-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Federal Register notice of withdrawal of public access to NGA
aeronautical products
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2004 09:57:26 -0600
From: Kent Lee <[log in to unmask]>
Organization: Eastview Inc.
Dear Maps-L:
As a longtime distributor of NGA products, we have been busy with
interpreting the scope, intention and likely consequences of the recent
NGA statement. As it is written, it is rather broad and does indeed
seem to indicate that paper ONCs, TPCs (and perhaps even JOGs) will
become publicly unavailable beginning 1 October 2005. We are not aware
that NGA officials discussed this proposed rule with anyone outside of
its own organization.
We consider it troubling that NGA has seen fit to cite multiple
rationales for withdrawing these aeronautical products. They include:
-that the public-domain nature of these NGA products has become an
obstacle to securing cooperation from NGA's foreign and commercial partners;
-that the products are being withdrawn to ensure the data integrity
of the products themselves;
-that the products are being withdrawn to ensure that no one uses
them in planning attacks on US or allied persons or interests.
All three are quite different issues, and taken together they provide a
broad foundation for justifying the total withdrawal of all NGA
products. Aeronautical charts and related products (8746 items) are not
the only product issued by NGA. In fact there are even more of other
products: nautical charts and related items (7235 items): topographic
(31,671); and digital products in general, including imagery products
(35,063). While far from all in each category are currently publicly
available, many thousands are.
We recognize that NGA has valid concerns with the public disemination of
its data. But it appears that an indiscriminate, carpet-bombing
approach has been taken where perhaps a precision-guided munition would
have been more appropriate, to use the military vernacular. For
example, the valuable VMAP-1 global vector database has been made
publicly available by NGA for a significant portion of the Earth's
surface, and in doing so they have perhaps provided a better model for
balancing respect for data which are created in cooperation with foreign
providers (who might not have the same traditions of public,
copyright-free dissemination of governmental data as we do here in the
United States).
The recent Federal Register announcement, if it is not amended or
withdrawn at least in part, strikes at the core of publicly available US
government cartographic data about the outside world. Map library
collections in the US and in many other countries would be denied the
ability to build cost-effective (if not free, to the extent that some
publications may be available under the FDLP) global collections of
high-quality English-language maps and charts of the Earth's surface.
We would like to see NGA engage the public users, collectors and
distributors of its data prior to the promulgation of major notices of
public withdrawal. While we realize that NGA considers its primary
users to be the US military and intelligence community, the history and
traditions of openness of US government information means that a wider
audience inevitably makes use of these excellent informational products
which are created at taxpayer expense. These users should not be
ignored or have their interests trampled.
In the meantime we do encourage map libraries and end-users likely to be
affected by the proposed NGA product withdrawal to take advantage of the
fact that the products are still available. To the extent that
libraries in particular are not already receiving these for free under a
depository program, they may be purchased from a variety of vendors,
including East View Cartographic (www.cartographic.com), Omni Resources,
and even the US Federal Aviation Administration.
Kent D. Lee
President/CEO
East View Cartographic, Inc.
3020 Harbor Lane N.
Minneapolis, MN 55447 USA
Tel: 763-550-0965
Fax: 763-559-2931
Email: [log in to unmask]
URL: www.cartographic.com, www.eastview.com
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