 What does OSCRE stand for?
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OSCRE is the acronym for The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate.
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Why did PISCES and OSCRE Americas decide to merge?
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PISCES and OSCRE Americas are very similar organizations which have been working together for a number of years to develop and publish data exchange standards that are appropriate to different geographic regions and business purposes but have similar core elements.
PISCES is the organization which has been developing and managing real estate standards mainly in the United Kingdom and Europe. OSCRE Americas has been working on issues and solutions that are appropriate for use in the United States and Canada.
As an industry led initiative our primary role is to listen and respond to the needs and requirements of the property sector and specifically to our members. The merger between PISCES and OSCRE Americas has been intended for many years and in depth collaboration with the membership led to the firm conclusion that we could achieve more as a single consortium.
Now is the time when consolidated governance, further unification of development and adoption activities, and technical evolution, are essential for organisations spanning borders to reap the full benefit of their interoperability investment.
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Why was the name OSCRE chosen over PISCES?
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The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate name says lot about who the organization is and what it cares about.
The word ‘Open’ signifies that the organization develops and adopts standards using methods that are openly transparent to the public. ‘Consortium for Real Estate’ indicates that OSCRE is a voluntary association of companies for a specific purpose – in this case to develop and adopt open interface standards for the real estate industry.
We have long recognised that PISCES as a name would not work as well globally and would have to be replaced. Now is an appropriate time to do that.
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Are you still a not for profit consortium?
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Yes. OSCRE is registered in each of the countries in which it operates as a not–for–profit or equivalent organization.
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Why is it important for OSCRE to be organized in this way?
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Being a not-for-profit consortium of companies and organizations, who voluntarily collaborate and require democratic consensus as a fundamental precept, helps to establish that the recommended standards are broadly accepted and held in the public interest rather than benefiting or being controlled by an individual commercial interest.
OSCRE also governs changes to the ‘standard’ using democratic processes in order to protect and assure that continuous improvement of the standard specification is in the public interest. The significance of this is that it allows OSCRE to provide a ‘neutral table’ for otherwise competitive companies to discuss and agree on standards that are beneficial to both but which would not be acceptable or perhaps widely adopted if owned or controlled by the competitor.
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Does the merger make any difference to my membership agreement?
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Yes, your membership agreement now provides greater access and benefits. Your membership agreement beginning in 2010 will be with OSCRE as a global organization rather than individually with OSCRE Americas Inc. or with PISCES or separately with both. The same membership levels will be available however, with the new global organization, your membership will:
- Provide privileges and access to global services and activities being organized in any region.
- Bring confidence that any investment your organization makes into standards development and standards based solution implementation will benefit its international elements or aspirations.
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As a member of OSCRE Americas or PISCES, does my organization receive any additional benefits following the merger?
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Yes. In the past your membership in either organization only provided your company with access to participate in services and activities for that organization. A major goal of the merger was to make it easier for companies/organizations with multi-country operations to access services and initiate or participate in activities applicable to multiple countries or regions. The new OSCRE membership model makes this benefit a reality.
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Which countries are represented in the merged Consortium?
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OSCRE Americas and PISCES together have work currently in progress that apply to Canada, United States, England, Scotland, Wales, and The Netherlands. The merged Consortium will continue to deliver the work in progress for companies operating in these countries. In addition, OSCRE has responded to inquires from, among others Germany, Australia, China, India, and Japan.
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What is OSCRE?
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OSCRE is a not for profit global consortium of companies, associations and government agencies who have voluntarily organized to increase business productivity through the development and delivery of interoperability standards across the real property sector. Driven by market requirements, Consortium members select, develop and adopt, and manage openly documented and freely available standards. These standards contribute to enabling real property information systems to rapidly discover each other, negotiate capabilities, and then communicate quickly, securely, and accurately.
Membership fees pay for staff and infrastructure to support members and the industry at large to achieve market–driven development and adoption goals and then govern in the public interest a continuous improvement process.
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What does OSCRE do for the real estate industry?
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OSCRE provides a forum and proven processes for the collaborative development and adoption of free and publicly available open interface specifications. It is an important principle of publicly available standards that their contents and structure are openly published and that the standards are available for free or at a very low cost. This helps to encourage wide adoption which is essential to maximize the benefits of standardization.
One of OSCRE’s principle missions is to boost the real property standards development and adoption process among key stakeholders, including owners, tenants/occupants, investors, operators, developers, service providers, regulatory agencies, consulting firms, vendors and suppliers – to benefit all parties and enable the real estate industry to function more efficiently in the digital economy. OSCRE is the only global e–commerce standards body for the real property sector.
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Why do companies and organizations join OSCRE and/or sponsor projects? Why not just wait to adopt published standards?
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Broad industry adoption of published standards is important and adoption by individual organizations brings its own rewards. However, there are many additional benefits that are only available to active Consortium members. There are four overarching reasons for maintaining an OSCRE membership. While each of these is applicable to every member, higher levels of membership and greater levels of participation are associated with increased benefits, privileges, leadership and governance of work products. 1. Leadership – Consortium members are recognized as industry leaders having the vision and fortitude to set a course for improvement ahead of others. These organizations recognize that leadership allows them to excel by bringing greater value to their investors, customers and strategic partners.
- Show Leadership – Support development and implement the standards to demonstrate leadership and gain competitive edge.
2. Industry Governance – Consortium members govern the standards development and adoption agenda, acceptance of interoperability work products, and management of continuous improvement. As a Consortium member, individual organizations have a significant voice in influencing the direction of an industry and the speed with which interoperability benefits are achieved.
- Strategic Influence – Decide which Standards are created or changed, in what order and to serve which purpose; ensure your issues are heard;
- Technical Influence – Steer decisions on technical details, approaches and results during workgroup sessions or by using leading edge online collaboration tools
3. Value – To realize maximum value, OSCRE must be a market–driven organization. Therefore, Consortium members set the OSCRE agenda and determine the outcomes of development and adoption activities. Equally important, Consortium members continue to manage, in the public interest, the spiral development process for continuous improvement. In this way, Consortium member companies realize their individual goals even as they are working to provide industry governance in the public interest.
- Market Insight – Keep track of the latest news and views in the OSCRE newsletter
- Marketing Opportunities – Use OSCRE branding to add value to your marketing effort and engage in joint marketing projects
- Networking & Industry Insight – Build links with other leading organisations and trade bodies at a variety of events, forums, projects and workgroups.
4. Growth through participation – Member organizations realize great benefit in associating with their peers to identify and resolve issues they have in common. By resolving issues that slow and degrade the speed and quality of information, competitors and partners each make it easier to focus on individual innovation and core product capabilities.
- Early Access – Being involved in development ensures you are in the strongest position to reap maximum benefits from a standards based solution.
- Training & Technical support – The OSCRE Technical Team are always on hand to help with queries and provide training and guidance to assist implementation.
- Free Implementation Tools – Non-members can access the standard schemas but the fastest and most effective route to successful implementation and speedy returns is to utilize the documentation and support tools offered through membership.
- Discounted Certification/Compliance Testing – Certify the interoperability of your systems at a special member rate.
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