[OSGeo Africa] ESRI in Government and tender requirements

Sun Jul 29 23:04:05 PDT 2018

Hi all, this matter is been taken up by SAGI (South African Geomatics Institute) seeking legal opinion – referring specifically to the matter Gavin raised.  Peter Newmarch, our President, has, and will be, in contact with some to provide further information in this matter.

Regards
Derrick Wells

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From: Africa [mailto:africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Angie Atkinson
Sent: 30 July 2018 07:37
To: 'Africa local chapter discussions'
Subject: Re: [OSGeo Africa] ESRI in Government and tender requirements

Hi Everyone,

I have just read all the comments and replies with regards to the requirement that one uses ESRI.

Something we have come across and what is a concern for us as well is that in most of the tenders, and will more than likely soon be come all tenders, stipulates that one needs to provide the municipality / government department with an ARC Map Package, no other software is compatible with this except for ARC, so unless the TORs states that one can provide shapefiles compatible with ESRI/ARC you will need to have ARC so that you can comply with the TOR requesting a Map Package.

Many of the Government Departments we work with have indicated that the ARC Map Package is the ARC GIS Format they are referring to when asking for data, some have amended the TORs to indicate that the data needs to be provided in ARC Map Package format.

Regards

Angie

From: Africa <africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> On Behalf Of Gavin Fleming
Sent: Thursday, 26 July 2018 10:10
To: Africa local chapter discussions <africa at lists.osgeo.org>
Subject: [OSGeo Africa] ESRI in Government and tender requirements

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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