Thirty Years of the Open Geospatial Consortium - History, Present, and Future

For 30 years, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has advanced geospatial interoperability through continuous innovation. The OGC provides strategies and Standards that promote adoption, increase efficiencies, create new opportunities, and transform our relationship with the dynamic planet we inhabit. It has fostered global collaborations among companies, governments, academic institutions, and non-profit organizations, reducing the friction inherent in introducing innovations to the industry. The article explores the OGC’s history and future aspirations, demonstrating how it became a global community of innovators dedicated to ensuring their geospatial tools and data can work together seamlessly, supporting both essential public missions and private enterprises. The OGC brand is renowned not only for its technical innovation pilots but also for its leadership in global standardization within the geospatial technology community. Additionally, the article also highlights the OGC's commitment to enhancing reproducibility through research and development in data representation, discovery, and access as part of its standardization and research activities. The OGC is committed to promoting connectivity between people, technology, and decision-making, leveraging FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.