Thursday 22 September 2011

5:1 ROI for Government by leveraging Open Source Communities

Australia's Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM), achieved a 5:1 Return on Investment by supporting OSGeo-Live’s Open Source community.

The Challenge

OSDM wanted documentation for Open Source Geospatial applications to support their goals of promoting the use of geospatial resources.

The Solution

OSDM engaged LISAsoft to lead collaborative documentation development within the OSGeo-Live project. LISAsoft, who are key contributors to OSGeo-Live, supported volunteers from 42 projects to write consistent Project Overviews and Quickstarts. LISAsoft provided vision and leadership, wrote writing templates and guidelines, supported developers, and then provided editorial review.
Projects provided their domain expertise and gained quality, consistent documentation, reviewed by professional writers, which is promoted through OSGeo-Live’s marketing channels.
By collaborating with the community, OSDM achieved a 5:1 direct Return on Investment instead of writing all the documentation themselves.
On top of this ROI for documentation, OSDM also gained preconfigured software ready to run, and the community are translating documentation into multiple languages. This results in an indirect ROI of around 20:1.

The take-home

Strategic collaboration with Open Source communities can significantly amplify the impact of government spending.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

LISAsoft is hiring Developers, Project Manager & Sales Person

  • Lots of Open Source 
  • Lots of GeoSpatial Maps
  • Lots of Cutting Edge Technology
It seems that LISAsoft's formula of being geospatial systems integrators, making use of open standards and integrating open source with proprietary applications is working for us, as we we need more people.
We are looking for a range of roles, from junior to senior developers, a project manager, and a "technically savvy" sales or pre-sales person. Job descriptions are available here:
image source: http://s3.media.squarespace.com/production/652287/7607658/2009/04/intern-technical-programmer.jpg/w/150

Wednesday 7 September 2011

OSGeo-Live 5.0 released - the Open Source Geospatial DVD

OSGeo-Live Desktop
Version 5.0 of the OSGeo-Live GIS software collection has been released.
OSGeo-Live is a self-contained bootable DVD, USB flash drive and Virtual Machine based upon Ubuntu Linux that is pre-configured with a wide variety of robust open source geospatial software.
The applications can be trialled without installing anything on your computer, simply by booting the computer from the DVD or USB drive.
A DVD or USB of OSGeo-Live is being distributed to every delegate at the upcoming international conference for Free and Open Source Software, http://2011.foss4g.org.
Homepage: http://live.osgeo.org

Highlights

  • 47 Quality GeoSpatial Open Source applications installed and pre-configured
  • Quality free world maps
  • One page overviews and quick starts for all applications
  • Overviews of key OGC standards
  • Translations for Greek, German, Polish, Spanish and Japanese

Contents

Browser Clients
  • OpenLayers 2.10 - Browser GIS Client
  • Geomajas - 1.8 Browser GIS Client
  • Mapbender 2.7.2 - Geoportal Framework
  • MapFish 2.2 - Web Mapping Framework
  • GeoMoose 2.4 - Web GIS Portal
Crisis Management
  • Sahana Eden 0.5.5 - Disaster management
  • Ushahidi 2.1 - Mapping and Timeline for events
Databases
  • PostGIS 1.5 - Spatial Database
  • SpatiaLite 2.3.1 / 2.4 beta - Lightweight Database
  • Rasdaman 8.2 - Multi-Dimensional Raster Database
  • pgRouting 1.05 - Routing for PostGIS
Desktop GIS
  • Quantum GIS (QGIS) 1.7.0
  • GRASS GIS 6.4.1
  • gvSIG Desktop 1.11
  • User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS (uDig) 1.2.2
  • Kosmo Desktop 2.0.1
  • OpenJUMP GIS 1.4.0.1
  • SAGA 2.0.7
  • OSSIM 1.8.6 - Image Processing
  • Geopublisher 1.7 - Catalogue
  • AtlasStyler 1.7 - Style Editor
  • osgEarth 2.0 - 3D Terrain Rendering
Navigation and Maps
  • GpsDrive 2.11 - GPS Navigation
  • Marble 1.0.2 - Spinning Globe
  • OpenCPN 2.5.0 - Marine GPS Chartplotter
  • OpenStreetMap Tools - JOSM, Merkaartor, Gosmore, Osmarender
  • Prune 12 - View, Edit and Convert GPS Tracks
  • Viking 9.9.94 - GPS Data Analysis and Viewer
  • zyGrib 5.0 - Weather Forecast Maps
Spatial Tools
  • GeoKettle 2.0-RC1 - ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) Tool
  • GDAL/OGR 1.8.0 - GeoSpatial Data Translation Tools
  • GMT 4.5.2 - Cartographic Rendering
  • Mapnik 0.7.1 - Cartographic Rendering
  • MapTiler 1.0beta2 - Create Map Tiles
  • OTB 3.10 - Image Processing
  • R Spatial Task View 2.12.1 - Statistical Programming
Web Services
  • GeoServer 2.1.1
  • MapServer 6.0.1
  • deegree 3.0
  • GeoNetwork 2.6.4 - Metadata Catalog and Catalog Services for Web
  • MapProxy 1.1.1 - Proxy WMS & tile services
  • QGIS Server 1.7.0 - Web Map Service
  • 52°North WSS 2.2.0 - Web Security Service
  • 52°North WPS - 2.0 RC6 - Web Processing Service
  • 52°North SOS - 3.2.0 Sensor Observation Service
  • TinyOWS 1.0 - WFS-T Service
  • ZOO Project 1.0.0 - Web Processing Service
Data
  • Natural Earth 1.3.1 - Geographic Data Sets
  • OSGeo's North Carolina, USA Educational dataset
  • OpenStreetMap - Sample extract from OpenStreetMap
Geospatial Libraries
  • GeoTools - Java GIS Toolkit
  • MetaCRS - Coordinate Reference System Transformations
  • libLAS - LiDAR Data Access

Credits

Over 80 people have directly helped with OSGeo-Live packaging, documenting and translating, and thousands have been involved in building the packaged software.
Packagers, documenters and translators include: Activity Workshop, Agustín Díez, Aikaterini Kapsampeli, Alan Boudreault, Alexandre Dube, Alex Mandel, Andrea Antonello, Andrea Yanza, Angelos Tzotsos, Anne Ghisla, Anton Patrushev, Argyros Argyridis, Astrid Emde, Brian Hamlin, Bruno Binet, Cameron Shorter, Christos Iossifidis, Dane Springmeyer, Daniel Kastl, David Terrativa, Diego González, Dominik Helle, Eike Hinderk Jürrens, Eric Lemoine, Etienne Dube, Fran Boon, François Prunayre, Frank Gasdorf, Gavin Treadgold, Gérald Fenoy, Hamish Bowman, Haruyuki Seki, Henry Addo, Hernan Olivera, Howard Butler, Ian Turton, Jackie Ng, Jan Drewnak, Javier Sanchez, Jesús Gómez, Jim Klassen, Jody Garnett, Johan Van de Wauw, Jorge Sanz, José Antonio Canalejo, Judit Mays, Klokan Petr Pridal, Kristof Lange, Lance McKee, Lars Lingner, Lucía Sanjaime, Mage Whopper, Manuel Grizonnet, Marco Puppin, Mark Leslie, Massimo Di Stefano, Mauricio Miranda, Mauricio Pazos, Michael Owonibi, Mike Adair, Milena Nowotarska, Nathaniel V. Kelso, Ned Horning, Nobusuke Iwasaki, Oliver Tonnhofer, Òscar Fonts, Otto Dassau, Pedro-Juan Ferrer, Pirmin Kalberer, Ricardo Pinho, Ruth Schoenbuchner, Samuel Mesa, Sergio Baños, Simon Cropper, Simon Pigot, Stefan A. Tzeggai, Stefan Hansen, Steve Lime, Thierry Badard, Thomas Baschetti, Trevor Wekel, Valenty Gonzalez, and Yoichi Kayama.

Sponsoring organisations:

Friday 2 September 2011

Launch of Australian Open Technology Foundation

Another positive step toward the Australian Gov 2.0 agenda will be the launch of the Open Technology Foundation on Wed 14 September 2011.
The Open Technology Foundation (OTF) is an authoritative peak body for the Australian and New Zealand public sector focused on advancing the uptake of open technologies in Government.
My understanding of the goals of the OTF is that they wish to provide support services to government agencies in deploying open source and standards based systems.