Office of Coast Survey - Print on Demand Agent Information

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Office of Coast Survey Receives Grace Hopper Government Technology Leadership Award - 2001

Government Executive Magazine and the Federal Technology Service presented the 2001 Government Technology Leadership Award to the Electronic Commerce and Print-on-Demand for Nautical Charts Project. The award announcement said that the Project nomination, "was considered to be outstanding by a distinguished panel of government experts in the area of federal technology advancement." The announcement went on to say that an unprecedented 266 nominations were submitted this year while only eleven were chosen to receive an award. The ceremony with reception, held December 4th in the ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, D.C., was attended by several hundred representatives of industry and federal, state and local governments. The ceremony and reception were sponsored by CDW Government, Inc., Compaq Federal LLC., GovWorks Federal Acquisition Center, Information Builders, Inc., Northrop Grumman Corporation, and PeopleSoft, Inc.

The Office of Coast Survey would like to acknowledge its partners in this work. OceanGrafix, L.L.C., of St. Paul, MN, is our Cooperative Research and Development Agreement partner for the cutting edge, Print-on-Demand technology. Software Performance Systems, Inc., of Arlington, VA, has been doing the sophisticated E-Commerce software development. The contract with SPS was funded by the Information Technology Innovation Fund.

Nautical charts are the fundamental tool of marine navigation. Hundreds of critical chart changes occurring each week need to be applied, charts manufactured, and then efficiently and quickly distributed by chart retailers to mariners.

The Print-on-Demand Updated Nautical Chart project is one-of-a-kind amongst hydrographic offices of the nations of the world. It provides to the mariner absolutely up-to-date information critical to safe navigation. It uses large format plotters, digital asset management, and electronic commerce to make nautical charts from digital files continuously maintained by the Office of Coast Survey. Charts are only printed when ordered using the up-to-date files. The technology enables customization of each chart to specific mariner, vessel, ship company, or industry needs.

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Friday April 18 2003by OCS Webmaster