[Ica-osgeo-labs] Intergovernmental agreements to expand "Geo For All" initiative

Tue Jan 7 06:17:42 PST 2014

Charlie, I agree on the importance to build collective action at the local and regional government levels. This is key for cost savings for governments who spend millions of dollars every year on proprietary GIS licences and are finding it difficult in current economic climate.

I think UK government has started doing good work in this area which is good example  for local governments in other countries also to follow on cost savings in IT.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-bodies-must-comply-with-open-standards-principles

Suchith

From: Charles Schweik [mailto:cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu]
Sent: 07 January 2014 13:10
To: Suchith Anand
Cc: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org; ica-opensource at lists.nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] Intergovernmental agreements to expand "Geo For All" initiative

Excellent news Suchith!

I think a key area here will be trying to build collective action at the local and regional government levels.
It would be wonderful if in some manner we could start through out network a collaborative effort for GIS systems to support local governments.

In addition, we might consider building a similar effort that is connected to international NGOs, such as NGOs working in the area of public health or environmental management.

Cheers,
Charlie Schweik

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 5:31 AM, Suchith Anand <Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:
Dear All,

Thanks to efforts of Chris Pettit and colleagues at the University of Melbourne http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/osgeolab   ,the 3rd EU - Australia Research Infrastructure meetings and workshops in Nov 2013 http://science.org.au/events/conferences-and-workshops/euaustralia/FINAL%20booklet.pdf    have done excellent momentum for our initiative.

I am pleased to inform that in the area of sustainable cities, we now have agreement to  establish Open Source Geoscience Sustainable Cities virtual Lab at the University of Melbourne with linked laboratories across Australia and New Zealand, under the ICA-OSGeo Initiative (jointly by INSPIRE, AURIN, ICA-OSGeo).

The Joint EC- Australian Government Communique is at
http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures/pdf/Third%20European%20Australian%20Workshop%20on%20Research%20Infrastructure%20Communique.pdf

I thank both the EC and Australian Government for their strong support and look forward to work with everyone for expanding our "Geo for All" initiative.

This is a key turning point for our initiative and we will look at using this model for further building high level governmental support for our initiative which is key for rapid expansion. We will do this in stages. In the next stage we will expand this idea to Brazil, Canada, China, India, South Africa, Japan and USA. I believe this will be an excellent way to build up the education and research collaborations internationally in Geospatial Science and bring opportunities in education to wider community.

Best wishes,

Suchith

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Charlie Schweik

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Department of Environmental Conservation - http://eco.umass.edu
Center for Public Policy and Administration - http://masspolicy.org
Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government - http://ncdg.org
Author, Internet Success: A Study of Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2012) - see http://tinyurl.com/d3e4545
Outsmart Invasive Species project: http://masswoods.net/outsmart

This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

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