USDA’s Compliance with the Geospatial Data Act for Fiscal Year 2022

Strengthen EGMO’s oversight practices to improve its management of the 13 covered agency responsibilities as required by the GDA.

EGMO should coordinate with agencies to identify and catalog a lifecycle for all geospatial datasets to collect, maintain, disseminate, and preserve geospatial data, such that the resulting data, information, or products can be readily shared with other Federal agencies and non-Federal users.

EGMO, in coordination with agencies, needs to ensure that NARA-approved record schedules exist for all NGDA datasets.

Develop and maintain a process to verify that all approved USDA NGDAs use geospatial data standards, including metadata standards, and ensure agencies are documenting their datasets with the relevant metadata required by Departmental regulation and made available through the GeoPlatform.

Implement a process to prepare and maintain a complete inventory of all the approved NGDA datasets and perform reconciliations of the inventory on a regular basis to ensure it is complete and accurate.