Hi there:
As open source philosophy, personal motivation has a big weight. One
enthusiastic QGIS user can do difference to motivate other GIS users
into QGIS adventure.
I'm working in a local government for two years and half. It took me
almost a year convince other that our geodatabase is public and that
we had to share shapes also, not PDF only (Sorry... life in tropics).
Next step was QGIS. I developed a pilot QGIS course into the office:
two hours each day, per one week, doing exercises with our own data.
QGIS has new followers over here. The seed is sown.
Here, the main feature that attracts to QGIS is the language.... so i
think it'll be great if plugins can be also translated.
Cheers from Peru
Carlos Cerdán
2015-06-19 6:30 GMT-05:00 Bernhard Ströbl <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>:
Hi all,
I think this is a useful discussion as QGIS is (at least IMHO) the
most popular OpenSource GIS in the public sector. From the
discussion I understand there are two reasons to not use QGIS as
the sole GIS in this context:
One are missing features (e.g. missing dwg support). As the
discussion shows this can easily be overcome by extending QGIS.
Someone needs to coordinate and pay, of course, but if there are
enough users in need of this particular feature it will be done.
The second reason seems less easy to tackle: A local government
has many different tasks related to spatial information: parks,
sewage, streets, water bodies, playgrounds, cadastral information
etc.. Most administrations lack the knowledge to just take QGIS
and model the needed data themselves, instead they are willing to
pay some money to a company that does it for them (and I assume
this is what ESRI offers with "ArcGIS for Local Government"). But
most of these companies are tied to a proprietary GIS software.
Maybe it is also the other way round: the adminstration already
has a proprietary GIS and looks for someone to implement their
needs with it because it is (understandibly) unwilling to
introduce another GIS for this particular task.
IMHO the situation is as it is because for the overwhelming
majority of local government tasks there are no data standards. As
soon as data standards exist users are more free to choose the
software that addresses their needs, e.g. WMS-Servers. IMHO this
makes it hard "to extend QGIS to include more "applied" solutions
for local government". There are, however, examples: The Swiss
QGEP project implementing the Swiss sewage data standard, the
German PostNAS project implementing the German cadastral data
standard. For non-stanardized data every user/company is free to
model the data according to their specific needs therefore QGIS is
probably not the right addressee. Instead the national QGIS user
groups could try to standardize their data needs thus making it
possible to enhance QGIS to support this "standard", which then
would lead to an extension of QGIS.
just some more thoughts :)
Bernhard
Am 18.06.2015 um 08:10 schrieb Steve Golden:
I am glad to have sparked some discussion. Being a FOSS4G
application forum,
I am not entirely surprised by some of the comments, but all are
appreciated. (sorry upfront, this turned into a long post
which perhaps
would be better suited on a blog of some sort)
I am a bit envious of those individuals who work in the public
sector
outside of the U.S. because it seems like there is more
acceptance and
directive to use FOSS/FOSS4G as primary applications and not
just something
that you "kick the tires" with. As for the use of FOSS4G
applications in
the States, I think that Randal and others summarized it
pretty well (at
least perhaps for the mid-sized cities). I knew of some
cities that were
using Intergraph or MapInfo, but now it is ESRI all the way.
You read about
some larger government organizations using FOSS for GIS web
services, but my
main focus, at least for this post, is small/mid-sized local
government.
ESRI seems to have done a very good sales job with their
"ArcGIS for Local
Government" branding. And like my original post suggested, if
you look at
all of the tools, apps, and maps that ESRI provides for "free"
(yes, this is
part of the sales propaganda) it makes their product look
really good for
local governments might see it as a great GIS entry point or
for those older
systems looking to extend into more web mapping or application
development.
And as others pointed out, there is the reality that you have
to have staff
that are knowledgeable in open source and/or willing to figure
things out.
Maybe things will change over time, but the majority of people
working in
GIS learned with commercial software and probably haven't had the
opportunity or need to look beyond what they know best and are
comfortable
with.
Strange as it may seem, I work in local government in the Bay
Area, CA (i.e.
Silicon Valley) and like Randal stated and as far as I can
tell, most of the
local governments look around at one another and if one city
has a working
solution, the others pretty much duplicate with some
variations (not
necessary a bad idea as long as you duplicate an intelligent
solution).
When I talk GIS to staff at other cities, people generally
want to discuss
the latest tools and functions in ArcGIS. At times I've tried
to encourage
others to look outside the box, but I generally get a chilling
look or
responses as if they don't have a clue that there are other
technologies out
there. However, I also think there are a lot of mid-manager,
non-GIS,
non-technical individuals that are leading cities, control the
budgets and
staffing and don't really know anything except for what the
majority of
cities are using and what is advertized to them. And like
another poster
stated, a lot of managers are more comfortable spending a
bunch of money on
a commercial solution that is advertised to work. Paul Ramsey
has some
great presentations
<http://www.cleverelephant.ca/writings.html> that
speaks more to this which I can't agree more.
It seems to me and others (based on comments in this thread
and across the
net), that the FOSS4G solutions (QGIS probably leading the way
in desktop
GIS) have evolved and are starting to replace commercial
providers like
ESRI. If you follow ESRI products, you've probably seen the
changes to try
to include more "free" functions, tools, and access to certain
data formats
to keep up with the FOSS4G counterparts. But alas, they are
doing more to
lock in their customers with the ESRI centric data
specifications/formats
and online user accounts which is leading to some
consternation, well maybe
a revolt
<https://geonet.esri.com/groups/arcgispro/blog/2015/04/24/arcgis-pro-is-this-the-start-of-a-revolt-against-esri#comment-14969>
.
While the foundation of my initial post (and even this one) is
a little ESRI
bashing (even though that the organization that I work for
primarily uses it
and is looking to sink further into it), and pondering the
more wide spread
use of FOSS4G, what my real aim was to understand if there was
anyone
looking to extend QGIS to include more "applied" solutions for
local
government. I hate to think that replicating exactly what
commercial
providers are doing is the right thing to do, but I wonder
even though QGIS
has matured greatly over the past few years, and there are now
supported
open stacks of FOSS4G applications like OpenGeo and consulting
firms who are
providing support for QGIS, if there is something missing to
make QGIS an
easier entry point for a GIS software solution for local
governments? I
suppose if there are more individuals who are willing to share map
templates, customizations of QGIS, workflow processes, etc and
if these were
aggregated in some manner, then perhaps it would be a start.
I suppose in
the global use of QGIS, what does local government mean and
what does it do?
Solutions might need to be sub-divided by country or region.
Well, just some more thoughts...
Steve
--
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