The information need Census Boundaries was identified as one of thirteen original
priority business information needs of the MetroGIS community.
Click here to view the Business Object Framing Model Fragment for this
information need. Click here for further information about MetroGIS's Business
Information Needs initiative.
The Census Geography Peer Review Forum was held on May 26, 1999. The workgroup concluded that the
specifications developed by the Metropolitan Council for rebuilding the U.S. Census Bureau's 1990 and 2000 Census
Geography Datasets to align the census geography with locally produced street centerline and other relevant data met
the needs of MetroGIS stakeholders. Council staff reported that a contract was pending with The Lawrence Group, which
would actually undertake the work to align the boundaries. The workgroup found that the roles and responsibilities
offered by the Council for itself satisfied the regional custodian tasks necessary to achieve the needs of the MetroGIS
community. See forum turnaround document for more details.
On January 27, 2000, as recommended by the Coordinating Committee, the MetroGIS Policy Board endorsed desired
data specifications for Census Geography data, endorsed desired custodian roles and responsibilities, and accepted the
Metropolitan Council's offer to serve as regional custodian for these data.
A central part of MetroGIS's work is to identify common information needs of GIS users in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metropolitan Area and facilitate the policy and data specifications needed to address each of these common information needs.
An investigation to understand these common needs was conducted by MetroGIS from September 1996 to March 1997. The result of this study was the identification of thirteen priority common information needs of the MetroGIS community. Since that time, a priority function of MetroGIS has been to facilitate the development and/or assembly of regional datasets needed to address each of these common information needs.
Each information need is addressed through a replicable process. In general, the process begins by assembling a team of content experts and through a facilitated group process (Peer Review Forum), the team begins with the business object framing model fragment to identify dataset(s) required to meet the information need. In some cases, this process takes place in a forum of content experts and in other cases it is not such a formalized process because the dataset(s) that meet the information need are intuitively recognized.
Once the dataset(s) required to meet an information need is identified, a working group of content experts is created to:
- Refine the desired specifications identified at the Peer Review Forum,
- Identify desired data standards and guidelines,
- Identify desired roles and responsibilities for the custodian organization(s) - organizations responsible for data creation, maintenance, documentation, and distribution; and,
- Identify candidate custodial organizations that have a business need and appropriate expertise to carry out the desired roles and responsibilities.
The process is complete when the Policy Board has adopted, as policy for the MetroGIS community, parameters defined through the stated tasks. The parameters are posted on a Web page for each “MetroGIS endorsed regional dataset”. Once an endorsed dataset is operational, MetroGIS monitors user satisfaction to continually enhance it.
To learn more, please see the About Information Needs page and the pages for each endorsed regional dataset.
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