OGC Business Value Domain Working Group

07 July 2010, 7:53pm

On the 17th of June 2010, the OGC held a business seminar at the OGC Technical Committee (TC) Meeting in Silver Spring, MD, USA. The attendees at this seminar proposed hat a Business Value WG be considered. Based on this recommendation, a charter was drafted and is now available for comment by OGC members and non-members at the link below.

The suggested scope of work involves working on a model called the Standards Value Model (initially described as Total Cost of Participation). This model will seek to balance the inputs and outputs from participation in the OGC standards development process (joining OGC, renewing membership, being OGC compliant, etc.), as well as identify and articulate the value of implementing OGC standards in market technologies and across communities of practice.

It was noted that there is value in being part of the OGC community, i.e. a member of the OGC, and that there’s value in leveraging and implementing OGC standards. These aspects will also be part of the value definition process.

This approach has a number of objectives:

1. Understand, define, determine and measure the value of geospatial standards

2. Communicate this to existing OGC members and the geospatial community

3. Involve more OGC business representatives and middle/senior managers

4. Use this to extend the global OGC community, i.e. engage more organisations

5. Build OGC marketing and communications around value, as well as interoperability

During the seminar in Silver Spring, I mentioned a number of reports and articles related to value and standards. I have attached an example and can forward other documents if you are interested (see link below).

As pointed out in the discussion, deployment of geospatial standards will be considered totally successful when they are used within ubiquitous application areas and people don't know they exist – think HTTP. The message is about reaching policy and decision makers who don't yet fully understand the value of geospatial standards.

Please note that there will be another free seminar on the business value of geospatial standards at the TC Meeting in Toulouse in late September. This seminar will also constitute an ad hoc meeting for the Working Group. If you cannot make it to Toulouse, but you would like to be involved in this Working Group please let me know. It will not work without your involvement!

Steven Ramage
Executive Director, Marketing and Communications
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact

Business Value WG draft charter (for comment)

Value and standards reports

Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc.

Geo: International