NOAA 95-1

Contact:  Eliot Hurwitz               FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
          (301) 713-3066                      1/5/95

NOAA REORGANIZES CHARTING AND GEODESY

The National Ocean Service plans to elevate its Nautical Charting, Aeronautical Charting, and National Geodetic Survey Divisions to full office status in response to the Clinton Adminstration's push to streamline government and make it more efficient.

This move recognizes the importance of charting and geodetic services and the need for increasing their visibility within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The organizational change will both improve the current level of service and revive the historic name "Coast Survey" for the nautical charting program.

The three new offices will now report directly to NOS, instead of going through a Coast and Geodetic Survey management layer. After review, NOAA management concluded that this layer could be removed and its functions redistributed with minimal impact on the program.

The move will give more decision-making power to the operating units, elevate policy making to the head of NOS, and improve the balance among NOS organizational elements. The reorganization is also in line with Vice President Al Gore's National Performance Review, which says "flatter" organizations are more efficient and adaptable to changing circumstances.

Another goal of the reorganization, which still must be formalized, is to bring the NOS charting and geodetic services staffs into closer contact with new users, especially coastal resource managers, helping promote the use of digital survey data in computer- based geographic information systems.

NOS is the oldest scientific organization in the federal government, established by President Thomas Jefferson in 1807 as the Survey of the Coast. In 1878 its name was changed to Coast and Geodetic Survey as it became responsible for the nation's geodetic reference system that establishes the national framework for surveying. The new office names will be the Office of Aeronautical Charting and Cartography, the Office of the National Geodetic Survey and, reflecting the origin of nautical charting, the Office of Coast Survey.