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

Tue Sep 4 08:20:01 PDT 2012

Hi

On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 9:00 AM, Llewellyn Gush <llewellyn at jgdm.gov.za>wrote:

>  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
>
>
Llewellyn hear hear! This is the rant I always give too, our governement is
sending m/billiions of rands out the country instead of creating a local
knowledge economy. Anyway that reasoning is why I joined the QGIS project -
GIS software should be freely accessible to everyone. It's so exciting
seeing how many people in SA and beyond are now making a living on top of
support and training services around QGIS and FOSSGIS in general!

If your users have QGIS questions / issues, please encourage them to join
our user mailing list or to post them on GIS Stack Exchange

[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
[2] http://gis.stackexchange.com/

Our community is generally very helpful and responsive (assuming questions
have been well put together). There are also local folks like Gaving who
can offer support around QGIS.

Regards

Tim

>  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 Fleminghttp://afrispatial.co.za
> t: 0218620670
> c: 0845965680
> f: 0866164820
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Africa mailing listAfrica at lists.osgeo.orghttp://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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-- 
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
==============================================
Visit http://linfiniti.com to find out about:
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