Anybody know anything about NIGP? It's this monstrous, standard, gov't
"product code" namespace. Everything from canned green beans to school
buses to diapers. Used in governmental purchasing. A company I was
consulting for a while back "owned" the maintenance of this namespace as
a sideline --- they had a group of folks in a room that people would
call up and say "what's the code for a polyethylene enema bag?" These
"coders" would discover that there wasn't a code for this item, and
they'd come up with one and log it in the code. Standard updates to the
"codebook" would be distributed periodically. It was even ontologically
organized, so that related codes were close according to some sort
order.
Weird, huh?
Namespaces are big business.
jb