[Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Mon Jun 15 03:28:42 PDT 2015

Hi Chris,

There are several local authority in the UK who have been migrating to FOSS GIS. QGIS and other open source GIS are more than capable of fulfilling most of GIS users’ requirements. But if the transition to OS GIS is planned properly the changes will not be too sudden and will not affect day-to-day productivity of users.

There are a couple of points to bear in mind when you plan your migration:

1-      Identifying key components of your GIS workflow which are not currently available in off-the-shelf OS GIS packages. This can be functionality or legacy database/script/add-on/macro. Assess the cost and see which one works for you: invest money/time in redeveloping those  in OS GIS (other LAs might be interested and can co-fund) or keep a couple of licenses for those niche tools/databases

2-      Support/training: make sure your users get the right training and support. For basic users, a mini wiki page to show how general work-flows in your existing software can be done in QGIS. With OS GIS, you have no limits of licenses and you can have more users and eventually having more departments doing their own basic GIS work and freeing up your time to deal with other stuff.

Regards,

Saber

Saber Razmjooei
Lutra Consulting
www.lutraconsulting.co.uk <http://www.lutraconsulting.co.uk/> 

From: qgis-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:qgis-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Chris Buckmaster
Sent: 15 June 2015 10:52
To: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Hi All

Interesting discussion – I am responsible for GIS at a small local authority in the UK; we are an ESRI site but I have seen just how far FOSS4G has come in the last couple of years and have now had a proposal accepted to look at migrating our ESRI infrastructure over to PostGIS / QGIS / OpenLayers over the next year. I’ve been impressed at how efficient FOSS is, and particularly for us where we don’t deal with advanced analytics etc, for the tools we need FOSS can provide these just as well, if not better in some cases than proprietary offerings.

Does anyone know of any local gov authorities that have gone completely FOSS? i.e. built their own web app(s) and are using open source desktop and database software?

Chris

From: qgis-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:qgis-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Neumann
Sent: 15 June 2015 10:39
To: Micha Silver; qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Qgis-user] Local Government for QGIS

Hi Micha,

Thanks again for your response. I will discuss this with the devs and will probably come up with a proposal, asking for some organizations to join the funding.

Andreas

On 15.06.2015 10:28, Micha Silver wrote:

Hi Andreas:

Thanks for your response.
I'm quite sure that for most regional councils here, DXF would not be enough. The surveyors and planners that we work with all use Autodesk products. All their work is delivered in dwg, and some do not even know that there is such a thing as DXF.

I have not been following the Open Design Alliance lately, but including that library QGIS would certainly be a quantum leap forward. After Radim's success in crowd funding the implementation of GRASS 7, your suggestion indeed sounds feasible.

Regards,
Micha

On 6/15/2015 10:28 AM, Andreas Neumann wrote:

Hi Micha,

That is interesting - we invested a lot in the DXF export capabilities of QGIS. Once this is finished I am pretty sure we will also look to improve the situation regarding the import.

Do you think import of DXF is enough or do we also need DWG support? If so, the best bet would probably be the Teigha library from the Open Design Alliance (https://www.opendesign.com/the_oda_platform/Teigha), which isn't available for free - but it is the library most other GIS (eg. ESRI, Intergraph) and CAD (eg. Bentley, Bricscad, etc.) are using. We would have to pay a membership fee, but it allows us to redistribute the library with the software. Membership in the consortium is affordable in my opinion.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you also be available to help with a crowd-funding effort? Do you see options besides Teigha?

Andreas

On 15.06.2015 08:57, Micha Silver wrote:

On 06/15/2015 09:23 AM, Bernhard Ströbl wrote:

Hi Joseph, 

could you elaborate why "it would be unrealistic to say we 
could ever be a 100% QGIS"? I am curious because I lost contact with ESRI products a couple years ago. 

>From our point of view, we need support for dwg. That side of vendor lock-in is, unfortunately, even stronger that the ties to ESRI. So we stay with Arc* not because of the GIS capabilites, but more or less only because of the ability to read Autocad plans and surveys.

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