Submitted by Rick Hamilton, Navigation Center GPS Information Analysis Team Lead & Civil GPS Service Interface Committee Executive Secretariat

The 59th meeting of the U.S. Civil GPS Service Interface Committee was held Sept. 16-17, 2019, in Miami, Florida. For readers who were unable to attend, Maritime Commons is providing the below synopsis of the meeting and presentations. The full agenda and presentations are available for download from the GPS.gov website.

The meeting of the CGSIC is an annual event, free and open to the public, conducted to provide official updates from U.S. GPS program officials and ensure effective information exchange between the U.S. government and civil GPS users. The two-day meeting is hosted by the Department of Transportation and the Coast Guard Navigation Center. DOT serves as the civil lead for the GPS and chairs the CGSIC in this capacity. NAVCEN is assigned duties as deputy chair and executive secretariat for the CGSIC.

Three subcommittees of the CGSIC (Timing, International Information, and Survey, Mapping, and Geosciences) held focused discussions on specific GPS topics such as NRL Time and Frequency Activities; Activities of the UN International Committee on Global Navigation Satellite Systems; and the Current Status and the Future of CORS Network.

The plenary session opened with a welcome from DOT’s Ms. Karen Van Dyke, CGSIC Chair, followed by a meeting overview given by NAVCEN Commanding Officer and CGSIC Deputy Chair Capt. Michael Glander. The keynote speaker was Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Deputy Assistant Secretary, DOT’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology. Furchtgott-Roth conveyed to the audience the importance of the U.S. Global Positioning System for transportation safety and numerous other civil applications and that its spectrum must be protected from harmful interference. She noted that, given threats from jamming and spoofing, the U.S. is committed to leading the world in PNT and to building and using the best possible solutions to maintain resiliency. In addition, Mr. James Platt, Director of Department of Homeland Security’s PNT Program Management Office, highlighted the need to understand cyber vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure supply-chain management. 

The plenary session included many other briefings related to the status of the U.S. GPS Program and the use of GPS around the world, including presentations from the National Space-Based PNT Coordination Office, U.S. Air Force, U.S. State Department, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Commerce, and NASA.

If you have suggestions for topics to include in upcoming CGSIC meetings, would like to present a topic, or if you found information from past meetings useful and would like to hear more, please contact us via our Navigation Center “contact us” form. Please be sure to select “Civil GPS Service Interface Committee (CGSIC)” from the pull-down menu.

If you would like to receive periodic emails concerning GPS operations, information about upcoming meetings, and other announcements from the CGSIC Executive Secretariat, please subscribe to the CGSIC mailing list.  You can find past CGSIC messages on NAVCEN’s Message Archive page.

From a GPS operational perspective, civilian non-aviation users can submit GPS-related inquiries or report signal interference or degradation to the Navigation Center online at the GPS Problem Reporting page or to the 24-hour watch desk at 703-313-5900.

Civil aviation users within the United States should contact the Federal Aviation Administration for GPS user support. The GPS Operations Center at Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado, is the lead in the Department of Defense for operational issues and questions concerning military use of GPS.

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.