Sponsors (3)
The bill narrows Digital Coast trainings to technical tool/data instruction to improve uptake and standardization for managers and researchers, at the cost of reduced nontechnical capacity-building and some implementation uncertainty for partners.
State and local coastal managers and governments will get clearer, narrower guidance to limit trainings to technical instruction on Digital Coast data and tools, making it easier for them to adopt and apply those tools in operational work.
Researchers, practitioners, and educational institutions will receive more standardized, tool-focused training content, which should speed adoption of Digital Coast datasets and reduce variation in training quality.
State and local officials may lose access to non-technical trainings (policy, planning, community engagement), reducing broader capacity-building for using Digital Coast outputs in decision-making.
Planners, policymakers, community groups, and other nontechnical stakeholders may be left without contextual or applied guidance, forcing them to seek help from other programs or bear additional costs.
Unspecified edits to subsection (g) create uncertainty about NOAA's authorities or obligations for implementing the training limits, complicating planning for partners and users of Digital Coast resources.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Clarifies Digital Coast statute wording and limits program trainings to technical instruction on using the program's data and tools.
Official title: Amend the Digital Coast Act to improve the acquisition, integration, and accessibility of data of the Digital Coast program and to extend the program.
Introduced July 10, 2025 by Tammy Baldwin · Last progress March 3, 2026
Amends the Digital Coast statute (16 U.S.C. § 1467) with mainly punctuation and connective edits and adds a new limit on trainings: the Secretary may provide only technical instruction on how to use the data and tools available under the program. Most changes are formatting/structural; the substantive change narrows the scope of allowable trainings to technical, tool-usage instruction. No new funding or broad program changes are added.