In 2001, under executive order of the Governor, the Idaho Geospatial Committee (IGC) was formed to provide policy-level direction and promote efficient and effective use of resources for matters related to geographic information. 

In 2002, the Washington-Idaho National Map Pilot Project integrated road data, and other themes, for a 4 county area near Spokane, WA and Coeur d'Alene, ID.  The data compiled under this effort was made available to The National Map through INSIDE Idaho as an OGC Web Map Service.  While this project was successful, it was realized that a model was not in place for the layer to be continuously updated.  Subsequent efforts took steps to address that shortcoming.

In 2003, the Idaho I-Plan was competed to set forth a strategy to coordinate and manage the collection, maintenance, and distribution of geospatial data themes critical to building an enterprise geographic information system (GIS) in Idaho.  Many folks across the state participated in the writing of this document.

In 2004, an FGDC CAP grant, which was not awarded, was submitted by INSIDE Idaho to create an automated application that would, on a weekly basis, copy a road layer from the Kootenai County FTP site back to a server, extract the archive file, and refresh an OGC Web Map Service containing the road layer. USGS was able to work with INSIDE Idaho under a cooperative agreement that year to develop an automated application that would retrieve metadata from Kootenai County to monitor data sets for updates.  

In 2005, INSIDE Idaho applied for and was awarded an FGDC CAP grant that focused on developing the infrastructure and partnerships needed to integrate up to date public domain data for Idaho for three framework themes (imagery, boundaries, and transportation).  Under this grant, the automated application created the previous year was updated to copy a road layer from the Kootenai County FTP site back to a server, extract the archive file, and refresh an OGC Web Map Service containing the road layer.  

It is important to note, that prior to February 2006, only one local or regional entity had public-domain road transportation data and metadata that was being updated continuously available via the Internet -- Kootenai County.  It is also important to note that between 2002 and 2006 local and tribal governments in North Idaho were developing robust GIS programs to support data maintenance.  In February, 2006 Nez Perce County published, via the Internet, their daily-maintained, public-domain road transportation data and metadata.  This was an important milestone; two road transportation layers that were maintained daily at the local level were in the public-domain and accessible via the Internet.  The opportunity for automated integration of daily maintained local data presented itself.

In June of 2006, under cooperative agreement with USGS, the Coeur d'Alene Tribe and INSIDE Idaho began to develop procedures and tools for sharing and integrating geospatial transportation data among interested parties.  The Tribe was tasked with handling coordination efforts and INSIDE Idaho was tasked with handling the programmatic efforts surrounding automated processing for integration.  A meeting of interested parties resulted in the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, Boundary County and Bonner County making their road transportation data available via the Internet (Nez Perce County and Kootenai County already had their data available) for the purpose of integration.  The group decided on a core set of attributes to be included in the integrated layer. The business case for this effort was 911.

Here is a list of current participants, the current layer attributes, and a list of the current layer attribute descriptions.

A description of the automated geoprocessing function is listed below.

Automated Geoprocessing Function

An application on the server runs as a schedule task each week (Saturday).  The application: 

1. Copies zip files containing shapefiles from partner FTP or HTTP locations
2. Extracts zip files
3. Selects features based on steward attribute (GIS_STEW)
4. Reprojects shapefiles to IDTM83
5. Normalizes attribute column names using a lookup table
6. Merges shapefiles and loads feature class to ArcSDE
7. Calculates feature lengths (meter, miles, feet)
8. Creates metadata on the ArcSDE feature class

This process continues to be refined.

Updates:

Summer 2007

• Added functionality to produce both a public and private feature class.
• Added US Census Bureau road layer for southern Idaho
• Added functionality to harvest layers from sites requiring authentication.
• Added Nez Perce Tribe road layer
• Added reporting output to track time each process takes

Fall 2007

• Created ArcGIS Server Web Service (Mapping, GeoData, Address Locator)
• Upgraded OGC WMS from ArcIMS to ArcGIS Server
• Add Madison County road layer
• Added functionality to stop/start ArcGIS Server to address SDE feature class lock issue

Winter 2008

• Added Jefferson County road layer
• Added Address Locator to INSIDE Idaho Web application
• Added automated export of SDE layer to shapefile for download per user requests
• Created an FTP site for partners to 'push' their data to
• Added Canyon County road layer
• Added Caribou County road layer
• Added Blaine County road layer

Spring/Summer 2008

• Added Ada County road layer
• Added Lemhi County road layer
• Added Teton County road layer
• Added Bonneville County road layer
• Added Latah County road layer