The NASA/ UL Lafayette Regional Application Center as a USGS Earth Science Information Center is a Mapping Partnership Office (MPO) with USGS to support the USGS mission to increase multi-partner agreements in an effort to eliminate duplication of effort, reduce cost to each partner, and share data collection and maintenance expenses.

The RAC Mapping Partnership office is also developing and participating  in the USGS The National Map project.  The vision of The National Map is to ensure that the Nation has access to current, accurate, and nationally consistent digital data and topographic maps derived from this data.  The National Map will be a seamless, continuously maintained set of public domain geographic base information that will serve as a foundation for integrating, sharing, and using other data easily and consistently.