| From the Editor
By Greg Thomason NDGPS and Free-market Interference
In a free-market system the role of government is to provide only those services that cannot or should not be provided by the private sector. That's why the responsibility for maintaining a national army, air force, and navy falls within the jurisdiction of the federal government and is not placed in the hands of private entrepreneurs.
Conversely, imagine if the federal government had rationalized when cellular phone technology was emerging that: 'All politicians will need cellular phones, therefore it is the role of the federal government to provide taxpayer subsidized cellular phone service.' It could never happen. Not only would Ma Bell and all her progeny have hired the biggest and 'baddest' lobbyists on Capitol Hill to dismantle such a proposal; every politician who has ever received a dime from a Tel-PAC would have decried such a proposal as the first cornerstone to the ruination of the free-market system.
Even the purists among free-market proponents can get lost from time to time. How else could the current U.S. Congress - with its budget reduction, private sector agenda - have overlooked the public/private sector conflict that arises from efforts to establish a taxpayer funded Nationwide Differential Global Positioning System (NDGPS)? Currently, proponents of this system have a total of $2.4 million authorized in the 1998 Department of Transportation and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Another $8.5 million is requested in the DoT's FY 99 budget. By the end of this fund-as-you-go project (with a projected completion date of 2001), expenditures are estimated to cost taxpayers $68.6 million.
The genesis for the NDGPS movement comes out of the Federal Railroad Administration's DoT mandate to implement a "Positive Train Separation" system. Under PTS, America's railroads could increase train frequency and volume while improving accident safety conditions. Hence, with an obvious profit motive for the nation's private rail operators, FRA took the lead on promoting NDGPS and recruited a reluctant partner in the U.S. Coast Guard to help promote this funding legislation in Congress.
Unfortunately, the Coast Guard's reluctance to get involved did not provide a strong enough message for the FRA or the consortium of potential beneficiaries that was cobbled together. Their collective agenda became the promotion of a national differential GPS standard.
With thousands of existing customer in the commercial market already using commercially available national DGPS systems, the argument can be made that standards already exist. Rather than the government expanding on the Coast Guard's role in order to compete with existing commercial vendors, what's needed here is a memo to all participating government agencies specifying the criteria to which they must conform when purchasing DGPS receivers.
The threat of litigation serves as another point of argument for FRA against using services from a commercial DGPS signal provider. Whereas the federal government protects government agencies under the federal banner from civil lawsuits by refusing all liability, commercial DGPS providers would limit their liability through negotiated, contractual limits.
What becomes obfuscated by all these claims is the fact that private companies have invested resources, and have successfully established a number of options for providing NDGPS to the marketplace. While representatives of these private firms openly admit that their systems might need to be augmented with additional service to cover specific, hard to reach areas in the U.S., none of these obstacles are insurmountable. Yet, to my knowledge, none of the commercial providers of DGPS were ever invited to submit a formal, competitive bid outlining their plans and costs for establishing an NDGPS program.
The point being: Without an open, competitive bidding process that weighs the benefits of both public and private sector NDGPS programs, how can the proponents for NDGPS (and Congress) assume that the best system available is being adopted?
Looking into my crystal ball, here is what I foresee under the current proposed system: cost overruns; startup delays; antiquated technology; signal service interruptions caused by atmospheric and power line interference, and; a new bureaucracy established to deal with these issues.
Thanks for making EOM your source for news in the GeoTechnologies. Greg Thomason Back |
