[Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Fri Jun 12 06:11:25 PDT 2015

In the states it's all ESRI all day.

A few small governments might try to run in a FOSS4G direction but it's 
rare. In the Southeast they go "what is the next town over doing? we 
will do the same thing". The models that ESRI provide are tempting for 
many because suddenly everyone is doing the exact same thing. So with no 
thought - Gov't A can share with Gov't B. They feel as thought they are 
adhering to a standard - of course a standard put forth by a software 
company.

My business is swinging in a more foss4g direction although I still use 
ESRI software as many of my customers do - but it's getting rare. So 
rare I opted to not renew my ESRI licensing this year. Many of my 
clients are versions back so I can sit on 10.2 for a while. I still get 
"well that free stuff can't be that good" but I'm slowly winning over 
clients as They are getting very good data with qgis/postgis and the 
word is spreading. Yes it's free but it's very professional.

Well - we seem to have started something - question is where do we go 
next with this?

Randy

On 06/12/2015 04:34 AM, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> Thank you for raising this important discussion.
>
> In some European countries the situation is a bit different and Open 
> Source solutions are gaining an increasing market share. I live and 
> work in Switzerland - and while the majority of the markets still uses 
> ESRI products - there is an increasing number of provinces who also 
> increasingly use Postgis, QGIS, OpenLayers, etc - sometimes 
> exclusively and sometimes side by side with proprietary software.
>
> I also think that the next couple of years we will see an increasing 
> number of governmental organisations introducing OpenSource GIS side 
> by side with commercial GIS and will gradually shift more and more 
> applications to FOSSGIS.
>
> Some examples in Switzerland:
>
> * The national mapping portal runs exclusively on OS software 
> (Postgis, OpenLayers, and some more) - it runs very well, fast and is 
> very popular - production of the data is still done exclusively in ESRI
> * 2 provinces in Switzerland run exclusively in FOSSGIS, about 7 and 8 
> additional provinces introduced FOSSGIS side by side with commercial 
> products
> * several cities and water/gaz providers are currently migrating to 
> FOSSGIS to document utility networks
> * The austrian province "Vorarlberg" introduced several hundred 
> installations of QGIS as the main GIS in their administration
> * several Scandinavian countries/provinces/cities are already using 
> FOSSGIS on both Desktop GIS and web mapping
>
> The list would be much longer - but things are moving slowly and 
> steadily to more FOSSGIS usage in Europe - at least I can tell
>
> There are two other interesting points:
>
> * in my opinion - it is not so much about money - but about different 
> values: the ability to more easily influence the direction of the 
> software, support of open standards, integration with other FOSS 
> software, etc.
> * as an employee of a local government it is so much more interesting 
> being able to actively contribute to FOSS software rather than just 
> using software "as is".
>
> As you can see above - it is more the "richer" countries that are 
> moving towards Open Source and fewer "poorer" countries. This 
> indicates that the factor "cost" is less important than people think.
>
> Andreas
>
>
> On 11.06.2015 22:28, Steve G 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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-- 
-----------------
Randal Hale
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
http://www.northrivergeographic.com
423.653.3611 rjhale at northrivergeographic.com
twitter:rjhale     http://about.me/rjhale
http://www.northrivergeographic.com/introduction-to-quantum-gis
Southeast OSGEO: http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Southeast_US