I’m in search of the Colorado GIS Portal, if there actually exists such an entity! Recall a while back I put together a comprehensive State Clearinghouse directory (See HERE). This may seem a little “hohum” to you, however, if you’ve ever tried to search out and document all the “official” State GIS resources you’ll soon realize what a daunting task this can be. One issue that, quite frankly, blows my mind is the frequency of such important resources simply vanishing without a trace leaving would-be users with that familiar 404 error… I guess I must be naive because I’m left wondering, is it really that difficult to coordinate such an effort? The most recent 404 message comes from the CO resource and I’m sure there’s a few others.
I’ll applaud James Fee (@cageyjames) who recently shouted out with a great idea related somewhat to this topic … “Cash for GeoClunkers“. James started a discussion something to the effect that we could use some stimulus cash to rid us of old, broken-down webmaps and GIS web services – really, this is a great idea – forget filling all those portholes, lets invest in some GeoWeb services and pave the way to open access to data! I’m hoping that with the recent launch of Data.gov perhaps this issue will come to surface once again. The Feds have started with a State/Local links page, although with only links to 2 state resources (CA, UT)it’s falling a little short and is disappointing to say the least.. perhaps Data.gov would like to use our State Clearinghouse resources as a starting point?? Please gimme a call and we can discuss, I’ll be glad to help you out! For those of you interested adding a description and link to an official State GIS resource that you frequently use, please Add details and a link to this Directory or list a regional, county, or local resource HERE