Points of Interest: Feb 2, 2005

GIS Monitor Was Down. Thanks to the many readers who called or e-mailed to note that the website was down for about two days. Now, back to business!

ESRI was awarded the GOS V2 Contract. That is, the Geospatial One-Stop project selected ESRI to update the federal geospatial data portal. The contract, if all options are awarded totals $2.38 million over five years. Described in the Jan 31 announcement from the Department of Interior as "highly competitive" the procurement began with an RFQ in October. The award was expected to be announced by January 3. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior Scott Cameron was scheduled to demonstrate some of the new capabilities at the ESRI Federal User Conference yesterday. I've raised this question before and I'll raise it again: Why does the US government use conferences to announce contacts and awards? I raised this issue last year when the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced recipients of its Innovations in Geospatial Intelligence Broad Agency Announcements at the USGIF's GEOINT banquet. (Tickets were not free.) Now, Mr. Cameron shows off the new portal at an ESRI hosted event for the federal government. (The event is free for federal employees and has fees for all others; one need not be an ESRI user to attend.)

Patterns Match, but No Link Suggested. A letter to the medical journal The Lancet explains (free registration required)that the pattern of red and blue states in the last U.S. presidential election pretty much matches that of the distribution of Lyme disease. 19 blue states covered 95% of the diseases reported in 2002. The few cases reported in red states are most likely a different tick borne disease which presents similar symptoms. Dr. Robert B. Nadelman and Dr. Gary P. Wormser, epidemiologists at the New York Medical College at Valhalla do not draw any connection between the two patterns.

Pre-Announce? NAVTEQ put out a PR last week about new data for Poland and Slovenia. "�NAVTEQ customers will now have digital map data for Poland and Slovenia at their disposal.*" At the bottom of the release was the rest of the "*," which read "Due to the complexity of the processes required to compile and integrate NAVTEQ maps into navigation systems and location-based applications, it may take up to a year before consumers will have access to these new maps for their navigation systems." This is mostly likely a release for the investment community, not the user community.

If news like this is important to you, sign up for our weekly  GIS Monitor Newsletter.

 ---------

Source: Material used herein is often supplied by external sources and used as is.