[OSGeo Africa] FOSS vs ESRI and other GIS issues

Wed Jun 5 05:30:54 PDT 2013

Hi All

I have been following this discussion trough out the morning. 

What does it matter if you have a degree or a semester course in GIS. We have engineers that operate GIS applications. It is how you use GIS and the environment that you implement it that determines what educational background you need. In my short career in GIS have seen very few people that are competent that have some GIS degree or remote sensing background and register with PLATO, but they have no clue what it means to convert file types or to write a simple SQL query. So I do not understand even the role of PLATO. Does n programmer need to be registered with PLATO? Maybe it is just me being bias.

Government is a special place and very few GIS practitioners have the ability to influence how the IM/IT landscape is planned. The problem that we have in this world. The people that need to use systems do not have the ability to find solutions to problems themselves. So most government departments have put in large amount of money into developing staff to use a software. To change to open source platform causes a large amount of money to be spent to retrain people.

I think something we need to employ in the FOSS environment it to have some certification for service providers. So that government/business know that who they employee will deliver a professional and reliable service. Secondly IT/IM decision makers should be educated in what is available in the open source stack and how it can be used and the ease of use. GIS users should not be retrained but just moved to new platforms. 

The way that the open source community is approaching business and government is wrong I believe. Do not force something and do not sell yourself on the basis that the software is free or very cheap. Sell yourself by showing how good it is, how scalable, and how simple it is to use. What type of support is available and how that support will be given to the client. 

Regards

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Today's Topics:

   1. FW:   FOSS vs ESRI and other GIS issues (Walter Smit)
   2. Re: FW:   FOSS vs ESRI and other GIS issues (Llewellyn Gush)

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Message: 1
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 12:19:27 +0200
From: "Walter Smit" <walter.s at sa-solutions.co.za>
To: "Africa local chapter discussions" <africa at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: [OSGeo Africa] FW:   FOSS vs ESRI and other GIS issues
Message-ID: <004e01ce61d6$2bce9ea0$836bdbe0$@sa-solutions.co.za>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hi Ray

I have been physically deployed in a national government department (DRDLR) for the past 18months and many of your points are very true. I could write a whole essay about it, but here are some quick points.

*        Training and inexperienced staff ? I have had to teach graduated GIS people (from various universities) what the difference is between files and folders. Seems to me that many universities are missing the plot completely on how to make young people ready for actual work.

*        ?not programmers? ? true, but the FOSS software I have used does not require any more programming than over-the-counter suites.

*        Enough PGPs? Correct, there are very few. It is however a fallacy that you need to be mentored by a PGP to be able to register with Plato (I was not ? and I didn?t get the benefit of the Grandfather clause either). I don?t know who started this lie, but it seems to stop people from even trying to register.

*        I cannot comment on unscrupulous service providers ? solutions should be scalable.

*        Freestate in the limelight ? I actually asked someone with more knowledge than the reporters. He was of the opinion that the service provider under quoted, because the range and scope of related services to that website was enormous. Like following several officials around to all their meetings for a year. 

*        Why pay more than once? Petty politics and leaders protecting their own little empires. And corruption of course. We have tried doing this for 18months?no luck yet. Also the communication between provinces and levels of government is ludicrously poor. Do you know what your direct neighbours in Environmental Affairs are using? Hopefully Enrico and Nacelle will be uploading their Bioregional Plans to the sharing platform when they are done. The same platform where you can see the EIAs from NEIMS?*shameless plug*

*        Data with known custodians. Have been doing this for 12months?it is very very difficult. Reasons: lack of high level regard for (spatial) data, capacity and attitudes of ?it isn?t in my job description?. Hopefully more OSD posts will change this. Remember that very few departments have ever taken responsibility for spatial data ? ever. It is a massively foreign concept to them. We are making good progress on this in 2 provinces. In the Northern Cape we have actually got all the HODs to sign MOUs that they will be custodians for their datasets. Appointing the actual person/post to an actual dataset is more of a challenge. 

*        GIS people in government. Lack of funding usually, or no GIS posts on their organograms. Government salaries for GIS people are actually much higher than private sector.

*        IT support in government. Cannot comment on something that doesn?t exist :)

Personally I believe that departments would be better served by implementing FOSS and spending the saved money on training. Because training (regardless of software used) is what people really need. But then again?Tswane?why change a system if it is already working for them? And their staff have probably already had some decent training.

Rant over,

Regards

Walter Smit

Professional GISc Practitioner SA (PGP 1193)

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Message: 2
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2013 13:19:35 +0200
From: Llewellyn Gush <llewellyn at jgdm.gov.za>
To: Africa local chapter discussions <africa at lists.osgeo.org>, 	Walter
	Smit <walter.s at sa-solutions.co.za>
Subject: Re: [OSGeo Africa] FW:   FOSS vs ESRI and other GIS issues
Message-ID: <51AF1EC7.9080809 at jgdm.gov.za>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

Hello Walt

Just read your RANT on OsGeo

Seems you may be changing your allegiance - to ESRI and all that ;-)

On a serious note the debate around the use of OSS has been doing the rounds in Gov now for longer than I care to remember. Nothing yet seems to have come of it, the reasons may be many and the will seems to be non existent, but one of the major stumbling blocks has been identified by yourself and the previous writer. This is not just about GIS though that is the primary focus of this forum. The whole debate is much broader and I think needs to have the profile raised.

It is really sad when a person considers themselves "computer literate"
when they can use Word & Excel and then not even do Styles or formula's more complex than simple addition - they use them as a glorified typewriter. It is a fact that our educational institutions are doing a very poor job of skilling students to really be computer literate. This has come about mostly due to the penetration and exclusive use of a proprietary vendors solution, which was given to educational institutions for free (Catch them young and they are yours forever principle). I fail to understand why it is accepted that a single vendors solutions should be considered as the only contribution to a school/university curriculum. The education authorities carry equal blame in this regard

Your "low blow" about IT support in Gov :-(

I like to think that at the institution where I am employed there is a least a semblance of support. Suppose there has to be since OSS has been almost exclusively implemented in the server space, and what do you know "it works" and works well.

Free State...??? Maybe the reporter did not know the scope of the work, but neither did the department that wanted the solution. How many man hours can you buy for 40 Million? A hellava Lot!! Way more than the scope of work done so far.

And finally ...........DATA......... I would almost term this the Holy Grail of computing. Proprietary vendors, service providers etc are doing a really really good job of capturing data and then making it unavailable to the client. I have seen more than my fair share of projects that at the end the service provider walks away with the IP in the form of the data. I know that this is almost always the fault of the project managers, but am afraid that it all links back to the above re training and skills and knowledge about how to manage the data component.

YOU ARE SO RIGHT

Llewellyn

On 05/06/2013 12:19, Walter Smit wrote:
>
> Hi Ray
>
> I have been physically deployed in a national government department
> (DRDLR) for the past 18months and many of your points are very true. I 
> could write a whole essay about it, but here are some quick points.
>
> ?        Training and inexperienced staff ? I have had to teach
> graduated GIS people (from various universities) what the difference 
> is between files and folders. Seems to me that many universities are 
> missing the plot completely on how to make young people ready for 
> actual work.
>
> ?        ?not programmers? ? true, but the FOSS software I have used
> does not require any more programming than over-the-counter suites.
>
> ?        Enough PGPs? Correct, there are very few. It is however a
> fallacy that you need to be mentored by a PGP to be able to register 
> with Plato (I was not ? and I didn?t get the benefit of the 
> Grandfather clause either). I don?t know who started this lie, but it 
> seems to stop people from even trying to register.
>
> ?        I cannot comment on unscrupulous service providers ?
> solutions should be scalable.
>
> ?        Freestate in the limelight ? I actually asked someone with
> more knowledge than the reporters. He was of the opinion that the 
> service provider under quoted, because the range and scope of related 
> services to that website was enormous. Like following several 
> officials around to all their meetings for a year.
>
> ?        Why pay more than once? Petty politics and leaders protecting
> their own little empires. And corruption of course. We have tried 
> doing this for 18months?no luck yet. Also the communication between 
> provinces and levels of government is ludicrously poor. Do you know 
> what your direct neighbours in Environmental Affairs are using?
> Hopefully Enrico and Nacelle will be uploading their Bioregional Plans 
> to the sharing platform when they are done. The same platform where 
> you can see the EIAs from NEIMS?*shameless plug*
>
> ?        Data with known custodians. Have been doing this for
> 12months?it is very very difficult. Reasons: lack of high level regard 
> for (spatial) data, capacity and attitudes of ?it isn?t in my job 
> description?. Hopefully more OSD posts will change this. Remember that 
> very few departments have ever taken responsibility for spatial data ?
> ever. It is a massively foreign concept to them. We are making good 
> progress on this in 2 provinces. In the Northern Cape we have actually 
> got all the HODs to sign MOUs that they will be custodians for their 
> datasets. Appointing the actual person/post to an actual dataset is 
> more of a challenge.
>
> ?        GIS people in government. Lack of funding usually, or no GIS
> posts on their organograms. Government salaries for GIS people are 
> actually much higher than private sector.
>
> ?        IT support in government. Cannot comment on something that
> doesn?t exist J
>
> Personally I believe that departments would be better served by 
> implementing FOSS and spending the saved money on training. Because 
> training (regardless of software used) is what people really need. But 
> then again?Tswane?why change a system if it is already working for 
> them? And their staff have probably already had some decent training.
>
> Rant over,
>
> _______________________________________________
> Africa mailing list
> Africa at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/africa

--
Llewellyn Gush
Information Technology Manager
Joe Gqabi District Municipality

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