As increasing demands are placed on the nation's highway infrastructure, governments at all levels are required to meet these needs with fewer staff and lower budgets. The efficient use of information throughout an organization becomes not only a political, but an economic imperative. Geographic information systems (GISs) may play a central role in serving users in executive, administrative, technical, and support staff positions. GISs provide an intrinsically logical, visually oriented display of information. Because many users are far more interested in, and more attuned to, their quantitative information under consideration than in the methods used to retrieve it, this visual interface is a critical element in the system. Additional information management tools, contained in some GISs and compatible with others, provide gateways to the applications required by the users; these include relational data bases, numerical analysis models, photolog records, decision support systems, and economic assessment and budgeting procedures. At the state and national level, many of these applications are operational, or are in the advanced development stage. A framework for development of a GIS is required for various applications; a number of these applications are assessed within that context. GIS applications that will be addressed are (a) the FHWA Geographic Roadway Information Display System,(b) FHWA's GIS for policy analysis,(c) Wisconsin DOT GIS for pavement management,(d) North Carolina GIS for the Division of Highways, and the (e) FHWA/Columbia Metropolitan Planning Organization, application of the Bureau of the Census, the Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system for a metropolitan planning organization.