What is the NSDI Geoportal and what is its purpose?

The NSDI Geoportal is a website or its equivalent established, maintained and developed by the National Contact Point for the purpose of metadata management and providing services for discovering, viewing, downloading, transforming and invoking spatial data sources and other information related to the NSDI. 

The NSDI Geoportal consists of the Metadata Catalogue and the Viewer, which enable searching, downloading and browsing spatial data sources.

The NSDI Geoportal is a place where anyone can find information about spatial data under the jurisdiction of the public sector, e.g. which institution is responsible, how to access the data and under what conditions it can be further used, etc. When the data is available through network services and open for use, it can be viewed and downloaded for further use without going to the competent institutions.