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On March 8th, GeoSearch traveled to WASHINGTON, DC, for the 2010 MAPPS Federal Programs Conference. MAPPS is the only national association exclusively comprised of private firms in the remote sensing, spatial data and geographic information systems field in the United States. The legislative initiatives highlighted during the MAPPS members’ meetings with members of Congress on March 10th included:

* The “Making America Prosperous (MAP)” Act, a proposed bill to authorize the “Imagery for the Nation” concept, authorizing a national geospatial image mapping program to provide baseline geographic data for economic development and a variety of other applications;

* A “Digital Coast” Act, fully authorizes the Digital Coast program within NOAA to help America’s fragile oceans, coasts and shorelines by implementing mapping, charting, and other geospatial data, as recommended in several recent commissions, as well as a National Academy of Sciences report;

* The “FLAIR” Act, or Federal Land Asset Inventory Reform Act, H.R. 1520, will create a current, accurate cadastre, or land inventory, of Federal land ownership, as well as consolidate the more than 100 duplicate, inaccurate, obsolete, and non-interoperable land inventories currently maintained by several Federal agencies;

* And the Freedom from Government Competition Act, H.R. 2682 and S. 1167, to codify the “Yellow Pages” test, a simple test that has been applied by Mayors and Governors, both Democrat and Republican, that says if there are private companies to be found in the Yellow Pages providing products or services in the commercial market that the government is also providing, then the service should be subject to market competition to break up the government monopoly and prove a better value to the taxpayer.

GeoSearch met with Colorado members of Congress and Congressional staff including Charles Cogar, Legislative Assistant in the Office of Representative Mike Coffman. Jimmy Hague, Legislative Assistant in the Office of Senator Mark Udall. Senator Michael Bennet staff members. Marissa Smith, Legislative Assistant in the Office of Representative Betsy Markey. Tommy Walker, Legislative Assistant in the Office of Representative Diana DeGette. Matt Henken, Legislative Assistant in the Office of Representative Ed Perlmutter and we met with Congressman Doug Lamborn.

The campus of the U.S. Capitol Compex was the location of our meetings and an exhibition of geospatial technologies showcased and hosted by MAPPS member firms including Merrick & Company, Riegl USA, Trimble, and Woolpert, Inc.

The Geospatial Technology Exhibition was held on the first floor foyer of the Rayburn House Office Building. U.S. Representative James Moran (D-8th District-VA), who represents MAPPS’ headquarters in Reston, VA, was the sponsor of the event.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 9:07 am and is filed under Employers, GIS, Small business, strategic planning, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.