[SDI-Africa] Surveying and GIS

[Craig von Hagen]

Maurizio,

This is also a good point! But the example you give below, probably would
not happen if the engineer/surveyor/GISer where registered and certified as
a professional. The client in this case would also have some recourse to sue
the engineering firm and have legal ground to stand on.

I agree with you regarding the data quality issue though. The state is
probably the major role-player in GIS in South Africa and all the commercial
GIS companies live off tenders that the government gives out. It would be
better if the government could choose from a pool of certified GIS companies
that would ensure good work and therefore minimize complaints about data.
Anyway government data in South Africa is usually of very good quality. The
problem comes in when commercial companies blatantly re-sell the data at a
profit and then have not added anything of value to the data.

Anyway this is a debate that cannot be answered in a couple of emails...

Cheers
Craig

-----Original Message-----
From: sdi-africa-bounces at lists.gsdi.org
[mailto:sdi-africa-bounces at lists.gsdi.org] On Behalf Of Maurizio
Sent: 26 September 2006 16:46
To: sdi-africa at lists.gsdi.org
Subject: [SDI-Africa] Surveying and GIS

Interesting debate, particularly when witnessed by a GIS non professional as

myself.

Although I would applaude such an initiative in any African country, I 
cannot but ask myself the question:
isn't this maybe, just maybe, just a way for the establishment to 
entrench/protect the status quo?

It appears to me that in the name of integrity and professionalism a 
burocracy is being set up by the industry with the blessing of the State as 
a way for traditional players to curb new independent professionals from 
competing. In the past the stumbling block for any independent was the 
exorbitant cost of base data. Now that base data has become freely available

and independents can finally compete new ways have to be found to keep 
profit margins up.

I cannot but think of a particular incident I just witnessed where an 
engineer commissioned a large firm for contours of a certain piece of land. 
The quotation for the job was R4.000 (approx. $530). Chatting to the 
engineer I casually mentioned that CDSM - Survey and Mapping,  does make 
such data available to the public for R21/CD (approx $2,80) plus postage. 
Out of curiosity the engineer ordered the data for comparison purposes only 
to find out that it was exactly the same data. It was little consolation 
that the final invoice was decreased to R3000 ($400).

At AfricaGIS 2005 the industry was constantly criticising the State for data

quality .... until when it was pointed out that most of the jobs are 
contracted out to the same companies who did the complaining.

I cannot but wonder ...

Ciao

Maurizio


_______________________________________________
SDI-Africa mailing list
SDI-Africa at lists.gsdi.org
http://lists.gsdi.org/mailman/listinfo/sdi-africa



		
___________________________________________________________ 
All New Yahoo! Mail – Tired of Vi at gr@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html