National Ocean Service; Quality Assurance and Certification Program for NOAA Hydrographic Products

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been mandated to develop and implement a quality assurance program that is equally available to all applicants, under which the Administrator may certify hydrographic products that satisfy standards promulgated by the Administrator. "Hydrographic products" are any publicly or commercially available products produced by a non-Federal entity that include or display hydrographic data. The Administrator will fulfill this mandate by establishing procedures by which hydrographic products are proposed for certification; by which standards and compliance tests are developed, adopted, and applied for those products; and by which certification may be awarded or denied. These procedures would be the mandated Quality Assurance Program. The implementation of the program would be the execution of those procedures for specific hydrographic products.