Wayland, Massachusetts, USA April 1, 1997 – The Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC) announced today that Dr. Clifford A. Kottman, formerly of The MITRE Corporation, has become OGC's Vice President, Technology Development. In this position he will manage key activities in the OGC Technical Committee, the industry team developing the OpenGIS Specification for software interfaces and services that enable efficient use of geographic information in network computing environments.Within the MITRE Corporation, Dr. Kottman was a member of the Senior Principal Staff, Technical Focal Point for Imagery and Spatial Data Systems Technologies, and Director of Geospatial Programs. He represented MITRE to the Open GIS Consortium.Prior to joining MITRE, Dr. Kottman was an Executive Manager responsible for Federal Systems Division marketing at the Reston, VA, office of Intergraph Corporation. He served Intergraph for over five years, and was their expert in spatial information standards. He represented Intergraph to ANSI X3L1, Open GIS Consortium, ISO TC 211, the NIBS CADD Council, and he chaired the ACSM Standards Committee. Cliff provided expertise in GIS requirements analysis for large government organizations and led a major study for requirements definition and preliminary design of a Kingdom-wide GIS in Saudi Arabia.Dr. Kottman also held similar responsibilities at the Lockheed Integrated Solutions Company, and prior to that served the Defense Mapping Agency for over twelve years, leading activities aimed at the standardization of DMA products, procedures, and data structures, including managing the Product Generation Segment of the DPS. He conceived the Digital Chart of the World project and obtained its funding.Prior to his civil service at DMA, Dr. Kottman performed duties of teaching and research at Louisiana State University, Oregon State University, and Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. Dr. Kottman has a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Iowa and a B.S. in Mathematics from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He is a member of AMS, MAA, URISA, ACSM, ANSI X3L1, ASPRS, and AM/FM and is the author of more than thirty technical publications.OGC coordinates development of the OpenGIS Specification and also facilitates business development related to open systems approaches to the collection, management, distribution, and processing of digital geographic information.– end –“