[Board] Objections? - California GIO Letter - Monday

[Arnulf Christl (OSGeo)]

Brian,
this looks really good, thanks a many. Please go ahead.

It is good to have contact to the explicitly designated Geospatial
Information Officer (there are not many GIO around here). Reading his blog
shows that he is interested in leveraging the Web to make geo more
accessible. The architecture paper should focus on Web tech coming off a
solid base technology and sleek interfaces but still not forget about
standards (he references OGC on his blog). We can mention that OSGeo is
actively involved with OGC (icluding a formal MoU) and maybe that GeoRSS
and others came from the OS world and are now standards, etc.

Is there any intention to get going with California based GeoFOSS
businesses yet? I will be in Mountainview, California in the second week
of December. If you think it would be worthwhile we could schedule a
meeting of the LC and/or interested businesses on the 11th to move things
on.

Best regards,
Arnulf.

> TO: Michael Byrne, GIO
>      Office of the State Chief Information Officer
> RE: ARRA Broadband Mapping Architecture Comment
>
> Mr. Byrne -
>
>    California is filing or has filed a State Plan for its implementation
> of the ARRA Broadband Initiative mapping requirement.
>
>    You may be pleased to know that the California Chapter of OSGeo is
> taking the lead in the US for OSGeo multi-national, and intiating
> dialog at the Federal level strongly affirming the need for Open Geo
> Data and public access. Further, OSGeo is writing a one page white
> paper on architectural considerations for repository and revision
> control of broadband mapping geo data.
>
>    It would be my pleasure to include your office in whatever way you
> deemed appropriate. I believe that with a new Federal committment to
> transparent government and public access to information coming from the
> White House directly, that there is an increasing opportunity for Open
> Source software and Open Standards geo data in the rapidly approaching
> implementation of the ARRA Broadband mapping objectives.
>
>     As you know, OSGeo is the leading, on-the-ground, open source
> geospatial software development organisation worldwide.  We are an
> international nonprofit [US 501(c)3 pending] comprising more than a
> dozen mature geospatial software projects built by more than 500
> developers from the United States and around the world. As a coalition,
> OSGeo holds a  unique role in advocacy of open standarads and open
> source, in a world where industry  consolidation has produced a very
> small handful of huge private firms, with the inevitable market
> tensions associated with maintaining their positions.
>
>    We believe that OSGeo is very much in line with the spirit and intent
> of the push for transparent government and public access science. As
> such there may be a special opportunity to raise the  bar for the kind
> of technology initiative as presented in the ARRA Broadband Initiative
> now and in the future.
>
>    sincerely
>
>    Brian Hamlin
>    OSGeo California Chapter
>
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-- 
Arnulf Christl
President OSGeo
http://www.osgeo.org