The State's vision for geospatial technology acquisition, development, deployment and management is "enterprise wide" -- providing high quality services available to all of State government and the State's partner organizations. MnGeo's technical coordination responsibilities include identifying service data priorities, coordinating state data investments, developing and promoting the use of data standards, identifying appropriate developers, aggregators and stewards for statewide data assets, and coordinating enterprise solutions for data storage, retrieval and use.
MnGeo, extending upon a role filled by LMIC for more than 20 years, works with State agencies and strategic partners, such as the US Geological Survey, US Farm Service Agency, local governments and other organizations to coordinate funding strategies to acquire essential geospatial data. Prominent among these are statewide acquisition of orthoimagery data that are so essential to modern GIS applications. MnGeo staff is especially experienced at packaging multi-organizational agreements to assemble the funding needed to acquire the data and works closely with its partners to ensure that technical experts develop product specifications.
Much of this involves taking advantage of Service Oriented Architectures that use the internet. Successfully pursuing this vision requires effective coordination among agencies and other organizations that provide "best of breed" component services -- image services, geocoding services, proximity services, query services are examples. MnGeo has designed a Service Cataloging facility to make it easier for organizations to document their technology services and find services cataloged by other organizations that they can use.