The Open GIS Consortium Inc. (OGC) announces that a Request for Quotations (RFQ)/Call for Participation (CFP) in the OGC Geospatial One-Stop Portal Initiative (GOS-PI) has been issued. Responses to the RFQ/CFP, available at http://ip.opengis.org/gos-pi/, are due January 22, 2003. GOS-PI aims to build a standards-based portal for geospatial information discovery, access, and mapping. OGC is partnering with the Geospatial One-Stop project on this work. Led by the Department of the Interior, GOS is one of 24 US Office of Management and Budget E-Government initiatives to improve effectiveness, efficiency, and customer service throughout all layers of government. Geospatial One-Stop builds upon National Spatial Data Infrastructure objectives to enhance interoperability among geographic components of government activities. More information about Geospatial One-Stop is available at http://www.geo-one-stop.gov/.

Sponsorship of this initiative will be provided under the auspices of Geospatial One-Stop by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Federal Geographic Data Committee, the US Department of Agriculture, and the US Geological Survey. The initiative sponsors and participants will collaboratively refine and document the technical architecture of the Geospatial One-Stop Portal detailed in the RFQ. Participants will then develop, demonstrate and install a working prototype implementation based on that architecture.

GOS-PI is part of OGC's Interoperability Program, a global, collaborative, hands-on engineering and testing program that rapidly delivers proven candidate specifications into OGC's Specification Program, where they are formalized for public release. In OGC's Interoperability Initiatives, international teams of technology providers work together to solve specific geoprocessing interoperability problems posed by the Initiative's sponsoring organizations. Questions about the Interoperability Program and GOS-PI should be addressed to Mr. Jeff Harrison, Executive Director, jharrison@opengis.org, (703) 491-9543.