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What PCA Offers

PCA brings together three closely related things:

  • an organization that coordinates communities, governance, and long-term stewardship
  • a digital platform that helps people explore, consume, evolve, govern, host, and learn from digital content
  • a growing set of libraries, standards, ontologies, reference data, and related digital assets

These are connected, but they are not the same.

PCA as an organization

PCA provides the governance, communities, and maintenance structures needed to keep digital content useful over time. This includes decision-making, review processes, and collaboration between members, working groups/committees, and maintenance bodies.

PCA as a platform

The PCA platform provides services for:

  • discovering and browsing content
  • consuming content through user interfaces and APIs
  • proposing and evolving content
  • reviewing and governing proposed changes
  • hosting and publishing digital content
  • enabling learning and adoption through documentation and shared guidance

PCA as a content ecosystem

PCA also makes digital content available for use and reuse. This may include:

  • standards
  • ontologies
  • reference data
  • reusable instance data
  • mappings
  • engineering symbols

Some readers come primarily for the platform. Others come primarily for the content. The documentation hub supports both perspectives.