In the United States, the policies regulating our ocean resources have historically been developed as single-purpose regimes. To facilitate a more integrated, comprehensive ocean management strategy, the Coastal Services Center (CSC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has developed a MapObjects-driven Web-based regional ocean governance geographic information system. Working with the four south Atlantic states, CSC georeferenced and aggregated the legal and institutional frameworks using ArcInfo region coverages. This data was then integrated with natural resource data within an ArcView GIS project. This paper will discuss the issues (error assessment) of developing these "legal" data layers in support of holistic regional ocean management.