1. Is OGC primarily a North American organization?

OGC has a truly global reach. The United States and Canada have a combined 105 members, which is less than half the total membership.




2. Who funds OGC?

Member organizations fund OGC through membership fees. Funding for development of specifications is open to OGC member organizations.




3. What is the difference between ISO and OGC?

While the mandates of ISO and OGC overlap to some degree, both organizations have different scope and goals.

ISO is the world’s largest developer of standards in a wide range of fields. Since 1947, ISO has published more than 13,700 international standardsfor activities ranging from agriculture and construction, mechanical engineering and medical devices, to the digital coding of audio-visual signals for multimedia applications.

ISO/TC 211 is the technical committee responbile for preparing a family of geographic information standards in cooperation with other ISO technical committees preparing related standards (e.g. information technology standards).

OGC, on other hand, is an industry consortium that specializes in and promotes geospatial data and geoprocessing resources. OGC’s geospatial specifications are intended to facilitate the integration of geospatial software and information into mainstream computing and the global information infrastructure.




4. What is OASIS?

OASIS is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business standards. OASIS produces standards for security, web services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces.




5. What is the difference between OGC and OASIS?

The biggest difference between OGC and OASIS is that OGC develops specifications with a geospatial component. There are fundamental differences between spatial and non-spatial tools and technologies, and OGC looks to develop specifications to be leveraged within spatial applications.