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.