[OSGeo-Discuss] National level strategy for Open Principles in Geospatial - next steps

Tue Jul 5 05:13:48 PDT 2016

Dear colleagues,

First of all, i would like to thank Jo and the OSGeo:UK Team for the successful organisation of FOSS4G UK 2016 in Southampton . Special thanks to Ordnance Survey guys Jeremy, Ian, Rollo  for the efforts they put in for hosting the event.

It is amazing to see the growth of OSGeo: UK over the last few years. I remember around 10 years back, there was an initial meeting organised (on the sidelines of another event) that i participated near Gatwick which was the first informal OSGeo:UK meeting trying to bring together those of us who were keen to make sure we work to build OSGeo:UK Chapter and have a strong community established in the UK. If i remember correctly it was around 10 people including Tyler Mitchell (who was that time the Executive Director of OSGeo), Jo Cook and myself who participated in that initial meeting.

That meeting and the dedication of the amazing colleagues that i met inspired me to contribute to the efforts and i decided that i will do everything in my abilities to support and work for building together the community and that was how i decided to organise the first Open Source GIS conference in the UK at Nottingham [1] even though i did not have any funding or experience. It was  difficult period that initial time as we were starting from scratch, but by God's grace and thanks to help of amazing colleagues and also help from the University of Nottingham we started building and expanding our ideas one step at a time in our bigger aim to establish firmly Open Geospatial Science.

I was told by some properitery GIS supporter folks over the years that what we are doing is "impossible" so many times , that i now just ignore them. For example, when we decided to establish 5 dedicated Open Source Geospatial Labs in 5 years it was called "impossible" and some  folks laughed at us initially . They underestimated the amazing people power that we have that can make things happen that no vendor can even dream to match. 10 years back ,who would have even imagined that free and open source QGIS starting from humble beginnings (in less than 10 years) will grow rapidly to be now the world's most widely used Geographic Information System powering millions of users in governments, academia and industry worldwide. The "impossible" has already happened so many times and we have only just started :-)  Geo for All is a world wide movement that fundamentally changes the rules of the game and provides immediate benefit to the world.

I would like to thank all participants who attended the session on the need of having a National level strategy for Open Principles in Geospatial [2] and all those who send me your excellent ideas. It helped me think more ideas for the future and why it is important that central/local governments should look at the big picture and long term view (and join forces and efforts) for mechanisms to support excellent staff in GIS teams at local government .

In order to start this process, we will need to follow up ideas on the following:

1. Start collating casestudies of successful migrations from central and local governments [3] in the UK. We will need colleagues in OSGeo:UK chapter to help with this and link this to the OSGeo:UK website.

2. Bring together a team of key people to develop an action plan for National level strategy for Open Principles in Geospatial. We will also link this to our Vision 2030 for Open Geospatial Science [4]. Anyone interested to contribute on this please email me.

3. There should be a vision to establish a National Centre for Open Government with expertise in Open Technologies and Open Data to build best practices in open source geospatial implementations in government and share ideas . There needs to be support and training facilities available for the local GIS departments who are migrating to Open Source GIS solutions. Investing in people is important. Scalability (without worring about exponential increases in licensing costs) will also be a important factor in cost savings and efficiencies. We already have dedicated Open Source Geospatial Labs in key research universities in the UK who can provide the expertise needed.

4. Detailed study on how much (roughly) is the UK government (central/local government etc) spending in buying properitery GIS licences for the last 10 years (2005-2015)? There needs to be clear plans for savings target for the next 10 years ?

There might be resistance from some properitary GIS vendors for this initiative as the cost savings for UK government and taxpayers in the long term might affect thier sales plans for the future but it is the duty of every citizen to ensure that hardworking taxpayers money is protected. We need to think of costs savings for 10 years, 25 years, 50 years from now etc. It will be in billions of taxpayers money that should be spend for expanding investment in schools, universities, healthcare etc NOT keeping paying to buy high cost proprietary GIS licences when there are now lot of open alternatives available and many other countries are already doing this. It will help also create and accelerate local innovation opportunities in location based technologies and stimulate local industry and accelerate new jobs creation in digital economy for value added services building upon technologies.

I had summarised some of my initial thoughts/ideas on the need for National level strategy for Open Principles in Geospatial at http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/03/national-level-strategy-for-open-principles-in-geospatial-ideas-and-inputs-needed/

The slides are available at
http://www.slideshare.net/SuchithAnand/national-level-strategy-for-open-principles-in-geospatial
http://www.slideshare.net/SuchithAnand/geo-for-all-empowering-communities-for-a-better-world

This session at FOSS4G UK conference 2016 at the Ordnance Survey UK was aimed to  start the process of bringing together interested participants from government, industry and academia  of discussing ideas on best practices in open source geospatial implementations, open data, open standards, opportunities for geo industry, migration to open source GIS, economic benefits, accelerating innovation ecosystems , skills development and educational opportunities, creating  highly skilled jobs, expanding startups and accelerating the digital economy. There is an urgent need for having a national level strategy for enabling the public sector to save money, innovate and make more effective policy decisions. I am looking forward to your active contributions and support.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Dr. Suchith Anand
http://www.geoforall.org/

Geo for All - Building and expanding Open Geospatial Science

[1] http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/osgis/home.aspx
[2] http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/05/inputs-invited-for-the-need-for-national-level-strategy-for-open-principles-in-geospatial/
[3] https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2016/03/using-open-source-gis-in-the-public-sector/
[4] http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2016/06/open-consultation-on-the-vision-2030-for-open-geospatial-science/

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