A Better Way to Map Arlington Cemetary

As Thursday’s congressional hearing and the Army’s own investigation have made clear, the dysfunctions at Arlington Cemetery go much deeper than the antiquated record-keeping. Yet that lack of a real tracking and mapping system clearly contributed to the errors detailed by Washington Post reporters -- and the fact that 11 years, 35 contracts and $5.5 million have failed to produce a usable database is appalling in its own right.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, technology projects are complicated, and government contracts have challenges all their own. But Arlington Cemetery -- with its 300,000 graves and few hundred acres -- is not *that* big of a data project. And there are countless current examples, using open-source tools and widely-used software, that show just how much can be done for a fraction of the funds wasted so far.

Take, for example, earthquake-ravaged Haiti -- a place most would agree faces resource and governance challenges that dwarf Arlington’s. Today, the definitive map of Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas is on Open Street Map -- a free, global, volunteer-driven project that aims to provide “a free editable map of the whole world.” In the hours after the Jan. 12 quake, volunteers on the ground began updating and improving the maps to facilitate relief efforts -- giving aid workers a way to navigate the confusing and often-blocked streets. Then on Jan. 14, high-resolution satellite images of Haiti were released, and volunteers worldwide began “tracing” and annotating -- not only roads, but buildings, obstacles and even communities of displaced Haitians. Within days, virtually every corner of the region had been accurately mapped -- no contract required.

More recently, InterAction -- a D.C.-based non-profit that focuses on aid and development -- launched HaitiAidMap.org. This site inventories, at last count, 1,045 aid projects in Haiti involving 87 different organizations. This project did involve a contractor -- which billed all of $40,000, and took less than a month to deliver the final project.

HaitiAidMap.org, of course, started with much cleaner data than the cemetery, with its index cards and “hand-drawn maps on six-foot-wide sheets of paper,” can provide. But as the Open Street Map project has proven, in Haiti and elsewhere, amazing things are possible with GPS, satellite images, and careful note-taking.

The basic mapping of Arlington Cemetery, in fact, is already done in Open Street Map. One woman, contributing to the project in her spare time, has added cemetery roads, monuments, several sections and a handful of notable burial plots. And as part of Open Street Map, that data is freely available for the Army to use and extend as it pleases.

Surveying and cross-checking every single burial plot would take significantly more effort, of course, and a functioning records system for our most hallowed cemetery requires more than just accurate and attractive electronic maps. But surely we can get more for our time and money than cemetery officials have managed over the past decade.

So next Memorial Day, when soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry place flags on the graves of service members (a ritual that, according to the Arlington National Cemetery website, takes roughly three hours), let’s equip them with some GPS units and make a day of it. Or better yet, let’s round up volunteers and do it now. The heroes buried at Arlington deserve a system that works -- and so do the American taxpayers.