Ideas4OGC

Update on Ideas4OGC: Initial Recommendations (October 2013)

Introduction

Formally kicked off on June 20th, 2013, the Ideas for OGC (Ideas4OGC) process has collected a broad set of comments, recommendations and constructive criticism from across the membership, the public and OGC staff.

Responses from members and the community were and continue to be extensive, excellent and highly constructive and demonstrates an on-going commitment to improving the OGC.

Comments received to date have been organised into 37 topics which were assessed by a voluntary Ideas4OGC leadership group representing OGC membership, the OGC Board and OGC Staff. Of the 37 topics, the leadership group focused initially on assessment of 10 topics considered as core. The leadership group also recognized that due to interdependencies between topics, these 10 core topics should be addressed first in order properly address many of the remaining topics.

Sub-Group Lead Staff FacilitatorSorted ascending Topic
Sam Bacharach Bart De Lathouwer Quality versus Quantity
Stan Tillman Carl Reed Standards Diversity
Stan Tillman Carl Reed Standards Life Cycle And Harmonization
Stan Tillman Carl Reed External Submissions
Stan Tillman Carl Reed SWG Creation
David Lemon George Percival OAB
Jack Pellicci Mark Reichardt Vision, Mission, Values
Frank Sukyens Mark Reichardt Active Direction
Geoff Zeiss Nadine Alameh Integrate Programs
Geoff Zeiss Nadine Alameh Improve Communication
Recommendations related to these topics were developed by the leadership group through a series of virtual meetings that have taken place over the past several weeks. These recommendations were then presented to the OGC Board of Directors at their quarterly meeting in September, as well to OGC membership at the September OGC Technical and Planning Committee meetings, to collect feedback.

We’ll be assessing and developing recommendations for additional shortly, with a second set of recommendations available by November 2013. We expect that initial recommendations will be available for all topics by the end of calendar year 2013. We also expect to see a reduction / consolidation of topics as we address the significant overlap of ideas between the current 37 topics.

Over the coming days and weeks, many of these initial recommendations will be integrated into OGC operational plans. In fact, actions are already underway for some of the recommendations. Other recommendations that require resource investments are likely to take longer.

As we integrate recommendations in to operational plans, we will be establishing methods to measure effectiveness of changes. This information will be summarized for review on a semi-annual basis to provide a greater degree of transparency and accountability to OGC membership and the broader community. This is a continuous, open process of renewal and further comments and construction criticism are encouraged.

For background on the approach for developing recommendations, please review the Ideas4OGC Leadership Group process background

Topic 1: Vision, Mission and Values

The Ideas4OGC leadership group assessed, evaluated and generated recommendations based on:
  • Review all comments recorded on the public wiki
  • Review existing vision, mission and goals statements
  • Review OGC bylaws and related content on the website
  • Review the 2005 OGC strategic vision paper
The leadership group also:
  • Identified and recommended 3 to 5 essential core values
  • Discussed and suggest elements of new vision statement
  • Discussed and suggest elements of new mission statement
  • Identified how initial recommendations should be integrated into OGC’s business plan / operational goals and objectives
The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: UpdateVision

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Update Vision Statement Recommend replacing the OGC Vision statement (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision):

“Realization of the full societal, economic and scientific benefits of integrating electronic location resources into commercial and institutional processes worldwide.”

with the Vision statement developed as part of the OGC 2005 strategic planning activity advanced by the OGC Board of Directors:

*“A world in which everyone benefits from the use of geospatial information and supporting technologies”*

This latter statement simplifies the message intended for a vision, and reflects not only the vision of the consortium as an organization, but its members as well.
Establilsh Core Value Statement As a complement to the OGC Vision and Mission, recommend that OGC adopt the following set of Core Values that articulate the durable and underpinning guiding principles of the Consortium.

*Integrity*
Conduct operations in an honest, transparent and ethical manner

*Excellence*
Strive to achieve the highest quality innovative processes, geospatial standards and supporting services.

*Collaboration*
Work cohesively with members, partners and the global geospatial community

*Empowerment*
Empower members, partners and staff to provide the global community with the most relevant and effective geospatial standards and supporting services.

*Good Stewardship*
Effectively manage and maximize the return on investment provided by members and partners
Update Mission Statement Recommend replacing the current OGC mission statement featured on the OGC public website (http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/vision):

“To serve as a global forum for the collaboration of developers and users of spatial data products and services, and to advance the development of international standards for geospatial interoperability.”

with the following revised Mission statement, which places primary emphasis on standards and related services, establishes the necessary linkage of standards with the enabling OGC process, and removes potential confusion by mixing of terms (e.g. “spatial”, “geospatial”):

*“To advance the development and use of international standards and supporting services that promote geospatial interoperability. To accomplish this mission, OGC serves as the global forum for the collaboration of geospatial data / solution providers and users.”*
Update Strategic Goals Recommend update to OGC Strategic goal 2 to emphasize standards and interoperability focus on both infrastructure and end use - as identified in the TopicUpdateVision discussion:

Goal 1 - Provide free and openly available standards to the market that are of tangible value to Members and have measurable benefits for users.

Goal 2 - Lead worldwide in the creation and establishment of standards that enable global infrastructures for delivery and integration of geospatial content and services into business and civic processes.

Goal 3 - Facilitate the adoption of open, spatially enabled reference architectures in enterprise environments worldwide.

Goal 4 - Advance standards to support formation of new and innovative markets and applications for geospatial technologies.

Goal 5 - Accelerate market assimilation of interoperability research through collaborative consortium processes.
 

Topic 3: Standards Diversity

The Ideas4OGC leadership group assessed, evaluated and generated recommendations based on:
  • Review all comments recorded on the public wiki
  • Review of draft Planning Sub-Committee Activity – Key Definitions and Policy Statements to improve mission understanding an focus
  • For the topic of Diversity, the leadership group discussed the following aspects:
    • Diversity through extending the number of domains
    • Diversity through different APIs.
The leadership group also:
  • Discussed and suggested 2 recommendations for dealing with extending the number of domains within OGC
  • Discussed and suggested 2 recommendations for dealing with embracing diversity through different APIs.

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: Standards Diversity

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Early Evaluation of new domain's usefulness and applicability to OGC

Recommend that a process be put in place to determine of the value a new domain brings to the OGC.

This should ensure that this domain serves OGC as a whole as opposed to a small group attempting to advance their cause.

It should also provide a detailed understanding of the groups purpose - perhaps through a "charter-like" document. This could then be used to promote marketing communications.

Early Evaluation of new domain's uniqueness

Recommend an early evaluation to determine whether the efforts of the new domain overlap other DWGs and would it be more appropriate to merge that domain with an already existing DWG

This would reduce the overall overhead of maintaining multiple groups.

Early Evaluation of new overlapping functionality and its benefit to OGC

The OGC should establish a rigorous review process that occurs at the beginning of a new standard to ensure that value (improves innovation, strong user base, etc.) is added to the standards baseline

In the case of overlapping functionality, this review should evaluate the value of adding a different API by identifying the new use case that it solves.

The key here is to evaluate the benefits/costs of a new standard before a lot of effort is devoted with a SWG process.

Regular evaluation of standards use and uptake

Recommend a regular evaluation of a standards’ effectiveness through use and/or uptake to determine whether they should be deprecated or retired.

In the case of overlapping functionalities, this would aid in determining if one API was preferred in the market over another.

New APIs with substantial overlaps to existing standards should only be added if they solve a use case that is not solved by the existing ones. So, the sentence should be changed to: In the case of overlapping functionality, this review should evaluate the value of adding a different API by identifying the new use case that it solves and that is not solved by the existing APIs.

-- UlrichDueren - 06 Dec 2013
 

Topic 5: Integrate Programs

The OGC has a structure built around 4 programs: Standards Development, Interoperability, Marketing and Compliance. Since the Inception of the OGC the interaction between interoperability projects (IP) and the standards development process has been informal, but in general has worked very well. In the last 5-6 years as the OGC has gotten into more vertical industries, the opportunity for a disconnect between the two processes has arisen. Domain working groups (DWGs) have been created in a number of areas but there is no formal relationship between the DWGs and IP test beds. The way the OGC is currently structured there is no requirement for the IP folks to involve the DWGs when a testbed is initiated. This can result in confusion and potentially parallel efforts when the IP project does not consult with the relevant DWGs before deciding on a direction for a testbed.

This issue is actually more general than just DWGs. Not only do all relevant SWGs and DWGs need to be taken into account when starting an IP program. but also external relationships with other standards bodies such as buildingSmart may also need to be considered. This generalizes the topic to include identifying external relationships, SWGs and DWGs relevant to an IP program.

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: Intergrate Programs

Based on this input the Leadership team makes the following candidate recommendations:

Candidate Recommendation Summary
1 Engage the community Each Interoperability Program should engage the community (internal and external to OGC) during the planning phases of each initiative
2 Increase awareness At every TC meeting an Interoperability Program update should be provided to the membership to increase awareness of planned and ongoing activities as well as policies and procedures

It might be useful if the updates were also posted to a web site for those not at the meetings. Indeed, each phase of the Interoperability Program might have a dedicated web page discussing the current status. ~~~~AdrianCuster

-- AdrianCuster - 14 Nov 2013
 

Topic 6: External Submissions

The <nop>Ideas4OGC leadership group assessed, evaluated and generated recommendations based on:
  • Review all comments recorded on the public wiki
  • Review of draft Planning Sub-Committee Activity – Key Definitions and Policy Statements to improve mission understanding an focus
  • For the topic of External Submissions, the leadership group discussions focused around early evaluations and value added to OGC.
The leadership group also:
  • Discussed and recommended that a set of criteria be developed for initial evaluation
  • Discussed and recommended that proposals be formally presented to the TC and voted on by the TC

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: External Submissions

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Acceptance of External Standards Generally accepted that External Submissions should be allowed to come into OGC. But anything coming to OGC from outside (either by existing members or potential members), should go through an “early” evaluation process to test the validity of adding it to the OGC baseline.
Early criteria measurement of potential External Submissions Establish a set of criteria that can be applied to the initial evaluation of an external proposal. Some of these might involve the following (but are not limited to):
a. Resources available?
b. Is the submitting group willing to actually work with the OGC and abide by the OGC <nop>PnP?
c. Willing to transfer IPR/copyright to OGC?
d. Willing to allow some level of changes to the specification?
e. How does accepting the proposal benefit OGC?
f. How does accepting the proposal hurt OGC?
Early TC Approval of potential External Submissions

Modify the process of submitting proposals to address issues & concerns at the beginning of the process. The submission should begin with draft package to the TC that includes:
a. A draft of the proposal
b. Information detailing if a proposed standard will not allow functional changes or does it plans to go through the full development process.
c. Whether it plans to form a SWG or go through a faster process (assuming a faster process exist). This is to help reviewers understand the urgency of their comments.
d. A description of the value it brings to OGC – this should have been written already as part of the criteria in recommendation #1.
e. Should clearly document how the submission deviates from and/or complements other OGC standards.

This information should be put before the TC for a 3 week (or X amount of time) review and allowing people to comment up front. This should be made as an email announcement instead of simply a presentation at a TC Plenary to ensure all parties are informed. After receiving these comments the submitting group can decide whether to continue prior to spending a lot of effort in a SWG process.

This recommendation is meant to allow proposals to be reviewed and well advertised at the beginning of the process so the SWG can focus on the technical aspects - any political and non-technical issues should be addressed before the end of the process.

It was pointed out that this activity would be good for internal standards as well.


Eliminate overheads for external submissions. Right now the bureaucracy overhead of engaging with the OGC in any way - as an advisor, or submitting a standard, or commenting - is designed for big businesses and contractors and completely incompatible with small companies. To do this, move communications online and make them asynchronous by default - chats & issues, not video & audio. Reduce scheduled meetings and only meet when there's actual work to do.

-- TomMacWright - 07 Nov 2013

Early criteria should be focused on the "the world" not the "OGC". The issue of standards is whether they make the world a better place, not whether they help the "OGC". e.g. "How does accepting the proposal benefit OGC" => "How would the proposed standard further the mission of the OGC?"

-- AdrianCuster - 14 Nov 2013

There should also be some evaluation of how the proposed standards will be maintained over the long term.

-- AdrianCuster - 14 Nov 2013
 

Topic 8: Standards Life Cycle And Harmonization

The Ideas4OGC leadership group assessed, evaluated and generated recommendations based on:
  • Review all comments recorded on the public wiki
  • Review of draft Planning Sub-Committee Activity – Key Definitions and Policy Statements to improve mission understanding an focus
  • For the topic of Harmonization, the leadership group discussed the following aspects:
    • Harmonization within OCG - i.e. between our own standards
    • Harmonization with domains and communities outside of OGC
The leadership group also:
  • Discussed and suggested 2 recommended approaches for harmonizing internally
  • Discussed and suggested 2 recommended approaches for harmonizing externally

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: Innovation Harmonization and Standards Life-cycle Management

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Internal Harmonization as the first priority

Recommend that OGC strongly encourage internal harmonization of OGC standards wherever possible and practical.

This recommendation is meant push organizations to look first at harmonizing (through document modifications)as the first option.

Detailed documentation for standards where harmonization is not achievable

If internal harmonization is not achievable, the rationale, benefits, impacts and harmonization approaches related to overlapping or divergent standards should be fully documented inside the standard.

This documentation should be detailed enough to provide a communication tool to help in communicating how a standard diverges and why it needs to do so.

Harmonization through external communication In order to promote harmonization in various domains, OGC should communicate to those domains and other communities of interest regarding the utilization of OGC standards and concepts.
Routine harmonization through regular standards maintenance Through maintenance of OGC standards, OGC should work to incorporate external harmonization actions where possible and practical.

How does this impact the "OWS Common" effort which died officially back at the Bonn TC and unofficially long before that?

-- AdrianCuster - 14 Nov 2013
 

Topic 20: Quality versus Quantity

The working team started by rejecting the notion that quality and quantity are in direct opposition to one another and that it is not possible to improve quality without reducing the quantity. Consequently we went about our business looking for ways to raise quality by improving the process. We understand that such an approach will not resolve all of your/our concerns, but believe that we can make considerable progress by doing that first which allows us to benefit from years of experience rather than tossing the whole process out –which of course may solve our current problem, but certainly will introduce new ones.

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Improve support to Standards development process

Standards development benefits significantly from defined processes, milestones and associated templates and artifacts in order to create consistent quality standards.

Provide engineers/architects with well-defined collection of guidelines, templates and tools to enable them to provide an understanding of the standard's applicability, the software engineer needs to have a well written technical section (s), the test engineer needs to find their requirements supported, and at the end of the day all of that leads to a Quality Process.

Provide engineers/architects with self assessment toolset for a standard/ checklist (simple / top 10 items / best practices)

Testing the standard in multiple organizations and environments using PlugFest -like initiatives (including all options).

Dedicated OGC-staff that monitors quality: consistent, well written (incl. grammar, spelling, syntax)

Review existing standards for quality

Use checkist and assesment tool to review existing standards for quality and record suggestins for improvement in considerant of future updates.

Where warranted, based on review, initiate an RFC.

Prioritize review based on popularity

Develop concise overviews for each Standard for managers, architects and programmers

Concise and Consistent Overviews should be written for each standard.

1 pager with the standard does / overview, purpose of the standard for decision makers

provide overview / big picture (architect)

technical folks (architect/programmers) on implementation of the standard

every std has scope and technology

Consistent editorial review

Consistent editorial review of standards for: clear writing, consistent structure, consistent terminology, implementability, testability.


Involves: Defining templates and writing guides. Central review against templates.

Develop only core standards that matter. Split domain-specific working groups into their own organizations.

-- TomMacWright - 07 Nov 2013
 

Topic 28: Active Direction

The main question in the 'Active Direction' topic, is whether members expect OGC staff to take a more active/guiding direction in certain areas of OGC. OGC is a member driven organization, where standards are defined based on involvement and voluntary contribution of its members. This obviously remains the same, but some important standards, documents, services may benefit from a more active involvement and direction from staff. The Ideas4OGC leadership group assessed, evaluated and generated recommendations based on:
  • Review all comments recorded on the public wiki
  • Overview of common specifications and related documents (OWS Common, SWE Common, OGC Reference Model, ModSpec, ...)
  • External services: OGC Naming Authority
  • For the topic of Active Direction, the leadership group discussed the following aspects:
    • In what areas should OGC Staff take a more active direction
    • Do we expect more active involvement in the maintenance of common standards and documents
  • The scope of this topic does not include recommendations on the content of the common specification or other documents or services.

The leadership group also:
  • Discussed and suggested recommendations concerning templates and editing support for new specifications.
  • Discussed and suggested a recommendation concerning ongoing staff work, as it turned out that for quite a number of recommendations OGC staff was looking into this already.

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: Active Direction

The Recommendations also draw upon discussions in some other topics: Spec Doc Policies, Naming Authority

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Additional OGC Staff for Standards Program 'DocLead'

Additional OGC staff time is needed for several aspects of standards creation and maintenance (documentation, editing, harmonization, conformance to guidelines, ...). Specific recommendations for separate aspects are formulated separately, but most rely on addtional time and effort of OGC Staff.

A person blessed with a good balance of writing and technical skill would be ideal to support SWGs. It would be a single voice across different SWGs making sure standards are written in a consistent way.

Each SWG would now have access to professional editor support to edit, correct, improve draft specifications and to make them comply to the documentation and modularity guidelines.

Publish standards in HTML

Standards should be available in HTML format.

A process should be defined to ensure new standards are automatically published in HTML and PDF.

Existing standards should be converted based on priority (implementations, age, ...)

Revise standards document format, template, and guidelines

A new format and template should be defined for standards documents (and other documents).

The new format should support:

- easy publishing in HTML and PDF
- easy text differencing between different versions
- easy editing
- easy cross-referencing, numbering, ...

The format should have tooling support across different platforms.

The format should facilitate conversion to a format/style/layout that conforms to W3C web accessibility guidelines. This enables members/governments to provide the documents according to their accessibility regulations.

Writing guidelines must be reviewed and adapted in synch with the format change.

Template and tooling should support extraction of information such a glossary, definitions across standards. That way a global glossary may be created and made available on-line.

SWGs may decide to host their ongoing work on repositories such as GITHUB. However, guidelines should state requirement of access to the documents from secure environments (e.g. easy import/export to allow access from sites blocking github) - NB. this requirement seems better suited for the SWG topics.

Continue revision of Mod Spec The Mod Spec has improved modularity and consistency in the specifications. However, some aspects in the mod spec could be simplified and improved.
Provide better infrastructure to log and maintain change requests Change requests should be logged in an issue tracking system to allow easier identification, maintenance, member access, etc.

The infrastructure should be set up and hosted by OGC and preferably not rely on external systems (github, ...).

Access rights should include OGC members (at least), potentially others.
Provide an exemplary standard specification

Once the mod spec and doc format/guidelines would be updated, it is recommended to take one standard specification (ongoing/new/existing) and spend extra effort to make it the perfect example of a specification following the new guidelines.

The mod spec itself might be a candidate, as it is a specification, is being rewritten, and should be an example of what it imposes to other standards.

Combine all documents, templates and guidelines for standard specs in one place There should be a SWG starter package which includes all the latest guidelines and templates.

Now the mod spec is in a different place than the doc template. The templates are located in the 'pending document' section, which may not be obvious for new SWG contributors.
Create concrete plan for OGC NA service The OGC Naming Authority (NA) is a service provided by OGC. The current version was realized mainly by member resources.

It is expected that the importance of the NA will grow, and other organizations such as the WMO are moving in that direction as well.

The NA is a critical service for OGC and should be well maintained and evolved. OGC Staff should lead this and be able to allocate resources for the evolution and maintenance.

A first step is to create requirements and a plan for the next generation of the NA.
Maintenance and harmonization of OWS Common and similar supporting standards/documents for which member resources are scarce. OWS Common underpins several W*S specifications. While W*S standards are evolving by membership involvement, this is less so for OWS Common, yet it should form the base of the evolving W*S standards as well.

OWS Common evolution and maintenance should be driven by OGC Staff. Harmonization with new version of W*S, application in these W*S standards should be driven by staff, possibly aided by the membership.

A process for such evolutions should be defined and documented.

Other common standards (SWE Common) or underpinning documents and standards should receive the same 'OGC maintained' status. Such a status must be assigned carefully to ensure OGC Staff can handle the workload.

Note: Ideally the mod spec should naturally integrate with having common parts in different specifications.
Web page detailing ongoing staff activities

During Ideas4OGC discussions, it became clear that a lot of things are already being investigated and worked on by OGC Staff.

It might be good to document ongoing initiatives on the member website, to allow members to provide input or know that things are being addressed.

A oral report is being given to the planning committee at regular times. It may be useful to report/publish the main topics and results to the TC.

Require an open source, liberally licensed reference implementation for any new standard.

-- TomMacWright - 07 Nov 2013
 

Topic 29 : Improve Communication

A number of suggestions and comments contributed during the Ideas4OGC Leadership initiative have repeatedly emphasized the need for better communications about OGC rules, policies and procedures. Most often these comments have come from people who have just recently become directly involved with the OGC and are searching for a way to quickly get up to speed with the rules, polices and procedures they need to be familiar with to work effectively. But similar comments have come from people who have worked with the OGC for some time, but are now starting to work in a new area, such as the Interoperability Program (IP), and want a way to get rapidly up to speed with IP policies and procedures relating to the IP program, for example. This is exacerbated by the OGC's organization and procedures becoming more complex as the OGC has expanded into new areas such as vertical markets. As one contributor put it, we need to find a way to answer 80% of the questions that people new to the OGC or new to a particular OGC program need to know to work effectively. On numerous occasions it has been suggested that the OGC needs a set of what have often been referred to as "one pagers", succinct summaries of OGC rules, policies and procedures targeted on OGC "newbies" and people who are "newbies" with respect to a particular OGC area such as standards (SWGs), interoperability (IP) or vertical industries (DWGs).

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: Improve Communications

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Develop "one pagers" Develop a set of accessible, concise summaries of OGC rules, policies and procedures targetted on OGC "newbies" and people who are "newbies" with respect to a particular OGC area such as standards (SWGs), interoperability (IP) or vertical industries (DWGs).

Deprecate the internal OGC portal system entirely. Move all standards documents to Git and GitHub, organized in Markdown files. Maintain a public, open access mailing list for discussion of all standards.

-- TomMacWright - 07 Nov 2013
 

Topic 34: OAB

The OGC Architecture Board has been operational for the last six years. The membership of the OAB is comprised of OGC members. Each year there is an election process to nominate and elect 4 new members of the OAB. The results of the election are then approved by the OGC Board of Directors. There is an OAB Policies and Procedures available on the OGC public website. The OAB serves many functions, including review of all candidate standard submissions, interoperability experiment submissions, process and technology arbitration, and other matters related to technology, architecture, and life cycle management of the OGC standards process.

Over time, the OAB Policies and Procedures has evolved to meet changing market and OGC community requirements. However, over the last couple of years the OAB has become increasingly busy. This is in part the result of more standards activity in the OGC but also due to increased responsibilities. As a result, the OAB and now the Ideas4OGC activity participants have been discussing how we can tune the OAB process to increase effectiveness, make OAB processes more transparent , and better communicate OAB discussions with not only the OGC membership but also the broader implementer community.

The below Recommendations came from discussions brought forward from this public topic: OAB

Candidate Recommendation Summary
Commend OAB members Members of the OAB are to be commended and thanked for their contributions to the OGC and the OAB.
Communicate OAB roles to members

It is evident that the membership don't clearly understand the role of the OAB within the OGC governance structure. As a result, assumptions are made. In addition, if one tries to find the OAB on the OGC website, it is not easy to find, not well described in terms of its role and powers and its relationship to the other parts of the OGC governance structure. Efforts should be taken to communicate the role of the OAB to the OGC membership. The functions of the OAB as defined in the Bylaws and OAB P&P should be highlighted to the members. Explain what the OAB reviews in terms of new standards, what topics they advise on and which items they take decisions on. It could appear that this is blury in terms of what is advice, approval or decision coming out of the OAB (e.g. review of standards documents, advising OGC staff on issues, and making decisions that affect the TC, (P&P voting procedures). What about its role with respect to architecture? Also, the role of the OAB is quite significant to the standards process and the members of the OAB do quite a lot of work and contributions which is not well communicated.
◦ Inform members about the election process, candidate qualifications and duties of the OAB.
◦ Make OAB page more prominent in website and show how it fits in the organizational structure.
http://www.opengeospatial.org/projects/groups/oab
◦ Inform members about the current issues being deliberated by the OAB. - Inform members about the role and activities of the OAB. - Inform members about who actually sits on the OAB and who they represent and whether they are also link to other roles (chair a swg, part of PC, strategic member, global advisory group, etc)

- Explain to members the process to provide input to the OAB

Review Bylaws and OAB P&P

This review has not been thorough enough to be able to recommend changes to the OGC By-Laws as they relate to the OAB or the OAB Policies and Procedures themselves. However, enough evidence has been gathered to determine that both the By-Laws and OAB Polocies and Proecures need to undergo a thorough review and possibly updating.

Reasons for undertaking this review include:

  1. There is a disconnect between some of the functions currently being performed by OAB members and those described for the OAB
    • Some functions described for terh OAB are not being performed and are possibly not relevant
    • The OAB is being asked to undertake tasks that are not currently within the OAB's mandate
  2. The workload for the OAB members has increased as the OGC membership and scope has increased. This is resulting in some functions not being performed as they are intended or not being performed at all.

The scope for this review should include:

  1. The purpose of the OAB and its responsibilities
  2. The processes used within the OAB to undertake its role

Employ OGC Staff Editor

Following from the previous recommendation, it is clear that a great deal of time for OAB members is taken reviewing the structure of submitted documents. This is not a good use of OAB members time.

It is recommended that OGC employ a staff editor whose primary role will be to ensure documents submitted to the OAB for review meet OGC requirements for structure.

Prioritize OAB routine workload As an extremely broadly tasked and busy group the OAB needs to reassess and prioritize its duties. Presently the OAB provides guidance for maintaining the OGC Reference Model, provides roadmaps for standards, monitors current technology trends and identifies technology gaps, reviews and makes recommendations on RFC submissions, reviews and makes recommendations on any developing work items, recommends relationships with other standards bodies, makes recommendations for guidance related to the life cycle management of the OGC baseline, assumed the role of the OGC Review Board and assists in conflict resolution and appeals, provides a sounding board for the TCC, and provides advice on other OGC process as well as technical and architecture topics.
 
Topic revision: r19 - 06 Dec 2013, UlrichDueren
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