Service Provider Directory

Introduction

A frequent request of organizations wanting to use open source geospatial software, is for suggestions on individual consultants, or companies providing services for the various software packages. In the past some projects have made an effort to list those offering services around the project, but a more holistic approach to this by OSGeo would be of substantial value to the projects, the service providers, and most importantly to the organizations looking to implement solutions.

However, maintaining a list of service providers is fraught with peril for OSGeo. It is important that we do so in a manner that is fair to the service providers (impartial), aligns with the goals of the Foundation and avoids OSGeo judging or recommending service provider capabilities.

Provider Details

It is proposed that WebCom maintain a service provider registry on the web site with the following attributes for each service provider:

• Organization (or individual) name.
• URL to service providers off-site web page with service details, etc.
• A list of packages/technologies the service provider provides services for (from a predefined pick list).
• A list of (human) languages the organization can provide service in.
• A list of office locations (perhaps city/country with lat/long coordinates) for the service provider.
• An employee count for the organization.
• An email contact for the organization (not normally displayed - used for administrative purposes)
• The date of last information update (not normally displayed - used for administrative purposes)

Implementation plan:

• Page with all the above fields compulsory
• Off-site page with more detailed information and some more e.g. short description for reference which is optional
• Same page has editing interface to change existing entries

Vetting

OSGeo is a collaborative work place and information hub. It is essentially providing a mechanism for service providers to list themselves, but makes no specific effort to determine if the information they provide is correct. OSGeo will have to publish appropriate disclaimers to this effect.

In order to protect the OSGeo brand the community might "vette" entries which can involve discussions on public mailing lists or edits in this Wiki. It is therefore in the best interest of service providers to only provide correct information. Service providers are invited to discuss questions on the WebCom (or VisCom or Advocacy) list prior to adding information about their Businesses.

It is possible that OSGeo will need an official mechanism to deal with complaints about the accuracy/appropriateness of a directory entry. Not anticipating many complaints, currently WebCom is responsible for preliminary negotiation of complaints. If the complaintant or service provider is not satisfied then the issue can be escalated up to the board. If this turns out to be a frequent problem OSGeo will develop a more streamlined procedure.

Web Display

The web page for the service provider directory should ultimately provide means to query based on each of the attributes (packages, languages, location, and employee count), though to start we might just offer the whole list. The directory should be randomly ordered, so that no service provider gets top billing by virtual of when they registered.

Implementation plan:

• Search page with all possible fields
• Facility to see complete list
• As a result, entries with very basic information as Name ,Technology and may optional short description will be displayed
• Each entry will lead to some more specific details on new page for the selected provider.
• In future, we may have some comparison page for some (possibly not more than some number) selected search results on some criteria (to start with only for technology and language support).
• Or search result will have proper pagination and search page itself will have all the details included so no need to navigate for each and every result.

Updates

Entries should be updated annually. On or near a year from the last update, the contact address should be emailed, and the service provider encouraged to update their page - even if only to save it "as is" updating the last update date. Any entry not updated for 24 months should be dropped, and the contact notified by email.

This all assumes the entries can be maintained by a logged in user to the Drupal site, and that an entry, once created, would be "owned" by a drupal user.

Implementation plan:

• Will be implemented using the edit entry page

Online Link

This version has been implemented by Gupteshwar Joshi on the OSGeo Drupal server. The implementation is tracked in a Trac Ticket #47 and has been switched to the production server beginning of May.

• http://www.osgeo.org/search_profile
• http://www.osgeo.org/submit_profile

Feedback

• The yellowish background color used to highlight some text is very garish! --Warmerda 20:45, 14 April 2007 (CEST)

• Some tiny, one person, part-time consultants don't have websites so alternative means of specifiying contact information would be helpful (e.g. email, or would a OSGeo wiki page be ok to create)?
  • Consider adding a page to this Wiki with the one person, part-time consultant's name. It is both highly visible and searchable and if anybody thinks this is not a good idea tell them to discuss that on Discuss. --Seven 17:44, 5 May 2007 (CEST)

• Perhaps a list of service types (e.g. end user application development, by language vs. data development vs. hosting vs. feature development) would help further differentiate providers. Change from "perhaps" to "must". I don't want to waste mine or anyone else's time turning down queries I'm not able or willing to provide.

• Add coordinates to a searchable map. Add colored symbols to represent different service types --Seven 17:44, 5 May 2007 (CEST)