Summary

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on geographic information system (GIS) activities at the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Energy, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, the Federal Highway Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Emergency Management Administration, focusing on: (1) agency missions; (2) GIS applications; (3) estimated GIS budgets; (4) computer hardware and software used for GIS; and (5) planned GIS procurements.

GAO found that: (1) the federal government's investment in GIS technology was significant; (2) in October 1988, the Office of Management and Budget reported that agencies would need at least $165 million each year to fund electronic mapping efforts, which largely included GIS; (3) some agencywide GIS are costly to implement and operate; (4) federal government GIS applications supported various diverse missions; and (5) the agencies' use of hardware and software in GIS applications varied, specifically in the usage of hardware components and software types.