Geoportals are important for effective use of geographic information systems (GIS) and a key element of a spatial data infrastructure (SDI).
Thus geoportals serve an increasingly important role in the sharing of geographic information and can avoid duplicated efforts, inconsistencies, delays, confusion, and wasted resources.
Unlike the NSDI Clearinghouse Network, GOS was built around a centralized metadata catalog database, with an architecture that links users to data providers through a Web-based geoportal.
At the same time, the United States federal government launched the Geospatial Platform, which represents a shift from focusing on cataloging references to resources, to providing shared web services for national significant datasets, API for developers, and end-user applications (built on those web services and API).
Esri's ArcGIS Online, with its Living Atlas Geoportal, provides a large of volume of data covering a wide variety of topics.