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:

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

  • DaveCompton1_360x360Objectives: 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

NewsML 1 Work Lead

News-in-JSON Working Group

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) and Michael Steidl (Honorary Member)

Public Relations Committee

Rights Expressions Working Group

Semantic Web Work Lead

Sports Content Working Group

  • Paul Kelly headshotObjectives:
    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

  • Paul Harman headshotObjectives: 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