OGC Prototyping US Government's Open Platform ``GeoSpatial One-Stop Portal''.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

WAYLAND, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 22, 2003

The Open GIS Consortium (OGC) announced today that work on the Geospatial One Stop Portal architecture and prototype is well underway by OGC member companies. As of this date, the following companies are actively participating or have agreed to provide technology: Compusult, CubeWerx, Galdos Systems, SAIC, Autodesk, Intergraph, PCI Geomatics, Sapient Technology, Questerra, Oracle and Northrop Grumman Information Technology, TASC. Twenty companies offered proposals in response to a December, 2002 Request for Quotations (RFQ)/Call for Participation (CFP) in the OGC Geospatial One-Stop Portal Initiative (GOS-PI).

The goal of the GOS-PI is to build a standards-based architecture and prototype for a portal that will provide geospatial information discovery, access, and mapping in the US. The portal implementation will be a "prototype" in the literal sense of a first working example on which future instances will be based. OGC is partnering with the Geospatial One-Stop (GOS) project on this work. Led by the Department of the Interior, GOS is one of 24 US Office of Management and Budget E-Government initiatives to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service throughout all layers of government. Geospatial One-Stop builds upon National Spatial Data Infrastructure objectives to enhance interoperability among geographic components of government activities. More information about Geospatial One-Stop is available at http://www.geo-one-stop.gov/.

David Schell, President of OGC, said, "The GOS Portal will be a key feature of e-Government in this country and it will be imitated around the world, so it is extremely important that it is, from the outset, an exemplar of multi-vendor interoperability. If GOS stays on course with an open, non-proprietary approach, it will be completely in alignment with the spirit and letter of Section 210 of the E-Government Act of 2002, which mandates the Department of Interior 'to promote the development of interoperable GIS technologies for low-cost use and sharing of geographic data by government entities and the public.'"

Jack Pellicci, Brigadier General, US Army (ret); Group Vice President, Business Development, Oracle Government, Education and Health, said, "The GOS Portal is a significant initiative that will allow government, citizens, industry and academia to share critical geospatial information more efficiently and effectively and will accelerate the development of interoperable geospatially enabled applications."

This initiative, under the auspices of Geospatial One-Stop, is being sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Geological Survey. As detailed in the OGC RFQ, the initiative sponsors and participants are working to refine and document the technical architecture of the Geospatial One-Stop Portal. In the initiative, participants and supporting organizations will develop, demonstrate and install a working prototype implementation based on that architecture.

James R. O'Neill, President of Northrop Grumman Information Technology TASC, said, "The Geospatial One-Stop Portal is a key enabler for the program to allow government to government sharing of geospatial information. As a leader in critical, protected, custom-synthesized information engineering products and services for the national and homeland security communities, we support the federal government's integration of products from vendors using OGC specifications to build a truly interoperable access and dissemination mechanism for geospatial data."

GOS-PI is part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, collaborative, hands-on engineering and testing program that rapidly delivers proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release. In OGC's Interoperability Initiatives, international teams of technology providers work together to solve specific geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiative's sponsoring organizations. Questions about the OGC Interoperability Program and GOS-PI should be addressed to Mr. Ron Fresne, Interoperability Initiatives Manager, [e-mail], [phone].

OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 250 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS(R) Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. The specifications empower technology developers to make complex spatial information and services accessible and useful with all kinds of applications. Visit the OGC website at www.opengis.org.