In an article in Government Technology by editor Todd Newcombe he pointed out that during the first day of the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C. the discussions of a future of opening up government data to improve democracy and citizen engagement would mean that GIS would be a clear winner.

The reason for this is that 74 percent of government data is location-based, according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Federal Enterprise Architecture framework. State and local figures are higher than that, closer to 80 percent.

Coming up: the Open Government Directive from the Obama administration will require federal agencies to set standards for providing data in machine-readable formats to the public.

http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/722260?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=link