The American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will create jobs in the short-term and spur economic growth and competitiveness in the long-term. But this plan must be designed in a new way. We must make smart strategic investments that serve as a down payment on our long-term economic future, create millions of new jobs - and provide the American workforce with new skills. To build a 21st century economy, we must engage Local, State, and Federal agencies and their partnering contractors across the nation to create jobs rebuilding crumbling roads, bridges, electric grids and schools - but these organizations need an updated online information network that will allow them to rebuild in a smart, efficient, environmentally conscientious and sustainable way. An investment in community-based mapping, updated with environmental information, will speed economic recovery by producing jobs and tie together ongoing government initiatives. An “NSDI 2.0” will leave the country with a public resource, a national spatial data infrastructure that will become a foundation for new business and technology investment – including broadband infrastructure development efforts now under consideration. Most importantly, this network provides a sustainable information infrastructure and investment in innovation that will create thousands of new jobs and contribute to the economy for many years to come.
The NSDI 2.0 is a “digital infrastructure” investment. Job-generation estimates by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation indicate that for every $1B in funds spent on such infrastructure, over 30,000 jobs are created. ITIF studies also indicate investments in infrastructure at an early stage of development, like a national spatial data infrastructure, create even more jobs because new jobs are generated by “upstream investment in industries that create new and innovative applications and services to take advantage of the more robust IT network.”
Congressional Research Service Report - Geospatial Information and GIS cites
NSDI 2.0 featured on All Points Blog
NSDI 2.0 Discussion Slides from 2009 EPA Exchange Network Meeting in Atlanta
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