A cornerstone of collaborative, regionally based planning is providing access to data for transparent, science-based decision-making. This is especially true in the coastal and marine environment. The president’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force recognized this in its recommendations.
“A robust national information management system dedicated to coastal and marine scientific data and information products is required to meet the diverse data and application requirements of CMSP, and the varying technical capabilities of users.”
Final Recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force, The White House Council on Environmental Quality, July 19, 2010
A national information management system for marine planning that follows from this recommendation is now available as Ocean.Data.Gov, a community of Data.Gov. This new portal gives Americans transparent access to data, tools, and information that federal agencies have about the oceans and coasts. NOAA is an active member of the Ocean.Data.Gov core working group, as well as a primary contributor to Ocean.Data.Gov, which contains many NOAA data sets and tools.