The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC®) announced new membership options for organizations based in emerging economies.

To support the current trend toward more global participation in the OGC’s open standards process, the OGC has responded to requests for a fee structure that gives certain categories of organizations discounts based on their country of registration. These categories include government, academic, research, not-for-profit, individuals,and some for-profit organizations. Discounts are based on   world economic indicator data [http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications]  compiled and published by the World Bank.

The OGC is building global representation through new members in regions including Africa, India and South America, as well as through support from the OGC Global Advisory Council. The need for information integration and the ability to share geospatial information within organizations, across organizations and across borders has increased dramatically in recent years. This has been driven by a large number of factors, including the large number of emergencies and disasters worldwide where data sharing is key.

Another element of OGC’s flexible membership pricing approach is GovFuture [http://www.ogcnetwork.net/node/1568] , a new kind of membership available for government agencies operating at the local, state or provincial levels in all countries. GovFuture membership focuses on helping local and sub-national governments implement and use OGC standards to achieve government mission objectives.

The OGC’s primary mission is to facilitate an inclusive consensus process for the development of open standards. The OGC’s education and outreach activities support this mission and provide additional value to members and stakeholder communities. Visit the   OGC Value page [http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/join/value] to learn more about the value of OGC membership for both technology providers and technology users.

See the new fee schedule and register online at http://www.opengeospatial.org/ogc/join/levels.

The OGC is an international consortium of more than 410 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OGC standards support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and location-based services, and mainstream IT. OGC Standards empower technology developers to make geospatial information and services useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org/contact.