The 55th meeting of the Civil GPS Service Interface Committee, or CGSIC, conference was hosted by the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center, or NAVCEN, at the Tampa Convention Center in Florida on September 14-15, 2015. The Department of Transportation serves as the civil lead for GPS and chairs the CGSIC in this capacity. The CGSIC Chair is filled by the Director, Positioning, Navigation and Timing Programs Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology in DOT. Assigned duties as Deputy Chair and Executive Secretariat for the CGSIC, the NAVCEN acts as the liaison between civil maritime and non-aviation transportation users of GPS and GPS authorities for outage reporting, and also sits on various GPS program meetings to represent civilian users and advocate for the civil use of GPS.

All CGSIC meetings are free and open to the public to come and learn about the broad array of GPS-based applications available. All CGSIC presentations are available for viewing online via the GPS.gov website: http://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/

A GPS signal can be disrupted for a variety of reasons, including the illegal use of a GPS jammer (http://www.gps.gov/spectrum/jamming/). Indicators of GPS compromise include intermittent signal, no signal and/or incorrect signal. Take note of the following critical information during a suspected or actual event: (at minimum) location, time and period of outage. Report this information to NAVCEN – the primary contact for issues related to land-based or maritime GPS signals. Aviation and military-related inquiries will be routed to the appropriate agency.

Please report GPS-related signal interference/degradation events or forward general GPS inquiries to the NAVCEN via the website: http://www.navcen.uscg.gov, or by calling 703-313-5900.

This blog is not a replacement or substitute for the formal posting of regulations and updates or existing processes for receiving formal feedback of the same. Links provided on this blog will direct the reader to official source documents, such as the Federal Register, Homeport and the Code of Federal Regulations. These documents remain the official source for regulatory information published by the Coast Guard.