Standards adoption is a very practical necessity in creating and maintaining an operational GIS.

First, we must differentiate the standards into different groups. There are four main groups of standards. The standards in the first group are mainly de facto vendor specific standards. In many cases, major vendors (like ESRI, AutoDesk or MapInfo) have built their own file specifications for spatial data storage. Such a vendor-specific solution can become a de facto standard through the sheer number of installed licences for the vendor's software. Perhaps more significantly this is enhanced as other vendors accept the specification, either for import/export or for direct reading or writing. Some such standards are widely supported across the industry, for example the DXF file format or ESRI's Shapefile format.

The second group comprises standards that relate to interoperability of different GIS packages. These standards deal with data formats that are independent of any specific package and enable the integration of different systems. The OpenGIS Consortium (OGC) is developing such standards and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) adopts and further develops them as part of its initiatives on global standards for emerging technologies.

The third group of standards comprises standards that focus on the ability to locate existing information and information sources. These are the metadata standards.

The fourth group of standards are standards that are not directly connected to GIS, but can have a far-reaching influence on GIS projects. Such standards include the ISO 9000 quality management series, which can be used in specific projects. However, this document does not discuss such standards.