The National Forum for Geoscience Information Technology

The National Forum for Geosciences Information Technology (FGIT - pronounced "figit") is proposed as a focal point for a national dialog on address information technology and cyberinfrastructure (CI) related issues and challenges through exchange of ideas, experiences, and requirements. It will foster and support the leveraging of efforts and the development of guidelines, best practices, new development and deployment teams, and interoperable software standards. Participants will include funded CI project leads, developers, users (researchers and educators including graduate students and post-docs), systems administrators, representatives from funding agencies, and other interested parties. FGIT meetings will include selected updates on important CI issues from the agency, university, and corporate perspectives, on key advances in CI that can benefit the geosciences, and on topics that cut across the geoscience and environmental communities. Attendees will be active participants in the meeting, bringing their interests into discussion groups through the use of Open Space Technology. They will have ample opportunity to interact with one another, sharing practical concerns and solutions to CI related issues. In this way, FGIT will augment other national and international meetings that have more disciplinary and/or developmentally focused CI agendas (e.g., the AMS IIPS Conference, AGU meetings, Global Grid Forum).

The theme of the inaugural meeting of FGIT is Advancing the Development, Coordination, Deployment and Use of Information Technologies for Enabling Research, Education, and Operations in the Geosciences.

FGIT will not duplicate or supplant other planning activities or projects but rather provide a broad communication fabric of benefit to them. The principal outcome of FGIT is expected to be a better educated and more effective information technology literate geosciences workforce and an associated CI enterprise that develops and supports tools/capabilities that lead to new insights, improved education, and informed public decision making.

FGIT 2005 Annual Meeting October 6-7, 2005 Washington, D.C.