[OSGeo Africa] reminder: Survey of FOSS GIS usage in South Africa

Tue Sep 4 00:00:34 PDT 2012

Hi Gavin

I am the IT manager at the Joe Gqabi District Municipality in the
Eastern Cape. Covering the area

  * Mt Fletcher,
  * Maclear,
  * Ugie,
  * Rhodes
  * Rossouw
  * Barkly East (Main Campus)
  * Lady Grey
  * Sterkspruit
  * Aliwal North
  * Burgersdorp
  * Jamestown
  * Venterstad
  * Steynsburg

I have implemented a FOSSGIS (PostGIS) solution, using DMS consulting in
East London (Dylan Rawlings is the director and I know that he has quite
a few other installations out there dylan at mapserver.co.za and does in my
opinion excellent work).

The system is web based though not yet available on a public portal as
some of the maps that we have are proprietary and for Government use
only. WE use QGis to access the database directly. I currently have
problems in this area in that the GIS Technician has "NO GIS" experience
beyond a few very brief in service training sessions on Arc
GIS................ so the updating and data capture process has stalled
until a suitable staff member is identified that will understand the system.

We are looking to extend the functionality of this system to include a
CRM module as well as possibly a asset maintenance and management
module. All will be an extension of the existing system. This is
necessary as the District Municipality is taking over the Water Service
Provision function from the local Municipalities. With the additional
developments I would like to link the system to the customer debtor info
and then make it available for customer queries via our existing website
(Joomla installation). I have other OSS installations that work very
well thank you.

As government policy goes it may be interesting to get hold of some of
the policy docs that have been published by the Government IT Officers
Council (GITO) as they are responsible for the formulation of policy
especially the following docs

  * OSS Policy
  * MIOS doc (Minimum Interoperability Standards in Gov)

These are most interesting for the TOTAL disregarding of these policies.
Not one dept in Gov seems to care about them and merrily goes their own
way purchasing proprietary software at what cost.

If you will allow me the following.

In RSA we have approx population of 50 mil
Approx half are of working age - 25 Mil
Approx 20 % work in Gov - 5 Mil
Approx 50 % have computers 2.5 Mil

All the above figure may be to some extent disputed - give me the
accurate ones if you can

For every windows PC the following costs are incurred - exclusive of the
hardware costs

1 x copy Win (XP) Win 7) OS - R2000-00
1 x copy MS Office - R2660-00 - The average user using maybe 1% of the
full functionality of the product
1 x copy AntiVirus product - R500-00

That is +/- R5000 per PC

With a total number of 2.5 mil PC's is a total investment in a single
vendors products of *R12.5 BILLION*. Makes it worse that this vendor is
offshore and that the products are paid in Dollar based currency.

With the usual life span of a PC being 3 to 4 years the replacement cost
incurred annually in MS Licensing is *3.125 BILLION*.

Besides the risk management issue associated with the huge virus threats
to MS Win this makes NO economic sense to me whatsoever, the sooner we
can have someone/organisation start to make people aware of this and
that there are other products available that will cost the tax payer
rather less.

I'm afraid that yes it gets better but I will leave that for another day

Regards

Llewellyn Gush

On 03/09/2012 10:57, Gavin Fleming wrote:
> Thanks for your responses so far. This is a reminder to send your
> response today describing any FOSS GIS work you've done or know about
> (details below). You are welcome to send it to the list as some of you
> have but you can also send it to me off-list at gavin at afrispatial.co.za.
>
> --------[sent last Friday]
>
> Hi fellow FOSS GISers
>
> I'm conducting a snap survey of FOSS GIS in SA - please respond by Mon
> 3 Sept! I will use later responses but they won't be guaranteed to
> make it into the proceedings (deadline 5 Sept).
>
> I'll be presenting a paper at the GISSA Ukubuzana in October with the
> following abstract:
>
>     Free and Open Source GIS Software is being used widely across
>     South Africa in diverse applications. This presentation will
>     showcase a number of projects implemented with FOSS GIS in
>     government, private industry, civil society and other sectors.
>     Case studies will be drawn from various companies, consultants and
>     service providers.
>
> I'd like to showcase what's being done and if I get a big enough
> response, to compile some stats.
>
> So, please send me some brief information about FOSS GIS work that you
> are or have been involved with or that you feel we should know about.
>
> I'm looking for work done with FOSS GIS in southern Africa by anyone
> OR work done by South Africans anywhere in the world.
>
> Any project counts, from a helpful script to a backend database to a
> big web application to a desktop GIS rollout - anything goes.
>
> Please send roughly the following:
>
> - a brief description
> - if web-based and public, a url
> - otherwise, send screenshots, publications, etc.
> - reasons why you or the client chose to use FOSS GIS
> - which FOSS GIS technologies you used
>
> PS: Apologies for the short notice but I was only notified of paper
> acceptance yesterday [last Thurs now].
>
> -- 
> regards
>
> Gavin
>
> Gavin Fleming
> http://afrispatial.co.za
> t: 0218620670
> c: 0845965680
> f: 0866164820 
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Africa mailing list
> Africa at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/africa

-- 
Llewellyn Gush
Information Technology Manager
Joe Gqabi District Municipality

Email llewellyn at jgdm.gov.za
Tel : "045 979 3070"
Cell: "082 573 4112"
Fax: "086 699 3633"
Website "www.joegqabi.gov.za"

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