Celebrating 30 years of service
OGC began with just 8 members and has grown into a worldwide community of 400+ leaders advancing shared innovation.
Three Decades of Open Standards. Endless Impact.
Our History
OGC unites organizations that might not typically work together to solve some of society’s biggest challenges using geography, geospatial technology and data. From the very start, we have promoted open standards to ensure interoperability among heterogeneous geospatial systems.
We had 8 charter members when we started in 1994. Today, our more than 400 members include influential GIS vendors, technology integrators, governments, non-profits and data providers.
Since our founding OGC has continued to make progress on interoperability, from the Standards Program’s first approved implementation standard in 1997 to the first Interoperability Program testbed (Web Mapping Testbed) in 1999 to today’s broad array of standards and initiatives.
More than 150 approved OGC standards are now freely available to address the challenges that were identified at OGC’s founding, and many others that have been identified since.
The real measure of OGC’s success is that these standards have been implemented in hundreds of commercial and open-source geoprocessing products and are being implemented in communities and organizations around the world.
OGC Through the Years
The OGC History Timeline showcases our journey of innovation, collaboration, and open standards that connect people, technology, and data to solve global geospatial challenges.