The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and EuroGeographics recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to promote interoperability through open standards to benefit the European geospatial community? The two organizations both seek to promote compatible, standards-based Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) from the local to global level, and the OGC is positioned to help EuroGeographics support a broad range of European stakeholders responding to Europe’s? INSPIRE Directive [http://inspire.jrc.ec.europa.
Both organizations will work cooperatively on outreach and communications to raise the awareness, acceptance, and implementation of open standards and related educational programs and best practices. This will include activities such as participation in international webinars; publishing papers on implementations; documenting Return on Investment; and examination and discussion of legal and policy issues associated with the use of spatial information and associated technologies. The two organizations will also work to identify, plan and convene joint workshops, conference sessions and symposia. In addition, EuroGeographics and the OGC will seek funding and in-kind resources to advance joint OGC testbeds, pilot projects, and interoperability experiments, with a focus on advancing the? European Location Framework [http://share-psi.eu/papers/
