NIST sends the proposed standard to senior contacts in Federal Government agencies and 
departments, and in State agencies. Comments received in response to the Federal Register 
notice and to the notice to Federal and State government agencies are acknowledged and 
reviewed by NIST. Copies of comments received are sent to the DoC Central Reference 
and Records Inspection Facility for public inspection. 
After the 90-day review cycle, a detailed justification document is prepared analyzing all of 
the comments received and explaining whether modifications were made or why recom 
mended changes were not made. The text of the final FIPS, the detailed justification 
document, the comments received, the analysis of comments received, and other supporting 
material related to the FIPS are reviewed by the NIST staff, the DoC, and the OMB prior 
to submission to the Secretary of Commerce for approval of the FIPS. 
Finally, a notice announcing approval of the FIPS from the Secretary of Commerce is 
published in the Federal Register. A copy of the detailed justification document is for 
warded to the Central Reference and Records Inspection Facility and Federal and State 
agencies are notified of the approval of the FIPS. 
The current role of the Geological Survey is to provide support to NIST during the com 
ment and revision period and to develop user documentation and software support. Fol 
lowing approval as a FIPS, the Geological Survey is prepared to submit this standard to 
the American National Standards Institute, Inc., for promotion as an ANSI standard. 
Utility 
User Interface. Users are a vital part of this development effort. The latest improve 
ments to the standard were initiated in part because of concerns about the difficulty of 
using and promoting a complex standard. The Survey recognizes that a significant effort 
must be undertaken to develop software interface tools and documentation so that the 
detailed constructs in the standard will be transparent to the user. 
The vendor community must also take an active role in developing software tools to 
encode and decode spatial data between the standard format and their own system format. 
A concerted effort has been made during the development of the standard to keep the 
private sector informed and to use their input to improve the standard. With the coopera 
tion and support of Federal agencies and the private sector, the transition of converting to 
this standard can be made smoothly and effectively. 
National Digital Spatial Data Base System. Within the government, developing and 
using existing digital cartographic data bases is becoming very popular. The absence of 
uniform standards for the transfer of digital spatial data is hindering the exchange of data 
and increasing costs. From a Federal agency perspective, the utility of the Spatial Data 
Transfer Standard is enormous. With such a standard in place, a large distributed spatial 
data base system within the Federal Government will be possible. A National Digital 
Spatial Data Base System is a proposed network of independently held and maintained 
Federal digital spatial data bases (Federal Interagency Coordinating Committee on Digital 
Cartography Standards Working Group, 1989). Traditional cartographic categories such as 
hydrography, boundaries, transportation, and elevations would be held, along with thematic