[gis_info] Expectations of the Government GIS Community

[Rachel Smith]

Jim,

 

Lucky for GIS practitioners, engineers aren't the only group of
individuals we support. I don't think I need to explain how and why GIS
is needed, and all of the individuals or groups that need and use GIS
and the data we create.  But if so, then I'm sure there will be plenty
of people who are on this list to add to that discussion.

 

Your points are good ones and they are exactly what many of us discuss
on a regular basis.  Distribution and sharing of data, duplication of
data creation, authoritative sets of data, etc... are all issues that
we're trying to work out and are indeed a struggle for all of the
agencies.  But even though we haven't found a solution to these issues,
that does not mean that we have no professional ethics. There are no
easy solutions otherwise we would have implemented them by now.  

 

I certainly don't have all of the answers, but I can tell you that we're
well aware of these problems and are continually working to find better
avenues/platforms/portals for distributing and sharing data, and working
to increase the awareness of GIS related activities that are happening
across the agencies to prevent duplication of effort.

 

Rachel Lyles Smith, GISP

Project Operations Manager

Geologic Survey & Services

 

Oregon Department of Geology & Mineral Industries

800 NE Oregon St. #28, Suite 965

Portland, OR 97232

971-673-0481 direct

971-673-1555 main

971-673-1562 fax

http://www.oregongeology.org/sub/default.htm

 

 

From: gis_info-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us
[mailto:gis_info-bounces at listsmart.osl.state.or.us] On Behalf Of Jim
Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 7:06 PM
To: gis_info at listsmart.osl.state.or.us
Subject: [gis_info] Expectations of the Government GIS Community

 

How many times are each agency: City, County, State, and Federal
processing, creating, storing, backing up, generating and purchasing
maintenance contracts on software while working on the same geospatial
data?  Building footprints is a simple example.  Another more relevant
issue is Lidar.  How many times is a DEM, DTM, or DSM is being generated
from the very same players and why, it just needs to get built once.  If
I procured a DEM from each level of government and compared the
similarities and differences between them what would the standard
deviations, if any.

Citizens, like members of this list, expect that the geospatial
community is following professional ethics and following good judgement
when it comes to expending taxpayer funds.

I talk with the IT folks and they tell me that a position (a Gee Spot)
they call it, is something that never changes but what does is the
complexity of the software that is supposed to organize it.  Sure they
say, over beers, that there is relatively minor changes to the built
environment, sure there are some.  The changes to the 5% of the total
inventory does not warrent 95% of the business strategy including
support.  They site that the cost to serve geospatial is the most costly
of most of the data IT is responsable for and because of that cost and
the complexitys really warrants a different approach, they said paper
maps were not such a bad idea, and prior to GIS engineers were doing
just fine.

Jim

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/gis_info/attachments/20121015/ddec9bc8/attachment.html>