[OSGeo Africa] ESRI in Government and tender requirements

[Gavin Fleming]

Hi all

I attended the briefing session for the Department of Home Affairs geographical accessibility study (Thanks Zoltan for the heads-up).

The ToR states that the service provider has to have ArcGIS. I asked for this requirement to be removed since it does not matter what software the service provider uses as long as they deliver the result. The response from DHA was that Govt has a ’transversal ESRI licence’ and that all Govt departments have to use ESRI! Never mind that this is completely contrary to the FOSS policy agreed to by Cabinet in 2007 and against SITA procurement policy, if it even is true that Govt is ‘has to’ use ESRI that does NOT mean service providers have to. Nevertheless I got a vocal support from other attendees as this requirement is ridiculous and exclusionary. 

DHA went further to say they want service providers to use ArcGIS so they don’t end up with issues using the data that service providers deliver. They are confusing software with data and don’t seem to be aware (or are so brainwashed) that most formats produced by most GIS software these days are completely interoperable. Furthermore they are unaware of and indeed flouting the MIOS (SA Govt Minimum Interoperability Standards).

Even worse and quite nonsensical is this formal response from DHA to all attendees of the briefing session:
Relating to SITA circular 1 of 2017/18 and National Treasury SCM circular 3 of 2017/8, it is a requirement that all Government departments make use of ESRI South Africa for software and therefore the format required will be in Arc GIS format.

Firstly there is no such thing as ‘Arc GIS format’. Secondly this is blatantly incorrect (and illegal if it is true). Lastly, can anyone enlighten the list as to the contents of the two circulars mentioned and whether they even support this argument?

Your thoughts? Anyone willing to take action?

regards

Gavin

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