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Open GIS Consortium Seeks Input for One-Stop Portal

The portal will allow all levels of government to access geospatial data.

WAYLAND, Mass. -- The Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) initiative has issued a call for additional requirements for the Geospatial One-Stop Portal.

The GOS portal will rely, in part, on interoperability specifications such as those published by the Open GIS Consortium.

Led by the Department of the Interior, the portal is one of 24 electronic-government initiatives from the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to improve effectiveness, efficiency and customer service throughout all layers of government.

The GOS portal builds upon National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) objectives to enhance interoperability among geographic components of government activities. The GOS will provide a portal for discovery of and access to certain basic themes of geospatial data, known as framework data. The portal will be a general user interface to distributed geospatial data and services available from all levels of government.

Also, applications such as desktop GIS software, decision-support systems and other services will be able to utilize the GOS portal through open software interfaces.

"The portal is all about access," said NASA's Myra Bambacus, acting executive director of Geospatial One-Stop, in a statement. "It will enable all levels of government to get the information they need for planning, disaster response, homeland security, and other activities."

Respondents to the call for additional requirements will help the Geospatial One-Stop portal team of state, local, and federal representatives develop the functional requirements of the portal. These requirements will inform the draft architecture of the Portal, which will then be refined and implemented during an interoperability initiative to be executed by OGC.

Responses received by November 22, 2002 will receive full consideration for version 1 of the portal.