[Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Thu Jun 11 23:08:27 PDT 2015

That is a great summary Falk!

I think the GIS community is lacking strategic marketeers and solid
branding. I personally tried to take that road once, thinking I was backed
by a solid group of open source professionals teamed up in a cooperation. I
was wrong. It is my opinion that the businessmodel where "one that does the
work gets paid" and "one that invests in relations does so on his own
account" needs tuning to put open source on the agenda of government
descision makers.

2015-06-12 3:56 GMT+02:00 Falk Huettmann <fhuettmann at alaska.edu>:

> Dear all,
>
> thanks,
> I find this is a very essential discussion to have, and with
> QGIS, GDAL/R etc at its core and solution.
>
> Much can be said, and should be said and changed,
> but here a few points for a start:
>
> -mapping relates to land, health and water management questions; many of
> these are widely unresolved nor do many people really want it to be
> resolved even.
>
> -mapping is, and remains, a highly strategic and military topic.
>
> -mapping affects economic growth and our neoliberal economy policy.
> Software is directly embedded in that; now all driven by online
> developments
> and its drivers.
>
> -mapping and its tools and data are part of democracy.
>
>
> Thus, a (tried) control of mapping, its data, and its tools, must come of
> no big surprise. It's a heavily vested subject.
> (one can add easily remote sensing perspectives in that discussion, and
> one really should).
>
> These things are not new, apply globally, and are part of any good
> Geography textbook really.
> I would go that far and put it as a major topic for Climate Change!
>
> So I think the current status of GIS & governments and its inertia can
> widely be derived from there.
> We have much experience in that, world-wide (happy to share if somebody
> wants to know; just ask...).
>
> What about a good set of GIS and Remote Sensing ETHICS ?
>
> Yes, I find it's time things change for the better.
> Keep me posted please.
>
>  Very best and thanks
>      Falk Huettmann
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 12:28 PM, Steve G <stevenlgolden at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I am not sure this is the correct forum for a start to this discussion,
>> but
>> I've been pondering this for a while and interested what others think.  I
>> work for local government in the U.S. and when people generally talk about
>> GIS there is no doubt an automatic association with the ESRI ArcGIS
>> platform.  And beyond GIS itself, the dominance that ESRI has is even more
>> pronounced given the fact that many cities have implemented other related
>> systems (permitting, computer aided dispatch, etc) that are identified
>> business partners with ESRI.  Furthermore, the "GIS Local Government"
>> track
>> that ESRI developed has evolved to offer an "turnkey" approach for local
>> government self-service to establish a robust geodatabase (Local
>> Government
>> Information Model), maps, apps, web services, etc.  This extends a COTS
>> approach for local governments to establish, develop, and maintain a
>> fairly
>> complete GIS.  In my opinion, pure genius...because for a lot of small
>> cities/governments with limited staff and budget, the turnkey approach is
>> very appealing.  For city bureaucrats thinking about
>> implementing/extending
>> GIS, what they might think as little $$$ and you get all of this?
>> Awesome...here's my money.
>>
>> HOWEVER, this approach has its drawbacks.  Long-term license/use costs,
>> vendor lock-in, continuous waiting for someone at the company to fix
>> something....well, the list goes on (just read any blog post supporting
>> open
>> source/FOSS).
>>
>> So, with the evolution of QGIS as a prevailing replacement/alternative for
>> the other product, is anyone thinking about building more of a turnkey
>> approach (database, maps, apps, web services, etc) geared to local
>> governments?  I like the direction of the OpenGeo platform (and others)
>> trying to provide the whole software stack, but still if a small local
>> government wants to have a full fledged interactive GIS, it might seem
>> like
>> a lot of work to develop and maintain.
>>
>> I am interested in other thoughts...perhaps this belongs on a blog post
>> somewhere more independent, but perhaps this can be a place to begin.
>>
>> Steve G.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> View this message in context:
>> http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Local-Government-for-QGIS-tp5210489.html
>> Sent from the Quantum GIS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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>
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