The following announcement was written by the Family History Information Standards Organisation:
New standards-setting organisation formed to support Family History and Genealogy
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA--Wednesday, February 1, 2012--FHISO (http://fhiso.org) is a newly-formed international organisation created to develop standards for the digital representation and sharing of family history and genealogical information. The standards will solve today’s interoperability issues independently of technology platforms, genealogy products or services. They will provide opportunities for innovation and will address robust user requirements such as search, capture and research administration.
In the fall of 2010, a group of dedicated technologists and users formed the “Build a BetterGEDCOM Project” to improve data exchange standards and to facilitate sharing between researchers. This grassroots effort has grown into a dynamic, open forum for the exchange of ideas, and a substantial body of work has been produced. In order to realise the project goals, a more structured, organised environment was needed. FHISO will provide this environment.
The FHISO process will identify practices and trends that require standardisation. It will provide a transparent, collaborative environment promoting innovation and consensus-building for the development of open standards. Following publication, the organisation will provide education and other support to encourage standards adoption and use. The FHISO standards will be publicly available at zero or minimal cost on a non-discriminatory basis. Anyone will be able to implement the standards for any purpose without royalty or license fees.
FHISO will be community-owned. Membership is available to all who participate in the global family history and genealogical community.
The success of FHISO depends on the voluntary participation of its members representing all the global stakeholder groups. In the standards-setting process, there is no substitute for the active involvement of vendors, developers, technologists, users and family history or genealogy organisations.
For more information, visit FHISO on the Web at http://fhiso.org. Follow us on twitter @fhisorg ; http://facebook.org/fhiso; http://goo.gl/FsYa5 on Google+.
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