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Wayland, MA, November 24, 2008.   The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC(R)) and GeoConnections announce the release of a video that documents last year's successful interoperability demonstration, a major output of the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure Interoperability Pilot (CGDI IP).  GeoConnections sponsored the Pilot, which concluded with a Web Conference that was witnessed live and online by more than 500 people. GeoConnections is a Canadian partnership program whose primary objective is to evolve and expand the CGDI. The CGDI IP was an OGC Interoperability Initiative.

The CGDI Interoperability Pilot video is available in English on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIZLc_qHYZc. The French version is also on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXvUqWVtjQo.

The main objective of the CGDI IP was to assess opportunities for improving the management and dissemination of geospatial data through open-standards-based technology. The project's collaborative activities with federal, provincial, and private-sector partners demonstrated improved mechanisms for distributing and updating framework data. Three valuable benefits result: currency is maintained, versioning is avoided, and duplication is minimized.

The Web Conference demonstrated access to place names, roads and municipal boundary data from a distributed network of 14 federal, provincial and territorial servers. It also executed direct updates of data in provincial servers and showed how the network could assist in emergency response.

Collaboration and co-operation among the federal, provincial, territorial and private sector participants in this project was outstanding, and the project results have been very well received by the participants. For additional information, please contact Brian McLeod ), Paula Rojas or Peter Rushforth.

The OGC® is an international consortium of more than 365 companies, government agencies, research organizations, and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available geospatial standards. OpenGIS® 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

accessible and useful with any application that needs to be geospatially enabled. Visit the OGC website at http://www.opengeospatial.org.