A Proposal for National Economic Recover

A Proposal for National Economic Recovery: An Investment in Geospatial Information Infrastructure

Jack Dangermond, ESRI, jdangermond@esri.comAnne Hale Miglarese, Booz Allen Hamilton, Miglarese_anne@bah.com

Summary

America’s financial crisis, the worst since the end of World War II, will force difficult actions and deci-sions. Large expenditures of taxpayer money must be designed to yield products of long-term benefit to the country. America has an information economy, and a robust geospatial infrastructure (system of digital maps and tools) is just as vital to its continued development as was the physical infrastructure to the industrial economy. A National GIS, properly designed and effectively implemented, providing public access and using best technologies, will speed economic recovery by produc-ing jobs and putting shovels in the ground more quickly. It will also leave the country with a public utility, a modern geospatial information sys-tem, that itself can become a founda-tion for new generations of industries and technologies in the future... more