[OSGeo-Discuss] National level strategy for Open Principles in Geospatial - ideas and inputs needed

Tue Mar 15 07:15:59 PDT 2016

Hi Mario,

Thank you for your inputs and i fully agree with all the points you mentioned. In fact, when we decided to set up the first Open Source Geospatial Lab in the UK to lay the foundation for "Geo for All" , i send invitations to select key players in the UK to send their representatives for the founding meeting . The Association of Geographic Information , British Geological Survey, EDINA, Ordnance Survey etc send their representatives for the founding meeting at University of Nottingham in June 2010 . The only international initiative that i invited for the meeting was gvSIG . We wanted to learn from gvSIG community, these excellent ideas and implementation plans and how you were able to scale this up from local,national to global initiative in matter of just a few years . Having the successful Triple Helix collaborations (Government, Industry, Academia) was really good idea.

"Geo for All" was initially started by scientists and research active academics to build strong foundations for Open Geospatial Science . Openness and transparency of research results (and how these results are created) are very important for us Scientists . We also wanted to create openness in Geo Education for developing creative and open minds in students which is critical for building open innovation and contributes to building up Open Knowledge for the benefit of the whole society and for our future generations.

We were laughed at initially by some proprietary vendor supporters because we do not have  any initial funding when we decided to start "Geo for All" . It is 100 percent the dedication and efforts of all our colleagues globally which helped us build this. We are grateful to all our colleagues globally for their help and efforts which enabled us to build this initiative. Please see http://www.geoforall.org/about/

We are now working closely with governments and industry to build strong cross collaboration links and the example you gave on the importance of Open Principles in Smart Cities and local government is good.   Some proprietary vendors have very clear enslavement strategies like reducing prices and giving 'free' online accounts for a limited period and when the local government moves its systems to their proprietary online web services they start charging huge costs.

For example, Dave Murray's (GIS Coordinator, City of Westminster, USA ) send this reply to my mail discussions in Geo4All mail lists in June 2015 [1] on the importance of having Open Principles in Education for our future generations. Dave has kindly given permission to share his email with the wider geo community so the wider community is aware of these kind of marketing gimmicks and vendor lock-in tactics.

"We got caught in the proprietary vendor's trap a couple of years ago. Our public works department adopted the vendor's online service. We had a number of business operations running that were critical to our success. Then the vendor told us the service would cost $15,000 + per year to continue. Quite a shock and after we even promoted their service at conferences. After that, I have real questions about what I can believe from them." [1]

When i read Dave Murray's (GIS Coordinator, City of Westminster, USA ) email on this , i realised that this is a much wider problem and we need to make all colleagues globally aware of the dangers of falling into some Proprietary vendor's very clever marketing trap. It will help others realise the costs of being silent as it is affecting not just government departments such as City of Westminister in USA and hundreds of other organisations worldwide but our future generations education opportunities. I am determined to do my best to make sure education is not at the dictates of any vendor.

Dave and City of Westminster, USA are just one of thousands who fall in the marketing gimmicks of various proprietary vendor's trap. Unfortunately many are very scared even to discuss this in public . I really hope UK Government organisations and departments don't fall in traps like this and millions of UK taxpayers money for this each year is saved.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-June/001828.html

________________________________________
From: Relating to all things GIS [GIS-UK at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] on behalf of Mario Carrera [mcarrera at GVSIG.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2016 12:27 PM
To: GIS-UK at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Re: National level strategy for Open Principles in Geospatial - ideas and inputs needed

Hi Suchith,

thanks for setting the gvSIG Association example. I comment between the
lines so that you have more information about the sustainability model
of the gvSIG project and also to open possible type of collaboration:

El 12/03/16 a las 10:50, Suchith Anand escribió:
> Dear All,
>
> Few months back, i decided to start*Free GIS Workshops and Think Tanks
> for UK government organisations, SMEs and startups* *at the University
> of Nottingham* to bring together all interested players to learn, share
> and discuss ideas in for future collaboration opportunities in Open
> Source, Open Standards, Open Data in Geospatial in the UK [1]. This is
> now being replicated by our colleagues in Malaysia and other countries
> globally.
>
> For background, *Open principles are now implemented by the UK
> Government and delivering huge cost savings for government -£409 million
> in the first half of the year it was implemented (six months in 2012
> alone)* [2]. Open source GIS software will help the local authorities
> and various government departments in reducing huge licence fee costs
> for proprietary software and the UK Government and taxpayers as a whole
> will benefit from cost efficiencies, reduce the cost of lock-in to
> suppliers and products. This is especially important for future IT
> investments (for example Cloud Computing) , so that more options are
> explored and choices available.
>
> In the geo field there are amazing developments happening in other
> countries in Europe. For example, in Spain where the joining together of
> universities, SMEs and local government resulted in *gvSIG initiative*
> (started in Valencia but now across Spain) where now national and local
> governments have shifted to free and open source GIS software (saving
> millions of Euros each year of tax payers money ) and also helped create
> hundreds of new highly skilled digital economy jobs through the starting
> of large number of local industry and SMEs providing value added
> services and customization that has resulted from this gvSIG initiative
> [3].*The "gvSIG" initiative was successful in Spain because it had
> strong collaboration between industry, local government and academia in
> Open Geo Services in Spain.*

Although the gvSIG Association is an association registered in Spain, it
has an international character. In fact, among the main members [1]
there are companies from Spain, Italy and Venezuela, and there are
entities from tens of countries among its collaborators [2] and honour
members [3].

As gvSIG was born in Spain it has had a great expansion here initially,
but currently the catalogue of gvSIG solutions (that go beyond gvSIG
desktop, with solutions for Spatial Data Infrastructure like gvSIG
Online [4], Roads Management like gvSIG Roads [5], etc.) is used in
organizations around the world (just to mention some of the clients that
work with the gvSIG Association: UN-Habitat, IUCN (International Union
for Conservation of Nature), New York University, PDVSA -Petroleum of
Venezuela-...).

In parallel to the business model, of course, we are working with the
users and developers communities organized around gvSIG. What I want to
say with all of this is that gvSIG has become a global initiative, in an
open source solutions development model based on shared knowledge and
collaboration, where companies and organizations of UK can be added of
course.

>
> *How can UK replicate gvSIG and other successful models ?* I think we
> also need to similar model but customised for local needs and also have
> a National level focus. There are many things that are in our advantage
> including UK Government's strong support and policy on Open Principles
> *(this has already reflected in software procurement polices saving
> millions of pounds of taxpayers money but this just a tip of the
> iceburg)*. In the UK there are 433 principal authorities: 27 county
> councils, 55 unitary authorities, 32 London boroughs, 36 Metropolitan
> boroughs, 201 districts, 32 Scottish unitary authorities, 22 Welsh
> unitary authorities, and 26 Northern Ireland districts ,and every single
> one of them are using GIS,*so imagine the costs per year of taxpayers
> money spend for buying proprietary GIS licences ! Now imagine the costs
> for not one year costs but costs for 5 years , 10 years, 25 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.

As I said above, the gvSIG Association is open for the participation of
organizations from all over the world. Any organization interested in it
can contact us and start to collaborate from tomorrow.

> *
> *Professional Open source GIS software like QGIS
> http://qgis.org/en/site/ will help the local authorities and various
> departments in reducing huge annual license fee costs for proprietary
> software and the UK Government and taxpayers as a whole will benefit
> from cost efficiencies, reduce the cost of lock-in to suppliers and
> products and help create opportunities for local SMEs and startups.

...and like gvSIG. :-)

In any case, I think that the most important thing for the
administrations is to have built-up platforms based on open source
sofware, like gvSIG Online, and having a sustainability and evolution
guarantee behind every technology. This also is provided by an
international organization like the gvSIG Association, removing this
weakness in a big part of the free geomatics projects.

Here an interesting reflection about local governments ans open source
software:
http://blog.gvsig.org/2016/03/14/smart-cities-no-open-source-software-means-no-intelligence/

I hope that these comments help the debate.

Best Regards,
Mario

[1] http://www.gvsig.com/en/gvsig-association/partners
[2] http://www.gvsig.com/en/gvsig-association/partners/collaborators
[3] http://www.gvsig.com/en/gvsig-association/honorary-members
[4]
http://blog.gvsig.org/2016/02/17/presenting-gvsig-online-the-solution-for-spatial-data-infrastructures-on-open-source-software/
[5]
http://blog.gvsig.org/2016/01/15/gvsig-roads-roads-management-with-open-source-software/

> *
> There are many best practice examples from governments globally that we
> can make use of to learn and adapt to suit our requirements.
>
> For example, The Netherlands were one of the first governments in Europe
> (back in 2007) to have an action plan for the use of Open Standards and
> Open Source Software in the public and semi-public sector. You can get
> the full details from
> https://www.ictu.nl/archief/noiv.nl/service/english/index.html
>
> There are now lot of best practice examples from other EU governments at
> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/open_standards_ict/og_page/best-practices-library
>
>
> *We are especially interested in examples of ideas and action plans from
> local authorities to make use of open technologies (esp in GIS)* for
> helping reduce the high proprietary GIS licence costs as it is one of
> the biggest IT expenses in GIS. So you can imagine the cumulative annual
> costs for the UK government for keeping buying proprietary GIS . Now
> imagine the costs for not just one year but in the future 5, 10 , 25
> years. The savings will be millions of pounds and with the UK government
> action plan on Open Principles implemented, i am interested in learning
> about examples from local authorities who are making this phased
> transition. This is especially important for Smart Cities programs and
> will help build an ecosystem at the local level and help create big
> opportunities for industry, SMEs and startups in the UK . This will
> create innovation opportunities locally. The startup community is
> especially open to the use of open software and data avoiding licensing
> restrictions which may impact on their business plans, raise early
> start-up costs and restrict their ability to innovate allowing them
> greater branding freedom and product flexibility.
>
>
> I am trying to look at other successful phased transition examples from
> properitery GIS to free and open GIS in other countries to learn ideas.
> For example,one key aspect of gvSIG success in Spain was that *they were
> thinking at national level while acting locally.* They came to meet me
> few years back at Nottingham to learn what we are doing and share thier
> ideas (they also invited us to be honourary member
> http://blog.gvsig.org/2011/02/10/building-up-gvsig-community-in-uk/ )
> and i was really impressed by thier clear implementation plans for the
> whole of Spain including developing strong value added support services
> for gvSIG across Spain through creating an Association for all SMEs to
> collaborate. They have been successful in expanding to other Spanish
> speaking regions but thier main drawback for wider global expansion was
> the focus on Spanish language . But the launguage customisation and
> focus was also key thier local needs .
>
> In UK there is already excellent early signs of effects (and this need
> to be accelerated) esp. in local government starting to happen with the
> UK Government policy and i understand that there are many local
> authorities now in the *process of planning phased migration plans to
> QGIS for desktop GIS and also looking into open geo technology solutions
> for thier webbased mapping needs*. I think this is a good sign but in my
> humble suggestion there needs to be a national level strategy for this
> (it is all being done differently in different local authorities) and we
> are missing an excellent opportunity of what the Spain and other
> countries have done by having *"Triple helix strategy - government,
> Industry and Academia" *in place which helped accelerate developments
> and bring more cost efficiencies in the process. We also need to keep
> educating colleagues on the importance of protecting open standards [4]
> and open principles to ensure no monopolies are created in geospatial.
>
> *Another important development is now the central and local governments
> are in a strong position for the first time in history in terms of
> software procurement because there is lot of choice.* It will force the
> properitery vendors (who used to be monopoly and dictate terms) to keep
> reducing thier high license fees and it just shows why it is important
> to have strong competition . So overall the UK taxpayers will benifit
> from savings of millions of pounds in software procurement for GIS in
> the future and the UK economy will benifit by this helping create more
> opportunities for SMEs and startups locally. So it will be double win
> for the UK government.
>
> Also UK has already a fast growing ecosystem of SMEs in open geo
> services and this need to be supported by the right policy frameworks
> and instruments . For example, if you look at the SMEs in the OSGeo
> ecosystem in the UK , you can see many - starting from 1 person startups
> to companies employing hundreds [5]. The right policy frameworks is
> needed to help create the conditions for more RedHat type organisations
> [6] in the geospatial and smart cities sector for creating thousands of
> highly skilled jobs in the future. It needs someone with the National
> level vision to lead this and i am interested to hear from national
> level organisations who are interested to act as a bridge for this. *So
> if you are working in central or local governments in the UK, please
> share my email with your colleagues and ask interested colleagues to
> contact me to discuss ideas. *
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Suchith Anand
> http://www.geoforall.org/
>
>
>
> [1]
> http://opensourcegeospatial.icaci.org/2015/08/ree-gis-info-workshop-for-uk-government-organisations-smes-and-startups-the-university-of-nottingham/
>
> [2]
> https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-bodies-must-comply-with-open-standards-principles
>
> [3] http://www.gvsig.com/en/gvsig-association
> [4] http://www.osgeo.org/node/1518
> [5] http://www.osgeo.org/search_profile?SET=1&MUL_COUNTRY[]=00002
> [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat
>
>

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