Government Cartography Agency

The Government Cartography Agency (GCA) was created in 2531.

History

Over the years, the government had received an increasing number of complaints against cartography companies for egregious inaccuracies or tiered pricing schemes that made detailed maps unaffordable to many consumers. One particular heinous example was when the Monroe Mapping Concern left a whole asteroid field off a map of Hadrian since they had promised exclusivity to a mining company. This led a number of politicians to lobby for increased oversight. It finally reached a tipping point with the Pallas incident. After discovering Pallas, Gaia Planet Services failed to properly scan the system before attempting to terraform Pallas III. Only then did they discover it was already occupied by the Xi’An, an unknown species at the time. Realizing regulations were needed to govern the charting of new systems, the Government Cartography Agency was created.

Initially, the GCA was tasked with charting and scanning all new systems and ensuring that the most current geospatial information was available to the public. When Ivar Messer empowered himself as Imperator in 2546, he realized that the GCA was in a key position to control the knowledge of the known universe. Not long after he was sworn in, private mapmakers got word to shutter their operations. Mapmaking was nationalized, and the GCA renamed the Imperial Cartography Center.