OSGeo UN Committee educational challenge : a use case of sharing software and experience from all over the world

Abstract

The paper presents the outcomes of an Educational Challenge launched by the OSGeo (Open Source Geospatial Foundation) United Nations (UN) Committee in 2018. The Committee promotes the development and use of open source software that meets UN needs and supports the aims of the UN. The Challenge supported the UN OpenGIS Initiative, a project "... to identify and develop an Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of UN operations, taking full advantage of the expertise of mission partners including partner nations, technology contributing countries, international organizations, academia, NGOs, private sector". The UN OpenGIS Initiative is organized into working groups, called ‘Spirals’. The OSGeo UN Challenge called for the development of training material that can be used for training UN staff working on Spirals 1 and 3. Spiral 1 focuses on a new open source web platform for data collection and Spiral 3 is related to new functionalities needed by UN staff during their field operations. The material developed for the challenges is now openly available for anybody, reaching a wider audience than only UN staff members. This paper describes the challenges and the training material developed for them. Expertise from all over the world was pulled together in designing, mentoring and developing the material.