Announcement: Open meeting of OGC/GIIPT Task Force

[Lance McKee]

This announcement is being posted to a number of listserv's.  Please accept
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Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Open GIS Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA 01778
Tel: 508-655-5858
Fax: 508-655-2237
lmckee at opengis.org


OGC ANNOUNCES OPEN MEETINGS OF TASK FORCE SERVING GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION IPT

Wayland, MA, October 3, 1996.  The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) today
announced that on October 25, 1996 it will hold the first in a series of
open public meetings of a task force co-chaired by representatives of OGC
and the Geospatial Information Integrated Product Team (Geospatial
Information IPT).  Led by the U.S. DoD's new National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA), the Geospatial Information IPT seeks widespread industry
participation in development of: 1) its master plan for future requirements
generation, production, management and dissemination, and application of
geospatial information in national security programs; and 2) a Geospatial
Prototype Facility (GPF) intended to demonstrate the proposed Geospatial
Information Infrastructure. This first meeting of the OGC/IPT Task Force
will be held at Mitre Corporation in McLean, VA.

By the terms of its Strategic Membership in OGC, the Geospatial Information
IPT will be provided by OGC with industry participation, review, assessment
services, and participation in OpenGIS Specification development.  OGC has
begun to develop and implement for the Geospatial Information IPT a process
that shapes and fuses industry and academic inputs to the planning and
procurement of geospatial technologies.  This process will ensure that
industry input is fully and fairly presented in the Master Plan and in the
leave-behind technology components that will be introduced, tested,
integrated, and evaluated in the GPF.

Membership in OGC is not a requirement for participation in the OGC/IPT
Task Force. In this Task Force, the industry at large will provide
technical input to the government for consideration in the development of
the Geospatial Information Infrastructure Master Plan, as well as provide
technical capabilities and support as part of the GPF.

The OGC/IPT Task Force will provide NIMA with a full assessment of COTS
products relevant to the DoD vision for geospatial information, and also
will provide honest broker assessment of COTS products capabilities,
leading to Government selection of an Initial Prototype Capability which
will ultimately, after testing in larger distributed environments, yield an
Initial Operating Capability.  In addition, as a Task Force of the OGC
Technical Committee's Application Integration Working Group, the OGC/IPT
Task Force can influence and extend OpenGIS Specifications for interfaces
that support interoperable geoprocessing.

Other OGC members will benefit.  Technology providers can participate in
Geospatial IPT requirements analysis and prototyping without cause for
disqualification from follow-on procurements. Providers will be able to
demonstrate their new technologies and solutions -- and their new OpenGIS
interoperability interfaces -- in a simulated operational environment with
live data. They will get a close look at the application requirements of an
important group of customers, which will enable them to refine and
differentiate their product strategies. Of course, customers represented by
the IPT, OGC's first Strategic Member, will benefit directly from this
product focus and differentiation happening in the open market.

See http://www.opengis.org for more details on the OGC/IPT Task Force meeting.

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Lance McKee
Vice President, Corporate Communications
Open GIS Consortium, Inc.
35 Main Street, Suite 5
Wayland, MA  01778
USA
tel: 508-655-5858
fax: 508-655-2237
lmckee at opengis.org