Work Structure

Committees and Working Groups of the IPTC are the backbone of the organisation. Find below what each group contributes to the IPTC.

A Committee conducts IPTC’s activities at a more global level and is responsible for the business of the company.
A Working Group is team of persons responsible for a specific area of technical matters.
A Work Lead is a person who is responsible for a specific area of technical matters.

The hierarchy of responsibilities:

• The IPTC membership
  • Board of Directors
    • Standards Committee with Working Groups (WG) and Working Leads (WL)
      • News Architecture WL
      • NewsCodes WG
      • NewsML-G2 WG
      • NewsML 1 WL
      • News-in-JSON WG
      • NITF WL
      • Photo Metadata WG
      • Rights Expressions WG
      • Semantic Web WL
      • Sports Content WG
      • Video Metadata WG
    • Media Provenance Committee
      • Provenance Governance Working Group
      • Provenance Best Practices and Implementation Working Group
      • Provenance Advocacy and Education Working Group
    • Public Relations Committee

Board of Directors

Objectives	To take responsibility for the organisation as a whole and to develop the guidelines for the work of the IPTC.
Directors	See the full list on the About IPTC page

News Architecture Work Lead

• Objectives: Maintenance of the IPTC News Architecture as common data model of multiple IPTC standards for exchanging news and news-related information, like NewsML-G2, SportsML-G2 or ninjs.
• Related standard: IPTC News Architecture – see on the IPTC Developer Site
• Work Lead: Dave Compton (Refinitiv, an LSEG business)

NewsCodes Working Group

• Objectives: The maintenance of IPTC metadata controlled vocabularies for categorising content – branded as NewsCodes – and the creation of new ones when required. Further investigating the value in creating a semantic exchange, a system for identifying, establishing and publishing the links between the subject vocabularies of multiple news providers.
• Related standard: IPTC Media Topics
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-newscodes
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-newscodes-dev
• Group Lead:  Jennifer Parrucci (New York Times)

NewsML-G2 Working Group

• Objectives: Maintenance and further development of NewsML-G2 as a news exchange standard to mark up any kind of general news content. The work on expressing events as defined by EventsML-G2 is covered by this group too.
• Related standard: NewsML-G2
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-newsml-g2
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-news-architecture-dev
• Group Lead: Dave Compton (Refinitiv, an LSEG business)

NewsML 1 Work Lead

• Objectives: Maintenance and further development of NewsML 1 as a standard packaging and syndication mechanism for multimedia news, by maintaining requirements and functional specifications, and specifying implementation guidelines and best practices.
• Related standard: NewsML versions 1.x
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-newsml
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-newsml1-dev
• Work Lead: Jayson Lorenzen (Businesswire)

News-in-JSON Working Group

• Objectives: Maintenance and further development of ninjs, IPTC’s JSON format standard for content APIs and mobile apps
• Related standard: ninjs
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-ninjs
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-news-in-json-dev
• Group Lead: Ian Young (PA Media)

NITF Work Lead

• Objectives: Maintenance and further development of the News Industry Text Format (NITF)
• Related standard: NITF
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-nitf/
• Work Lead:  Currently vacant

Photo Metadata Working Group

• Objectives:
  • The goal of this Working Group is to act as a special interest group regarding all photo metadata issues of the IPTC.
  • The work is not focused on a single standard but will support all current IPTC standards in all photo related areas.
  • The work done will cover in particular supporting the development and maintenance of generic IPTC metadata standards, the development of specific photo metadata standards and acting as a standing group of experts to respond to issues raised by external parties.
• Related standard: IPTC Photo Metadata: IPTC Core and IPTC Extension
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-photometadata/
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-photometadata-dev/
• Group Leads: David Riecks (PLUS Coalition)

Public Relations Committee

• Objectives: To cover all aspects of IPTC’s public relations.
  
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-pr/
• Chair: Linda Burman (Individual Member)

Rights Expressions Working Group

• Objectives: Development of means for expressing rights associated with news content.
• Related standard: RightsML
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-rightsml
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-rightsml-dev/
• Group Lead: currently vacant

Semantic Web Work Lead

• Objectives: An initiative to reconcile Semantic Web technologies with publishing and exchanging news.
• Related standard: rNews
• Public forum: for rNews: https://groups.io/g/iptc-rnews
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-semweb-dev/
• Work Lead: currently vacant

Sports Content Working Group

• Objectives:
  The goal of the Working Group is to identify common problems and areas of cooperation related to sport content. Specifically:
  • Develop, maintain and promote the SportsML-G2 standard
  • Support the development and implementation of other IPTC standards in areas relevant to sport
  • Incorporate or develop other appropriate standards
  • Act as a standing group of experts to respond to issues raised by external parties
• Related standard: SportsML
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-sportsml
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-sportsml-dev
• Group Lead: Paul Kelly (Individual Member)

Standards Committee

• Objectives: The Standards Committee is IPTC’s body for formal approval of all standards and acts as steering group for the technical development of new standards and the ongoing review of all standards in use.
• Related standard: all IPTC standards
• Committee Chair: Paul Harman (Bloomberg)

Video Metadata Working Group

• Objectives: The goal of this Working Group is to define a common set of metadata properties for videos and how they can be expressed in different technical ways typical for video formats.
• Related recommendation: IPTC Video Metadata Hub
• Public forum: https://groups.io/g/iptc-videometadata/
• Forum for IPTC members only: https://groups.io/g/iptc-videometadata-dev/
• Group Lead: Pam Fisher (Individual Member)