OGC's
column for the December, 1996 issue of GIS World
Strategic Membership for Nations and Regions
by Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
OpenGIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC)
From the Open GIS Consortium's beginning, it has sought international
members to: 1) ensure that the OpenGIS Specification meets all nations' needs
and becomes internationally accepted; and 2) maximize business opportunities
for all of OGC's technology providers and maximize technology access for all
of OGC's users, without regard to nationality. OGC's international membership
has now grown to 25 non-US members, one-third of OGC's membership (as of October
1, 1996), and OGC now has sufficient international experience and resources to
begin formalizing its international organization and programs.
EUROGI Head on OGC's Board
On June 14, 1996 of Michael Brand, President of EUROGI, the European Umbrella
Organization of GI Associations, was elected to the OGC Board of Directors. Mr.
Brand brings vast experience with European and international GI organizations:
he well understands the European situation and has shown a longstanding commitment
to coordination, data sharing, and interoperability in the GI domain across Europe.
As a Director, Mr. Brand will help ensure that European technology producers
and technology users become full partners in our activities, and he will bring
wisdom to the Board's deliberation of international issues in general.
Issues of International Organization
OGC's staff and the International Subcommittee of the Management Committee have
been discussing a broad range of ideas with OGC members in Japan, Europe, Canada,
and Australia. There is general agreement about the need for region-focused and
perhaps in some cases nation-focused groups, programs, and meetings. Issues being
discussed include: the missions of regional and national groups; coordination
between these groups and OGC's current Board, Management Committee, and Technical
Committee; international representation in those OGC bodies; division and sharing
of responsibilities, resources, and fees; and addressing regional and national
needs through Strategic Memberships. These discussions have been positive and
there is desire on the part of all participants to build OGC into a truly international
organization. Significant decisions are likely in the next few months.
Strategic Membership
Major Geospatial Information Communities should be aware of OGC's activities:
In the second half of 1997, different vendors' OpenGIS Specification-compliant
geoprocessing software products will be serving each other's requests for simple
features and feature collections using functions such as intersect, union, subtract,
and select by attribute, location or topological relation. OGC's process will
generate cross-vendor interoperability for Earth images just as it has done for
features. Similar work will be done for network services such as catalog services
for data discovery, and then for semantic translators to automate the integration
of semantically heterogeneous data.
Major Information Communities, including groups who cooperate and share information
within or between nations, have a stake in the specification work described above.
Through Strategic Membership in OGC, a nation, a cooperating group of nations,
an industry association (for banking, logistics, transportation, etc.), a Fortune
500 company, or an international organization, can: 1) solicit a comprehensive,
detailed matrix of applicable current and projected geoprocessing technologies,
2) get expert help in creating community-wide geospatial information architectures,
3) establish, with vendors, standard interface specifications that will lead
to highly differentiated, use-specific, competitive but interoperable products,
4) establish prototyping facilities, and 5) request other kinds of help from
OGC.
OGC's focus in all cases is on the user. As the supply of technology increases,
it has nowhere to go but toward user needs, which may indeed be potentially great
but which are not always obvious and quantifiable by vendors or easy for a user
to convey simultaneously to all candidate vendors.
There is a unique advantage to users of housing such a market forum inside a
consortium like OGC: an open interface specification can be created if a user's
technology requirement can be more effectively met by such a specification than
by a single product or collection of products cobbled together from a few vendors.
In OGC, vendors work together to do most of the work of creating open interface
specifications, motivated by the business opportunities that open interfaces
create. An interface specification created in OGC for a major Information Community
could be an extension of the OpenGIS Specification or another industry standard,
or it could possibly be a separate and independent specification. It may serve
only the needs of a single Information Community or have broader applicability
for other Information Communities.
As discussed by experts at the Emerging GSDI Conference September 4-6 in Bonn,
Germany (see http://www2.nas.edu/earthmap), every country's NSDI has academic,
legal, governmental, social, and cultural as well as technological and commercial
dimensions. The GSDI is a web of linkages between these domains as they exist
in different countries. OGC's view is that geoprocessing technology and commerce
are the “hub” of a truly global GSDI, that these elements of the
GSDI will race forward due to market forces, and that participation in OGC is
the best way for national and regional interests to track this progress, shape
it, and put it to use in local contexts.
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