This was in my Facebook feed today from one of my fellow GIS professionals. We need to find out what the heck is going on. It seems that a new bill has been proposed by Warren Hatch that would "Limit federal contracts to A&E firms for almost any mapping-related data collection, analysis, or use activity at the exclusion of vast swaths of current GIS, IT, and mapping industries and related organizations." According to this article by American Association of Geographers
the bill would limit the “geospatial data” services proposed for restrictive procurement open only to licensed A&E firms by the GDA (see section 2 of the bill for the full laundry list) is wildly broad and encompasses data such as:
- “all information tied to a location on Earth”;
- nearly all GIS, mapping, cartography, and imagery data;
- data that is represented by points, lines, and polygons;
- data depicting the distribution of natural or cultural resources, features, or phenomena;
- “any data used by a Federal agency”
Please read the link above, as well as this article published by GIS Lounge
I would like for this issue to be discussed at UC.
Thanks
Katy
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