California Surveyors Forums

Today was the first time I read this:

http://www.gisci.org/PDFs/GISCI_positio ... _final.pdf

Sounds like the GIS certification folks aren't particularly fond of our profession. Any comments?

Indeed. Sounds like a fundamental challenge, all right:

"GISCI contends that the practice of surveying should be defined narrowly, and that associated state regulations should be narrow in scope, reflecting the limited footprint of survey practice within the geospatial field. The projected growth in employment of GIS professionals should not be stifled by unnecessary government regulation. Instead, helpful efforts by government agencies such as the Department of Labor to define the geospatial field, and to identify the full range of competencies required for worker success, help foster the GIS Profession."

For some reason I cannot get it to open.

On a related issue, affects Engineers only at this time. Civil Engineers now have to take a 3 day course and pass a test every two years to do SWP's (storm water pollution prevention reports. The only reason I see is that this private company found the right hand to grease in Sac and developed this seminar and testing to increase their revenue.
The seminar is ~$600 + ~$125 for the test, plus lost wages. You get 2 tries to pass the test and if you fail both times you have to retake the course before being allowed to take the test again.
How the CEs allowed this to happen is beyond me, but they did.

I see it as the tip of a iceberg. In the Survey profession special license for GIS, GPS, ALTA, etc.

I'm a little concerned as well. I'm a big proponent of GIS as a tool for land surveyors and the clients they serve, but it seems like the GIS certification folks are pretty aggressive about staking out their turf. This doesn’t seem to be isolated to just the GIS folks.

At the Fresno Surveying Conference this year I attended a talk by some of the certification folks for the photogrammetrists. They said that it is now against the law to practice photogrammetry in Oregon without a separate license. I’m not sure if there is a relationship between this license and their certification. I made a comment at the end of the presentation about the difficulty in drawing the line between land surveying and photogrammetry. Would I be breaking the law if I established survey grade coordinates on aerial targets? I didn’t get a good answer to that question.

On a similar note, I vaguely remember another western state that is requiring the GISP certification for certain GIS activities performed by public agencies. I can foresee a situation in which a GISP can prepare, for example, a land parcel GIS data layer that I as a land surveyor am not allowed to prepare. That seems particularly dangerous and short-sighted.

I’m not trying to be paranoid. But I think we need to take possible threats to our profession seriously. Certification can be beneficial in some circumstances, but I start to pay attention when certification by some third party starts to become part of the legal system.

This is an issue we should pay attention to.

It is also worth noting they seem to specifically single out land surveyors for their hostility in this document. That is disturbing. I try to view myself as a person that builds bridges between land surveyors and GIS professionals. Documents like this don’t help that cause, in my opinion.

(Does anyone else not the irony of a certification organization complaining about licensure?)

Licensure fragmentation is also something that concerns me, but that is fuel for an entirely different forum post. :]

I am of the opinion that this stuff is seeded by private companies looking to profit off the classes and testing as in the SWP cert.

Companies with the cash can hire a PR company to write a very convincing argument for special certification to a State Board and then hire a lobbyist to push it thru.

Just the profit off the CEs in CA to get SWP certs at ~$725 each every 2 years and you know the cost will rise.

API is another PITA cert spawned by a private company and it's all computer generated. Initially it was $10, last year a 50% jump to $15. Why? did their electric bill go up. When I was first required to get this I made a few calls to API esp since the test had zero survey safety on it. By the end of the 2nd call the woman was getting irritated as I was chewing up their profit by talking to a human.

If there are enough $$$$ to be made you can bet some company is going to figure out a way to cash in on it. Unfortunately State boards do not seem to realize what is needless certification.