2000115-Strengthening-Communities-with-Neighborhood-Data

Institutional Context 59
professional connections needed both to exchange ideas and to advance
the overall data-sharing environment in the state, and developing innovative
platforms for distributing data.
Efforts to standardize data got under way with the Land Management
Information Center, a state agency created in 1977 that was devoted to
coordinating and providing GIS services within Minnesota’s state government.
The goal was to establish a central GIS “shop” for the entire
state. The Land Management Information Center worked with multiple
government agencies that generated a variety of data, which were often
recorded and described without much thought to inter-department uniformity.
Recognizing the benefits of adapting a consistent annotation
system, the center established state metadata guidelines for describing
key aspects of these state-generated datasets, such as data quality information,
distribution information, and so on. 3
Further steps for standardization were undertaken by the Governor’s
Council on Geographic Information, an advisory group created by executive
order in 1991 to guide and work on statewide GIS policy (with
administrative and technical GIS services still being provided by the
Land Management Information Center). A committee from the council
adopted a process for establishing additional state standards, and even
though the standards in question were not applicable to local governments,
representatives from local municipalities served on this committee.
The idea was that city and county departments, having helped form
state-level standardization guidelines, might adopt these standards for
their own departments (see Craig, Baker, and Yaeger 1996).
The Council on Geographic Information also proved to be a useful
forum to network and exchange ideas. Composed of 18 representatives
from a cross section of sectors—including federal, state, and local
governments, as well as higher education and the private sector—the
council convened the state’s top GIS experts to shape GIS policy and
direction (Craig 2005). One of the council’s guiding principles was to
“promote geographic information as a public resource that should be
widely shared with and available to interested parties.” 4 It should come as
little surprise, then, that a product of the council’s work was the creation
of the Minnesota Geographic Data Clearinghouse, an online, searchable
repository of geographic data that provided (and continues to
provide) access to hundreds of datasets developed and maintained by
state and local governments. 5 Launched in 1997, the Geographic Data
Clearinghouse was the first Minnesota portal that the public could use