The National Computer Board operating under the aegis of the Ministry of Technology Communication and Innovation organised the following at the eBene building in Mauritius:

• a one-day workshop on Open GeoSpatial Workshop on 19 February 2019, targeting high level officers in Ministries/Departments/para-statal bodies and Programme Managers of CIB with the main aim of setting up of Open Geospatial Data Teams
• A level 1 Training on Open Source Geospatial (technical) targeting the Systems Analyst of CISD and IT Professionals in other governmental institutions, with the main aim of instilling basic GeoSpatial data visualisation and analysis skills in the participants.
• Introductory training on the use of Tableau Public for data visualisation.

 Consultant: Mr. Tim Sutton, was the convenor for the workshop.

Open Data Workshop

Through the successful award of this tender, the consultant was requested to convene a workshop on the use of open geospatial data in government. The workshop was aimed at high-level participants of the NCB and various other governmental departments.

The content of the workshop was divided into two sessions:

Session 1 - Keynote session: with addresses from the Minister of TCI, Permanent Secretary of the ministry of TCI, Chairman of the NC, Executive Director of the NCB, and the convenor of the workshop.

Session 2 - Workshop session: During the workshop the convenor gave a grand tour of the Open Source, Open Data and Open Standards landscape as relates to geospatial technology. This included:

• Concepts of FOSS, GIS, FOSGIS, Spatial Data
• An overview of OSGEO
• Cost / Benefits of Open Source vs. Proprietary Data
• Open Standards, and in particular an overview of the OGC standards body
• Ethical considerations in open vs closed data
• Data quality control, digital vandalism, trust and crowd sourced data
• SDI’s and a standards based approach to geospatial data
• Q&A / Discussion

Objectives of the Workshop

The objectives of the workshop were to familiarize participants with key considerations when embarking on an open geospatial data strategy, with particular reference to the importance of using open standards and the development of open, interoperable platforms.

Participation

Around 100 participants attended the workshop amongst were Deputy Permanent Secretaries, Assistant Permanent Secretaries, IT Managers, Programme Managers, Senior Systems Analysts, and Statisticians, Head of IT departments, IT Managers, Systems administrators and University Lecturers.

QGIS and Tableau Training

The consultant presented 3 days of hands-on training in the use of QGIS (2.5 days) and Tableau (0.5 day).  The QGIS training covered the following curriculum:

Training Day 1 Morning:

Theory: Gentle Introduction to GIS

1.1 Introduction to QGIS-QGIS User Interface Tour

1.3 Introduction to QGIS-Adding vector data

1.4. Introduction to QGIS-Adding raster data

1.2. Introduction to QGIS-Navigating map data

Training Day 1 Afternoon

3.3. Symbology-Map Decorations

1.6. Introduction to QGIS-Working with CSV

1.7. Introduction to QGIS-Working with Spreadsheets

1.8. Introduction to QGIS-Working with WMS

1.9. Introduction to QGIS-Attribute data basics

1.11. Introduction to QGIS-Query and Filter Attributes

Training Day 2 Morning

3.1. Symbology-Styling basics

3.2. Symbology-Styling classes

3.6. Symbology-Colour ramps for vector data

3.9. Symbology-Ordering symbols

3.7. Symbology-Colour ramps for raster data

7.3. Raster-Single band rasters symbology

Training Day 2 Afternoon

6.1. Composer-Map Composer Basics

6.7. Composer-Expressions in map composer

6.5. Composer-Atlas Creation (optional if time allows)

6.2. Composer-Scale Bar

6.3. Composer-Legend

Training Day 3 Morning

4.4. Expressions-Field calculator

4.2. Expressions-Attribute expressions

4.1. Expressions-Expressions in Symbology

8.6. Analysis-Buffering using the Processing toolbox

8.7. Analysis-Buffering  using the Graphical Model

Whilst the Tableau training covered:

Training Day 3 Afternoon

1. Tableau Product Overview
2. Download and Installation
3. Input Data Best Practices for Tableau
4. Dimensions and Measures
5. Training scenario: Tourism in Mauritius
6. Getting Data from http://data.govmu.org
7. Splitting the file into columns in Tableau
8. Worksheets
9. Filtering
10. Sorting
11. Paging
12. Dashboards
13. Stories

Objectives of the Training

The objectives of the were to teach the participants the basic concepts of GIS and then to provide a practical training experience to the participants covering the basic activities of using a GIS, with a particular focus on workflows that would be used when publishing data to an open spatial data portal such as GeoNode. Additionally our goal was to familiarise attendees with the basic workflows and usage patterns in QGIS so that they can take the imparted knowledge and build on that through self-study and interaction with the broader QGIS user community.

Participation

Around 60 participants attended the workshop amongst were technical staff from NCB, database administrators, system administrators. There were also representatives from other departments such as land administration etc.