Advocacy

Shaping the GIS Profession

clientuploads/directory/graphics/URISA Advocacy.jpg URISA actively works to advance and support the GIS profession and GIS professionals. URISA supports an advocacy agenda, develops standards, models and policy statements...and invites your participation. URISA is advocating for your success and here’s how we can effectively do that together:

URISA Is Advocating for You

Truly valuable professional associations do three things well for their members: education, communication, and advocacy. URISA has always advocated on behalf of its members, but we’ve recently started to take the advocacy role to a new, more effective level.

There’s a value proposition for you in the URISA advocacy role: Having URISA on your side, speaking out for you to National and State/Provincial Legislatures, County, City, and Town Commissions, and Regional/Tribal Governments will result in greater, more effective investment in geospatial systems (data, people and technology) for everyone.

For that to happen, you have to let URISA know what geospatial issues are important to you and what you think should be done to improve things. At the annual GIS-Pro conference, we’ve established a Chapter Roll Call in which URISA Chapter leaders get a chance to tell all the participants what they’ve heard from their members about important issues. The Chapter leaders solicit that input from their members in the months leading up to GIS-Pro. We spend time in many of the conference sessions discussing those important issues and defining actions that need to be taken…actions for which URISA can advocate.

The result of the discussions at GIS-Pro is the URISA Advocacy Agenda. This tool provides any member a way to show leaders in their jurisdiction what URISA believes is important and what actions are needed to make the agenda items a reality. This is URISA’s initial effort at putting together an Advocacy Agenda. It will improve in content and effectiveness as more members participate and as we hone in together on the important issues and activities.

We are already using the Advocacy Agenda to coordinate efforts on executive support, data development, education, and workforce development with a number of other professional associations, thereby leveraging the influence of many others to accomplish our objectives. For example, we are coordinating with the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) and the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) on national address data development and Next Generation 911. We’re coordinating with the U.S. Department of Labor and the Australian Spatial Sciences and Surveying Institute (SSSI) on workforce development and education/training. We also work with the Coalition of Geospatial Organizations on all of our advocacy agenda items in various ways.

URISA and our partner organizations communicate directly with leaders in Congress and the White House, with State legislators and with local elected officials often throughout the year to advocate for specific actions that align with our advocacy agenda. The Advocacy Agenda is there for you to use to do the same, to ensure that we are all speaking with the same powerful voice. The Advocacy Agenda guides our efforts as a professional association and helps us prioritize those efforts.

The coordination we’re doing with other associations and organizations is something that’s made possible because we’re working together through URISA to use the combined influence of our membership. That combined influence, reflected through our Advocacy Agenda, and brought to bear on the problems and issues that stand in the way of our individual and collective success is tremendously valuable to every member.

URISA actively works to advance and support the GIS profession and GIS professionals. URISA supports an advocacy agenda, develops standards, models and policy statements...and invites your participation. URISA is advocating for your success and here’s how we can effectively do that together.

Advocacy Agenda

1. Executive Support & Sustainable Funding for Geospatial Programs

Develop, promote, implement URISA’s ROI model
Promote/enhance the geospatial community
Encourage development of GeoAuditing

2. Nationwide Development of High Quality, Publicly Accessible Geospatial Data

Develop, implement Geospatial Capability Maturity Assessment
Coordinate advocacy with NSGIC and others on For the Nation data initiatives
Support the Coalition of Geospatial Organizations (COGO) Data Sharing Initiative

3. Affordable Geospatial Training Programs Offered by Academic Institutions and Other Organizations

Support GeoTech Center and others in developing affordable geospatial training
Identify and promote open educational resources initiatives internationally
Promote more federal financial aid opportunities for part-time & non-traditional students
Continue developing web-based curricula of URISA workshops and webinars
Create web collaborations to extend reach of geospatial education beyond URISA

4. Highly Capable Geospatial Workforce to Meet Current and Future Demands