11-21, 11:30–11:55 (Pacific/Auckland), WG308 TE IRINGA
This talk is about why National Land Survey of Finland made a strategic decision to use open solutions and collaborate actively with other agencies and OS communities. The talk will outline our experiences on open solutions and collaboration, as well as plans to strengthen the collaborative efforts going forward.
The National Land Survey of Finland has been an active user, and increasingly a developer, of FOSS4G solutions related to our core tasks for nearly two decades now. We also made a strategic decision in 2020 to leverage open source solutions for our major business critical IT systems.
Following the strategic decision, the National Land Survey of Finland started building a new topographic data production system on open source components in autumn 2020. Core components of the system include QGIS, PostgreSQL/PostGIS and QField for field work.
During spring 2025, the system was taken into full production use. Now it is time to put even more focus on the collaborative aspects: how we collaborate with other authorities, the QGIS user community and with IT companies to ensure continuity of the solution.
This talk will describe
- On what grounds we made the strategic decision of using open source
- What are our most recent experiences with the open solution and collaboration
- How we are organizing collaboration in Finland with other stakeholders
- How we are looking at engaging in further collaboration with open source communities to ensure continuity of the solution
- Most importantly, what benefits every public sector organization can gain by using and investing in open solutions.
Jani Kylmäaho has been working with geospatial data infrastructures, data production and distribution for 25 years. He has been involved in national and international collaboration and projects, working both for the public and private sector. During his career, Jani has contributed to extended use of open source geospatial solutions in the Finnish public sector. Currently Jani is the Chief Digital Officer at National Land Survey of Finland.