The Open GIS Consortium Inc. (OGC) announced that Phase 1 of its Critical Infrastructure Protection Initiative (CIPI-1) recently began with a successful kick-off meeting held in Reston, Virginia. CIPI aims to test the application of interoperable technology to meet critical infrastructure protection needs for coordination of geospatial data and services between national, state, provincial, and other local governments, commercial, and non-government organizations. One of the overarching goals is the development of a collaborative, distributed network of critical infrastructure information sources and services based on open standards and specifications.

CIPI-1 represents the first of a series of pilot projects to help advance interoperability for critical infrastructure protection and other vital service needs. CIPI is also an opportunity for vendors, users, and other interested parties to mutually shape critically needed services, interfaces and protocols in the context of a hands-on engineering experience.