October 14, 2004, Wayland, Massachusetts. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) (formerly the Open GIS Consortium), announced that it will conduct live, multi-vendor demonstrations of Web-based geoprocessing interoperability at “Interoperability 2004 — Integrating process, organization, systems.” This conference, organized by the Institute for Defense & Government Advancement (IDGA) will be held October 20 – 21, 2004 in Washington, DC.The demonstrations will be part of a Wednesday, October 20 workshop titled, “Net Centric Interoperability for Multi-Source Integration and Application.” A standards-based interoperability framework for geospatial data and Web-based geoprocessing services is of critical importance to the advancement of NCES, Horizontal Fusion initiatives, and other critical DoD and homeland security objectives. OGC's framework, the product of a decade-long, global industry effort, has been tested and broadly implemented in the geospatial technology marketplace. It allows critical planning and operational functions to be accomplished across a variety of computing platforms, networks and devices.At this workshop, an OGC member panel led by OGC's president, Mark Reichardt, along with several OGC member representatives will explain the framework and conduct live demonstrations of its capabilities on the Web. Demonstrations will emphasize the framework's ability to:– Perform multi-source discovery, access and integration of geospatial information sources from around the world and across different platforms, operating systems, computer languages, etc., to form a user-defined common operational picture.– Task, access, integrate, and apply information from geolocated sensors and sensor networks through standards that transform sensors into a network ready resource.– Integrate functionality and data into custom geospatial intelligence applications.– Leverage Web-based development tools, application servers, messaging protocols, security infrastructure, workflow definitions, etc.Panelists include: Dr. Mike Botts, Earth System Science Center, GHCC – NSSTC, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Mark DesRoches, MapInfo Corporation; Chuck Heazel, OGC; Ron Lake, Galdos Systems, Inc.; Barry O'Rourke, Compusult Limited; and Chris Tucker, Ionic Enterprise.The OGC is an international voluntary consensus standards organization of more than 250 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geoprocessing interface specifications. OGC's Specifications support interoperable solutions that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT.The Institute for Defense & Government Advancement (IDGA) has established itself as a non-partisan information-based organization dedicated to the promotion of innovative ideas in public service and defense. We bring together speaker panels comprised of military and government professionals while attracting delegates with decision-making power from military, government and defense industries.”