The Gardels Award, a gold medallion, is awarded to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to advance OGC's vision of geographic information fully integrated into the world's information systems.

Doug Nebert is the Clearinghouse Coordinator at the US Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC). He was a principal organizer of the first Web Map Testbed, which gave rise to OGC's Interoperability Program, and he is one of the few currently active Technical Committee and Planning Committee participants who have been active in OGC from the beginning. He was the principal author and is the editor of the OpenGIS® Catalog Services Specification and he has been a key contributor to other key specifications. He chairs the Architecture Working Group.

In addition to his many contributions to OGC, Mr. Nebert has spoken and taught around the world to promote the idea of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure. He is well known and widely regarded as one of the top experts on geospatial metadata and geospatial catalogs. Doug has also played a key role in helping people in governments understand how OGC standards fit into modern government enterprise computing. He has been the chair of the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure (GSDI) Technical Committee for many years and has been instrumental in the creation of numerous nations' National Spatial Data Infrastructures.

Mark Reichardt, president of OGC, said, "Doug has been a tremendous asset to the Consortium and its members. Year after year he has taken on problems that were critical and technically challenging, and he has always been a clear voice of reason in the Technical Committee and also in the Planning Committee, where he has often served as a Technical Committee Representative. His advocacy for OGC within government has been essential to our progress. We all owe him our greatest thanks."

The award is given annually in memory of Kenneth Gardels, one of the founding directors of OGC and OGC's former director of academic programs. Mr. Gardels coined the term "Open GIS," and devoted his life to the humane and democratic uses of geographic information systems. He died in 1999.

The OGC is an international industry consortium of more than 270 companies, government agencies and universities participating in a consensus process to develop publicly available interface specifications. OpenGIS(R) Specifications support interoperable solutions that "geo-enable" the Web, wireless and http://www.opengeospatial.org