Podcast: Geospatial Job and Products Cuts and a Push for GIS for the Nation
By Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg
January 20, 2009
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Take advantage of a special year-end sale on SPOTMaps, the 2.5 meter, seamless, color mosaic made to fit your area of interest. Save 25% off all SPOTMaps through November 10th, when you mention this ad! Click here for detailsThis past week the geospatial technology community saw layoffs and product disruptions at Autodesk, Intergraph and Google. At the same time the community learned that industry players were taking the case for GIS for the nation to Capitol Hill advocating it be part of the incoming administration's stimulus package. We explore the downside of layoffs and product disruption and the possible upside of geospatial stimulus.
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Show Notes
Early Bird registration for the 2009 ESRI Developer Summit ends February 6th. The Summit will take place March 23-26 in Palm Springs, California and is the perfect opportunity to connect with ESRI staff and software developers from around the world.Information/registration
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| The podcast discusses two principal issues in this request: One, this 'ask' was submitted by one company (ESRI) rather than the industry as a whole, and should have included more representation from the broader industry; Two, there was no mention of openness of data standards and/or accessibility of the data. The general sense is the ESRI ask could have certainly been communicated more openly with the geospatial community. Good points. Now here's the facts as I see them... The stimulus bill is nothing but a huge earmark, all rolled into one big lump sum of discretionary allocations. The due process of government is in no way present in how the bill was assembled, nor will it be present in how the money will be spent. ESRI has years of experience in earmarks through defense appropriations, agriculture subsidies, and technology policies. their best friend in congress, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R, San Bernadino) was Chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcomittee, and is now Chair of the House Appropriations Committee. Jerry has earmarked millions of dollars for ESRI onto various DoD bills, and if ESRI's plans work out as planned, perhaps now into the Stimulus package. The communication of the request was "little and late" precisely because "open and early" would have diverted money *away* from the very entity that developed, submitted, and wishes to control 'the ask'. The earmarks business is essentially a back-room discussion between the asker and a representative (or representatives) on the Hill. Occasionally the ask comes from an entity like MAPPS or COGO that include (some) of the constituencies they purport to represent. Often the ask is from a major lobbying effort, such as you would see by Boeing for airborne tankers. Or ESRI for geospatial contracts. Contrary to the lily-white "we don't lobby" statements from Redlands, in fact ESRI is very, very good at working the earmark process. I suspect ESRI wishes they didn't have to discuss the request in public at all. After the fact requests to support the request helps the cause somewhat, but truth be told whether the earmark goes in or not is hardly dependent on a groundswell of support pouring in from across the geospatial community. Interesting that you don't see MAPPS or COGO on the endorsement list. Working with them would have been easy to do, but hard to control. As for data standards, what's that? As long as everything is produced in a Shape or a GeoDatabase or an SDC format, those are industry standards...so what's the issue? [ironic tone] All that said...if money does flow, the geospatial trades best bet for openness is through petitioning for transparency in the procurement process. |
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| Archey, I'd like to put my final spin on this conversation about the National GIS with someone who doesn't have a $ to gain from whatever way this goes. Since I am ex-ESRI you might expect that I would have some bone to pick with so-called non-open solutions. The truth is that no entity, government or private, has produced any stats on long term return on investment on open solutions. And you know that benefits to stakeholders are hard to quantify with any solution. However, I do know this about implementation of ESRI solutions. If an application needs support, there is someone to call. If a community network is needed to solve a problem, there is someone there. If you need to get the attention of senior management regarding issues you may have with licensing, support, services, and creative thinking, someone is there. And if you need a guaranteed upgrade path, someone is there. So I can't help but recommend our representatives to consider this proposal is in benefit to the entire community of geospatial providers, whether services, software, or both. In fact, ESRI is the only company that has provided continuity in our market over the last forty years. The government might call Scott McNealy in, and others globally, and I hope they do. But SUN, Microsoft, and others have the same basic fundamental interest of any commercial company in the world. In the mean time, I don't think the new administration will not think this through, and I can only hope that they come to the conclusion that there is no hope of recreating a competitive environment that would take 20 years to replace and wouldn't offer the benefits that mature solutions offer. This ploy by big corporate America offering limited real functionality and data will not solve the issues of common datasets that can be shared by all. |
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