
a flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way.
Welcome to JI!
JI is the SaaS arm of the Shared Services Hub (SSH). SSH is being constituted as non-profit whose mandate is to build open source infrastructure for municipalities with a goal to reduce cost, increase access to technologies particularly in rural areas by freely sharing resources and to increase public ownership of valuable data and information.
JI currently provides municipalities, especially small municipalities lacking resources access to cloud based open source platform provisioning Asset Management, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Business Intelligence.
Credibility & Permanence
We are in the process of setting up a SSH which will be constituted as non-profit with a representative board whose mandate is to share open source software and other open licensed resources freely. This creates an independent and enduring body that develops and guides open source adoption in the public sector and helps fulfill our aim of increasing access, freedom and democratization of technology. Open source incorporates innumerable advantages for public sector development including:
- Freedom from vendor lock-in: Open source prevents vendor lock-in in the vendor’s specific technologies. Vendor lock-in exposes municipalities to price increases and lack of flexibility in addressing emergent needs.
- Freedom to be responsive & flexible: The open code allows the flexibility to easily and freely modify code and to add features.
- Software transparency & reliability: Open source code means just that—you get full visibility into the code base, as well as all discussions about how the community develops features and addresses bugs. Because there are more eyes on it, the reliability of open source code tends to be superior as well.
- Access & Inclusion: Due to its lower cost and access to shared expertise through a cloud based platform, small rural municipalities & first nations can now access sophisticated platforms and provide a level of service previously only accessible to larger and wealthier municipalities who could afford to hire technical staff.
- Frugality: Ability to save taxpayers tens of thousands per municipality by leveraging open source & using the cloud to develop shared services.
- Reporting transparency: By using open source BI frameworks which are not limited in distribution by the cost of licenses, we provide the ability to transparently share data and reports with the public & enhance understanding for council.
- Strengthening Municipal Commons: Encouraged public ownership of extremely valuable data & information.
Value Proposition – Pay for SaaS and subject expertise, with less what you currently spend on software licences.
Redirect resources from software licensing to provision of services. The annual cost of software licensing ranges from $20k to $30K even for the smallest municipalities. This can effectively pay for SaaS while also paying for shared expertise in Asset Management, GIS and BI. This also offsets the need to hire in-house staff costing in excess of $85K while providing a higher level of service.
The annual savings in software licences alone can easily add up to $30k which typically includes:
- GIS Software (ArcGIS EULA) ~$10k to $20k
- Asset Management Software Licence ~$10k+
- Web mapping software licence ~$10k
Furthermore, upfront savings in setup & consulting typically range between $50K to $60K.
Benefits: Our service will empower you to
- Easily meet grant funding requirements for asset management.
- Effortlessly gather capital asset stats for reports & surveys including the new LGDE requirements, Stat Canada surveys etc.
- Manage assets proactively
- Visualize and map assets and parcels on GIS for internal use and for the public.
- Analyze and report on BI with full ability to customize
- Capture data in the field
- Share unlimited maps with unlimited usage with the public at no additional cost
- Manage multimedia, docs & spreadsheets tied to assets
- Create interactive BI reports for council & the public
- Create amortization reports with ease for your audits
- And much more…