Members Present

Barnett, Chris MU – CARES
Cook, Liz USDA – NRCS
Cole, Julia East – West Gateway Coordinating Council
Davis, Jim – Dept. of Mental Health
Dorge, Greg – City of Jefferson
Duewell, Mark – Dept. of Health & Senior Services
Falter, Jeff – SEMA
Haithcoat, Tim – MU – MSDIS
LaScala, Jim – City of Liberty
Peterson, Jennifer – City Utilities of Springfield
Pitts, Debbie – MO State Library – Census Data Center
Schloss, Jeff – Dept. of Natural Resources
Shaw, Jo Ann – Dept. of Natural Resources
Spicci, Tony – Dept. of Conservation
Williams, Arnold – Dept. of Transportation
Williams, Darryl – USGS – MCMC

Others Present

Bearden, Morgan – USGS
Fonner, Mike – City of Springfield
Fox, Ray – USGS
Hermes, Doug – MACOG
Stewart, Helen – SEMA

Members Not Present

Beahan, Gary (excused) – Dept. of Economic Development
Carey, Michelle (excused) – City of Kansas City
Daw, Steve – Shafer, Kline, & Warren
Holder, Renee (excused) – Dept. of Revenue

Tony Spicci called the meeting to order at 9:00 a.m.

Minutes as emailed out to members were approved.

Tony introduced Doug Hermes of the Missouri Association of Councils of Governments (MACOG) to the group and indicated that he feels that it is in the best interests of the committee to support the efforts of the MACOG in improving GIS. Tony stated that since we are moving forward with the development of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI), we should include local governments.

Doug has been working with the councils to identify needs and define an action plan to improve GIS at the local level. He told the group that this has been difficult because of the disparate needs. Some councils are not as far along with GIS as others. Some do not have staff and GIS systems in place. The goal is to bring all councils up to a minimum level. MACOG would like to work with state agencies to accomplish this goal. Doug handed out MACOG’s GIS Strategic Program to the committee. The group discussed ways that the MGISAC could provide assistance to MACOG in the areas of executive director education and local government education and promotion.

Tim indicated that MSDIS could help with some of the hardware that is needed and development ofCDscontaining data from MSDIS.CDswould be easier for some local governments than trying to download the data. He also said that there are several Power Point presentations that could be copied and distributed to the councils.

Tim told the group that MSDIS has been named by NASA as one of the best geospatial extension agents in the nation. Geospatial extension agents are pushing geospatial data out to local governments. NASA is willing to support this effort, and MSDIS will be applying for grants from the NASA space program, Raytheon Corporation, and USGS FGDC.

Liz has spent the last couple of years training all of the county USDA offices in GIS. She said these offices would be a good resource for peer-to-peer training. Most of data layers can be shared. We might want to have the regional planning committees identify who would be the liaison or point of contact for the USDA offices.

Greg said that we need a standard for parcel mapping. Greg suggested that someone from MACOG could talk with the tax commission about getting a standard. Doug said that one of the goals is to make sure data is shareable. He will be attending the Missouri Assessors meeting soon, and he will discuss this issue there. According to Greg, one of the problems is that school and fire districts cross county lines. Liz said that a good place for counties to start is to use USDA’s parcel maps. The USDA term is common land units that are ownership based. These units are essentially parcels. Liz said that USDA would not have to create this layer if we had parcel maps for the state.

JimLaScalasaid that one of the goals of the education and outreach sub-committee is to assist local governments. Every county has at least one person attending MACOG. Doug said that he would like to work with this committee to develop the training program for local governments in the state. The MGISAC has good resources, which could be tailored to meet the local agencies’ need. Jim L. made a motion to assist MACOG in achieving their strategic program. The motion passed. Doug will meet with Debbie and Jim, the co-chairs of the education and outreach sub-committee to begin coordination. He told the committee to feel free to contact him via email and/or phone.

Tony asked for those who do not want to want to be nominated to the committee. Liz requested not to be nominated, because the nature of her work and the nature of the activities in this committee have grown apart. Terry Barney was nominated for the NRCS slot. Darryl Williams has accepted another position with USGS, and he asked that Ray Fox be nominated to the committee to represent USGS. Jennifer asked that Mike Fonner, City of Springfield, be on the list of nominees. Tim indicated that he would try to get someone from DESE. Janet Duncan Dept of Insurance will be nominated. Tim suggested getting someone from MORENET. Mark said that he would like to get someone from the Highway Patrol. Tony will check with Ron Beck for a name. Debbie suggested Dept. of Corrections and Social Services. Tony stated that Corrections does not want to participate, but he will try to get a name for Social Services.

Tony and Tim met with Gerry. The IT consulting contracts have been signed. The architecture plan is moving forward. GIS may be a separate domain but also appearing in the other domains. Gerry indicated that GIS might be raised to be an umbrella piece. Although the funding package has been put in with homeland security, Gerry said that the funding for DNR’s GIS and for MSDIS is still alive. Gerry will be sending his comments on the bylaws soon. He indicated that he still would like to have the MGISAC functioning on a peer level with ITAB.

Gerry would like to have a GIS Users Group for the state. This group would be a sub-committee of the MGISAC. It could include state and academic users. It would be an opportunity to share information; however, it would not be a policy group. Jeff Falter stated that ITAB was in agreement that the MGISAC should report directly to the CIO. Julia asked if MACOG could function as the user group under MGISAC. Jeff Schloss wants to revive the Mid-Missouri Users group forArcInfotechnical discussions, which would be open to everyone. Jeff is concerned that these two groups would be overlapping with the same people. Darryl suggested that MGISAC have a user group session in the afternoon with training and presentations. He feels that this is the role that we have set up for the State Mapping Advisory Committee (SMAC). Tony said that would make a long day for some of us, but he acknowledged that it is a logical placement. Tim said that management would have to support people attending this group during work hours. He thought that we could try it for a short period of time to see how many people would attend. Darryl suggested giving some thought to this before we implement to clarify the role of the users group.

Gerry is interested in seeing a GIS Coordinator for the state possibly in 2004 or 2005. Gerry met with Tim Daniel to discuss addressing and how the homeland security money would best be spent. Jeff Falter, SEMA, will assist in the coordination. Most of the money will go to first responders and hazardous materials. The highway patrol is asking for funding for better communication.

Tony added two new sub-committees: Homeland Security and I-Team. He wants at least one member from the MGISAC on them, but others from the GIS community can be enlisted to work on them. Jo Ann will take the lead on the I-Team. Tony will forward the I-Team proposal to Jo Ann. Once the proposal is approved, we need to come up with a strategy with funding and timelines. We will need to build partnerships to assist in the development of the NSDI. Ray (USGS) is already on the subcommittee as the federal champion. MAGIC has a draft agreement with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) to establish a framework for cooperative activities. We will be working on a regional plan for integration. Tim will forward a copy of this agreement to Jo Ann. Tony will be providing assistance to the Homeland Security sub-committee. He would like to see a GIS response team, maybe with a trailer, similar to what Minnesota has, that could go to somewhere in case of emergency. Or, we could get a Winnebago and equip it with computers and GIS software.

GIS Position Development

OA is still reviewing the positions. Then, they will be sent to the Personnel Advisory Board. For reclassification, it will be necessary to update position description forms. Jeff said that there are still a couple of questions. Do we want to multi-allocate the technician and analyst? Technician is entry level. If you multi-allocate these two positions, the benefit is that you would have a better chance of retaining the person. The person could move into the next level almost automatically. The downside is that state agencies are somewhat obliged to promote the person. Jeff Falter recommends the multi-allocation, because he says that if you don’t, you have to reclassify the position to get the person up the ladder. Mark Duewell agreed with Jeff F. Even if we write the positions like this, we are not obliged to multi-allocate. It is still up to the agency. They could write the position up specifically as a technician. If there are no other ramifications, Jeff will answer yes to the multi-allocation question. The other question was what is the difference between a GIS technician and a super user. Tony said the answer is that if you take the GIS program away and the person would not have a job, then he or she is a GIS technician. OA wants a test to see if people who are already doing GIS can reclassify. Jeff said that one of the major tests is service or support to others in GIS. Mark stated that each agency would ultimately make the decision about whether they are in a science position or GIS position.

Strategic Plan

Mark reported that the assistant from strategic planning from MDC would not be available to write the plan; however, he may still be able to provide some guidance. We may be able to by with a plan that is less than five years. Tony suggested a 2-3 day meeting for brainstorming, and then we could write the plan. There are some conservation areas where we could meet. Mark will be talking with people about participation.

Education and Outreach

Tim will be sending the logo to the printer soon. Jim asked for a list of conferences and volunteers to attend some of them, because he and Debbie will not be able to attend all of them. Debbie asked the group again for address lists that they should be contacting. If anyone has a map that you think would look good on the display: let Debbie or Jim know. Jim will get a group of people together to choose the items to be used in the display.

Federal Initiatives

Darryl introduced Morgan Bearden, USGS, to the group. Morgan has the responsibility of developing the land cover for the NIMA footprint for St. Louis. He would like to solicit input from the state agencies. This prototype may be used for other cities. Morgan stated that this is a high-resolution land cover for the 120 cities. No one has defined what high resolution is. There is no guidance about how we are going to do this. Denver will do on screen digitizing. Sioux Falls will do multi-spectral satellite imagery interpretation. They are thinking about a hybrid approach, since the rural western area will be different from the urban core. Urban areas are difficult. Photo interpretation will be used for the urban area. Satellite imagery will be used for the rural areas. There will be a Denver model, a Sioux Falls model, and a St. Louis model. After a comment period, they will decide what is the best way to get this done for the smaller cities in the state of Missouri. Tim asked how the datasets would be maintained. He asked if USGS would do some validation and verification for some of the NASA grants and projects flowing through MSDIS. He asked for a meeting with USGS to discuss this possibility. Morgan asked for any questions to be sent to him via email.

The USGS is beginning a dialogue about coordinating inquiries to local governments for data for homeland security. Census may ask for data, and USGS may also ask for data. So, they are trying to coordinate these requests. The USGS is trying to work together with Census to cut down on the number of times the federal agencies are bothering the local governments.

SMAC

Ray will be attending the USGS Central Region State Mapping workshop in Denver May 6-9th. Jim made a motion that MGISAC send Liz and Tony to this meeting with expenses to be covered by MSDIS. Darryl stated that Missouri’s SMAC meeting will be on May 16th at the Mid- Continent Mapping Center in Rolla. Darryl asked that agenda items be sent to Ray. The SMAC meeting will start at 11:00 a.m. Liz said that the main focus for SMAC is the method of next generationDOQQsand funding agreements for sharing costs.

Although there will be some funding from USGS, it may not be at the 50% level. Darryl said that he had heard that NRCS would not be funding the next round ofDOQQsat the national level. The USGS is trying to get some involvement from FEMA and other agencies that now have an interest in this data.

Data Standards

The sub-committee has picked a target and is moving forward. They are trying to get some of the bio-terrorism money for the addressing standard. They came up with a prioritized approach for implementation. They will start with counties that are not already in the 120 cities and do as many as possible. MSDIS has been chosen to house the addressing and to do the maintenance. Gerry has asked the group for estimates of the proposal. Mike and Jennifer volunteered to serve on this sub-committee.

Internet

Chris sent out emails for approvals to his changes for the document they are working on. Due to email problems, he hasn’t got the responses yet. He would like to create a listing of who is involved in Internet mapping in the state. This list could be used for a variety of purposes. This list would be posted on the MSDIS web site. The group could share information about technical issues.

Bylaws

Gerry is currently reviewing the bylaws.

State Architecture

The requests for development of the domains will be sent to Tim for review. We need to make sure that we have enough people to cover each of the domains. Tim asked that the group be thinking about which domain that they would like to participate in.

MSDIS

They are still improving on the website. The bio-diversity data will be up at least by the end of April.

Missouri GIS 2003 Conference Committees

The location is Columbia Executive Center. We need to be looking for 2005 site. Tim has had some discussion with Tan-Tar-A.

Tony reported that we now have approximately 300 registrations. We have added 3 more vendors. He said things are slowly coming together. He encouraged people to register for the conference. The next MAGIC meeting is in Olathe, Kansas. Everyone should have received the forms for awards. There are a couple more MAGIC scholarships. If you have names of people who need these, send them to Tim.

Tim has decided to try to get the $6,000 grant. It requires a 50% match, so we will be spending $12,000.

The Missouri GAP Data Analysis will be tomorrow at the CERC in Columbia.

Motion carried to adjourn.