4. Incentives are needed to encourage partnerships that are designed to maximize use and benefits to the broader user community. Such incentives could be provided through the monitoring and coordinating roles of the FGDC and state geographic information councils.

5. The Federal Geographic Data Committee should investigate the extent to which federal procurement rules (and future revisions resulting from the National Performance Review) are an impediment to the formation of spatial data partnerships, and identify steps that can be taken to ease them.

The partnership model with data stewardship responsibilities at all levels of government represents a fundamental shift in the way the nation develops and supports the NSDI. Federal agencies will devote more resources to coordination and less to data production. States and other government entities will continue to expand their data production roles to support national needs. It is consistent with the recognition that today data are distributed across the nation at all levels of government and the public. The rapidly expanding communication network (the NII or information superhighway) will be the conduit to bring these data sets together. The FGDC, federal agencies, and state geographic information councils in concert will form a critical component of the infrastructure that ensures logical consistency and availability of framework and other spatial data to carry the nation into the next century.