[Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Fri Jun 12 09:57:48 PDT 2015

In British Columbia, where I work in mineral exploration (in industry not government) there has been quite a lot of interesting non-ESRI work at the provincial geology and mining level.  This is probably not a surprise if you no the history of some of the tools.

My experience in our (junior exploration) company has been that we can get a lot more done now with FOSS and that with a little thinking this fits very well with legacy ESRI products.  Using Dropbox with a GRASS like directory structure we have been running cross platform on projects on several continents.  In other words, the Windows machines are usually running ESRI while the Macs (like me) have been running QGIS.  In addition, QGIS has been extending what the ESRI bundles cannot support.  Projects are split between management and technical expertise in Canada and fieldwork in Argentina and Ireland.

I’m very interested in starting another push for open geological support of drilling and other specific methods that work with QGIS.  Not all this is related to government but there is some overlap. The ability to play nicely with ESRI while in transition or at the edges of FOSS is very important to understand when considering options!

Cheers,

John Harrop

> On Jun 12, 2015, at 7:31 AM, James Keener <jim at jimkeener.com> wrote:
> 
>> They feel as thought they are adhering to a standard - of course a
>> standard put forth by a software company.
> 
> A proprietary software company with whom they have no reason to believe
> their data from now will be accessible in 10 years, let along 50.
> 
>> Yes it's free but it's very professional.
> 
> A million times, yes. This is a message that's hard to get across.
> 
>> Well - we seem to have started something - question is where do we go
>> next with this?
> 
> Does the OSGeo group have a local governments sub-group? (I didn't see
> one, I wonder if there would be interest in creating one. If not, I
> still think we should create one, and I would be willing to fund the
> domain, site and forum hosting, mailing lists, &c  at first.) It seems
> to be a tech-focused organization and I wonder if they would they would
> be interested in forming a group dedicated to ... ?
> 
> What should we be dedicated to? (Also, I'm using F/OSS as a catch all, I
> realize we might want to trim it to OSG or something else).
> 
> Main Goal: To increase the usage of F/OSS software by government.
> 
> I say that with the subtext of "legitimizing" the use of F/OSS by
> governments, i.e. show them others who are using it, show them standards
> they can point to and justify themselves by, and show them that being
> beholden to software corps isn't the only way to get support.
> 
> I would suggest the following actions to supporting that goal:
> 
> * Compiling standards that Governments can (be) point to (endorsing the
>  (OGC standards)[http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards]?)
> * Compiling software that Governments can (be) pointed to (QGIS,
>  PostGIS, GDAL, &c)
> * Compiling case-studies done with F/OSS
> * Compiling white papers around using F/OSS
> * Improve the documentation and tutorials of recommended software
> * Work towards creating standards as needs arise
> * Provide a starting point for Governments to network with
>  * Other governments using F/OSS
>  * Vendors of F/OSS-based services (I'd be OK if this was left out,
>    though it could be useful depending on our exact goals)
> 
> Thoughts?
> Jim Keener
> 
> On 06/12/2015 09:11 AM, Randal Hale wrote:
>> 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.
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Qgis-user mailing list
>>>> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Qgis-user mailing list
>>> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-user mailing list
> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user