May 16, 2007 Meeting Minutes and Agenda
AGENDA
• Approval of the March 21 st meeting minutes - Chair
Subcommittee Reports
• Financial - Dan Walters
• Policy & Marketing - Marilyn Lutz
• Technical - Will Mitchell
• Status on the GEOPortal - Will
• Guidelines for Portal Administrator - Marilyn
• Orthoimagery Project / Purchased ortho products- Larry
Harwood
• Parcel Grants - Larry
Geolibrary Funded Grants
• Linking registries to GIS - Bill Hanson
• Additional funding of CAT 3 grant
GIS Stakeholders Group
Geolibrary Funding
Meeting Minutes
Present
Jim Page, Chair
Marilyn Lutz, Co-Chair
Gretchen Heldmann
Elizabeth Hertz
Will Mitchell ( by phone )
Ken Murchison ( by phone )
William Hanson ( by phone )
Gary Duplisea
Greg Copeland
Nancy Armentrout
David Blocher
Staff
Larry Harwood
Dan Walters
Visitors
Ray Halperin, former Board member
Matt Davis, ESRI
The meeting was called to order at 10:13
1. Approval of the April 18, 2007 meeting
minutes
The Chair entertained a motion to approve the minutes. One change was
suggested. Under section 3, the first bullet should read "Geolibrary
will contribute $15,000 in cash match "
Liz Hertz moved to approve the minutes as revised with Gretchen Heldmann
seconding. The Board voted unanimously in favor. The motion carried.
2. Subcommittee Reports
The Chair gave a brief explanation and history of the three standing
committees, Financial, Technical and Planning, for the benefit of the
new members. In summation, the Financial Committee is quiescent as most
of the available funding being spent of encumbered, but should become
more active as we need to approach the legislature again. The Policy
Committee is working thru a list of policy documents on a long term basis.
The Technical Committee is heavily involved with the developing GeoPortal.
The minutes may reflect more history and detail than normal on some matters
due the attendance of these new members.
Financial
The Chair cited the major items of funding remaining. Of the original
$2,300,000 in bonds, $1,717,235 has been spent, $497,281 has been encumbered
by contract leaving $85,483 still under consideration. Of that amount,
$25,000 is still nominally under consideration for Standards conformity & data
validation tools. There was a question on the accuracy of the $300,000
cost of the orthoimagery creation. The reply was that this was a best
estimate and probably very close.
Policy & Marketing
There was little to further report on the principal current task of
the Policy Committee which is the document Policy on Dissemination
of Geospatial Data: Fee Setting. Marilyn Lutz explained the work
of the Policy Committee and its difficulties in attempting to do so.
A more pressing policy issue is the Memorandum of Agreement ( MOU ) between
the Geolibrary and the comparatively new GIS Stakeholders group. Marilyn,
Dave Blocher, Dan Walters and Jim Page agreed to work on the new MOU.
Dave reported that the Stakeholders Charter document had been completed.
They will try to have the MOU ready by next month.
The Chair explained the history of the GIS Executive Council which for
years represented the interests of several state agencies that make use
of GIS technology. The Geolibrary focus has been on the general public
and private sector use of GIS. The Executive Council began with those
state agencies signing Service Level Agreements to fund MEGIS operations.
It evolved into a confederation of agencies guiding state GIS development.
Funding now being provided by appropriation, the GIS Stakeholders is
a further evolution of the group and serves in an advisory capacity to
the Chief Information Officer.
Technical
Parcel Grants.
Larry Harwood and the Chair explained the municipal parcel data grants.
The grants were in 2 separate rounds and the grants themselves were of
2 types. Rapid Grants were reimbursements of up to $1,000 for conversion
of existing digital parcel data to state standards. Standard Grants were
payments, per parcel, up to a maximum of $10,000 per town for creation
and/or upgrading of the spatial accuracy of digital parcels. There have
been a number of contract extensions. There have been 27 awards of rapid
grants with one town declining and 47 awards of standard grants.
Orthoimagery Project.& Photo Products
There was nothing new to report on the orthoimagery; there have been
no deliveries and no word on schedules. The aerial photo products were
described as scanned tiff images of the actual negatives plus control
information sufficient to create orthorectified or stereometric products
from the images. All products have now been delivered.
Status on the GEOPortal .
Will Mitchell reported that a new test site for the updated GeoPortal
will be running soon on the OIT test server platform. The thinking is
that a final product is 2 to 3 months out at this point. On April 20,
2007 , the Technical Committee approved the latest GeoPortal design.
This design was provided primarily by Sean Myers and the review was thru
a CDM web E-room session. On May 4, 2007 , Ionic gave their response
to the proposed GeoPortal design. The consensus was that this was not
everything asked for but would be an acceptable next step with some requested
changes.
There was some discussion of what the screens should look like and what
could be realistically gotten from Ionic at this point in time. It was
suggested that if the GeoPortal was functional and stable that might
be all that could be asked. The Committee wants a "Build 3" as per the
contract although that may be difficult. It was asked if the Geolibrary
would own the application code; this was not certain. It was also asked
whether or not the metadata administration module had been demonstrated;
it has not been.
The Chair summed up by citing that progress has been made but certainly
more work has to be done. The Committee needs a simple list of accomplishments
and functions, perhaps just a few bullet points, to indicate "we are
there" or "where we are" with the GeoPortal.
Guidelines for Portal Administrator .
There has been no progress to report on this item.
3. Geolibrary Funded Grants
Linking Registries to GIS
Bill Hanson reported that as a supplement to the Category 3 Grant he
has investigated the possibilities of linking title transfers to geographic
locations, i.e. tax parcels by unique identification numbers. As a theory
this has been well received, particularly by the more technically advanced
registries in Cumberland and Penobscot. Some registrars contacted were
interested in a prototype program. He has asked the Title Standards Committee
( Maine Bar Assoc. ) if he can make a presentation at the next meeting
in September. If he can get on the agenda this would be a short PowerPoint
on the basic idea.
This got strong informal support from the Board. There was some discussion
of what existing GIS softwares are in the county registries, the answer
apparently being not many. Also discussed was the very eclectic nature
of property descriptions from exact surveys to ancient descriptions.
Bill will have a letter to the Title Standards Committee for review by
the Board at the next meeting.
Additional Funding of CAT 3 Grant
The grant is approved and underway. The immediate need is for an RFP
to get proposals form vendors. The Board can add to some of the parts
of the grant, especially the revised strategic plan, standards and promotion.
There appears to have been no provision yet for a pilot/promotional demo.
There was also discussion of involving Tim Glidden at SPO as there might
be a crossover from this grant to development tracking.
The Chair asked for volunteers for an ad hoc committee to work with
Dan Walters on the grant. Greg Copeland, Marilyn Lutz, Bill Hanson and
Nancy Armentrout agreed to help. The Chair, Ken Murchison and Will Mitchell
noted that they will have to recuse themselves from voting on the RFP
due to potential conflicts of interest.
4. GIS Stakeholders Group
This item was not discussed and tabled to the next meeting.
5. Geolibrary Funding
The Chair gave an update on the recent attempts to acquire additional
bonding and suggested new members review the last Annual Report to the
legislature. The bond approach having yielded nothing, the Board must
have recourse to the legislative approach. It will be necessary to make
an organized effort to get legislators to support the Geolibrary. The
Board needs to map a strategy for the next legislative session. The idea
will be to identify a small number of key legislators willing to work
towards funding the Geolibrary. The Chair suggested that everyone try
to come up with the names of 1 or 2 legislators that might be thus favorably
disposed. It was also noted that the CAT 3 grant might be part of the
effort to get funding.
There was a short non sequitor discussion of possibly relaxing the state
standards for digital parcel data. This might increase the data holdings
by creating a second level tier of parcel data not as good as the standard
but sufficient for many needs. Ken Murchison and Larry Harwood agreed
to see what they could come up with.
Meeting Adjourned 12:30
