Background

The State Cartographer's Office (SCO) was established in State statute in 1988 and was funded by the Arizona State Land Department in 1995.

The SCO was created in large part due to the efforts of the Arizona Geographic Information Council (AGIC) in the belief that establishing funding for the SCO was a high priority in order to fulfill the objectives of the AGIC Strategic Plan.

AGIC's Strategic Plan clarifies the relationship of AGIC, as a policy board, Arizona Land Resource Information System (ALRIS), as the state GIS data base developer, and the SCO as the standards and data base coordinator.

The State Cartographer is responsible for developing and managing a long term program for collecting, updating, and disseminating statewide information about GIS data resources in an Arizona GIS clearinghouse. This effort is ongoing.

AGIC has identified as one of the main duties of SCO, the exploration of alternative funding sources for the development and maintenance of GIS data, which includes examining legal issues related to the access, cost recovery, and sharing of that data.