source,” Westerman spokesman Ryan Saylor said. The Federal Geographic Data Committee would be charged with overseeing it.

In a letter, Google and the rest of the groups said Westerman’s “vital legislation” would “strengthen U.S. geographic science, research capacity, and competitiveness.”

The legislation, Westerman said, will “make government more efficient and more streamlined.”

Currently, some agencies are buying and collecting the same data, needlessly paying twice for the same information. And because they use different platforms, they can’t easily share it with one another.

By standardizing things, “we should be able to combine some of this data collection so that it’s sharable across different departments of the government plus [available] to the general public.”