I used to deal quite a bit with ABAG myself, and after I moved to Santa Cruz with their version of it down there, AMBAG. But my understanding af ABAG's  (and AMBAGS) role may be a bit different than yours.I've always been a nuts and bolts guy, not an administrator or manager type.

 It looks to me more like ABAG is simply becoming the outbound locus point for information contained in the member County(s) digital archives on a computer network being created specifically for the purpose of establishing Statewide access to all that very same information in every County in the State through one access portal. it's obvious that ABAG in its capacity has access to ALL of the records,, including the ones that you cannot access through the existing infrastructure, even though they may not use all of them.  .

My thinking  is that ABAG may have a greater part in this than you know, mainly because their stated function does not include operating a computer sub- network of sorts. The computer servers that access all of  the ABAG member Counties and Municipalities "Geospatial Data" archives located in each county are actually owned and operated by ABAG, and are physically located in Berkeley..So the information that ABAG is using to formulate it's own information/reports with respect to its own stated functions are coming from its' members archives as well as USGS and University and Research digital archives.. What you're really looking at here is the State of California creating a computer networking platform with ABAG serving as a digital locus point which is not an administrative, analytical, or political function either cited or inferred as one of ABAG's stated functions.. It's simply a matter of existing Information Technology being used to consolidate access to archived information located elsewhere..  

Above ABAG on the Governmental flow chart,, the State of California has a GIS organizing component under the California Division of Technology, which is supposed to be in charge of consolidating all of the digitized regional/local archival access statewide. ABAG is but one of the components in that network, but it will access the State to all 9 sets of those Governmental archives as well as the outboard University and Research group archives presently accessed by ABAG's system..

What you are really looking at here is the State of California creating this system for a multitude of its' own reasons and purposes that we are not privy to.. I spent about 1/3 of my working hours  from December of 2010 through December of  2013 accessing California County and in some instances Municipal government public records databases as a part of my job here in Phoenix, Arizona. Only a small amount of that information was retrieved from AMBAG member Counties, but the fact is Southern California has similar regional orgs  which are already in compliance with the State of California directives on this subject,,and we had access to both the SoCal online databases and their off line databases as well. Everything from maps of all sorts,zoning and use info, right down to pre-subdivision planning and engineering documents. If the documentation had in fact been digitized and was considered to be a "public record", we had access to it. But we could only do this because 1.) we had permission to do so from the database owners {the County(s) involved], and 2.) we had the programs on our computers ("apps" on a computing device) that allowed our computers to access to them through specifically designated web portals.. It would appear to me that the State is probably in the same boat as we were and is simply trying to get the system to conform to one universal standard as to data sharing/access..

So my thought is that this is probably more a case of the onward march of technology than anything else.

If it were a straight electrical engineering problem it would more than likely be analogously classified as an impedance mismatch. In other words the "mechanical" part of the system itself works, but one side of it is limiting flow so the rest of it doesn't work to it's full potential.

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