[Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Fri Jun 12 10:23:12 PDT 2015

To All,
I am glad to see the discussion and interest in QGIS in local government. I
have been interested in QGIS in local government for sometime now. I work
for MapForsyth| City-County Geographic Information Office in Forsyth
County, North Carolina (USA). We have and use both QGIS and ESRI products
(more of ESRI than QGIS). In our case it would be unrealistic to say we
could ever be a 100% QGIS (FOSS) shop at this point, but it is our goal to
have QGIS integrated with more of our departments and through time we will
be able to increase the use of QGIS.

I know from my experience, case studies and showing return on investment
(ROI) are  very important to have and show decision makers. However, let us
not for get our IT departments, especially in local government. In our case
we partnered with them so they could see, understand, and ask questions
regarding QGIS or any open source software we use. I have found that they
are becoming some of our best supporters.

Some of my other thoughts are support and governance of QGIS
installations...best practices etc.

Just my two cents, but glad to see the discussion.

Cheers,

Joseph Sloop

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Randal Hale <
rjhale at northrivergeographic.com> 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.
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>>
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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
>
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-- 

_____________________________

Joseph Sloop

PhD Candidate

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Department of Geography

jbsloop at uncg.edu
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