For those living in the U.S. of A., you’ve probably noticed in various ways how much the government shutdown affects us as citizens. It may even serve to educate some of us on how many programs are actually funded by the U.S. government. While a number of shut-down programs seem to have lesser impacts, there are many closed programs that will substantially affect considerably large numbers of people, and we hope that these programs will recommence quickly.
So, how does the government shutdown affect us at Juniper Systems, the data collection industry, and many of our customers? I’ll tell you a few of the ways.
How the Government Shutdown is Affecting Us:
Some customers are closed down for the time being – Many of our customers who are federally-funded have closed their doors temporarily. This includes many customers in Natural Resources, particularly the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, USGS, USACE, and National Park Service. We also have customers in military and public works who are shut down.
The shutdown also limits our customers’ ability to move forward on projects, due to the unavailability of their regular business contacts.
Some resellers who sell to government agencies may be affected – For those of our resellers who specialize in selling to the U.S. government, the government shutdown may have adverse effects on their business.
Customers who use GPS may not be able to attain needed data – While U.S. government-run satellites still remain functional, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) websites are currently closed, meaning that the websites associated with GPS corrections data are inaccessible. This is tough news to a significant number of our Geomatics customers who utilize GPS and GIS data on a daily basis. They may not be able to post-process newly-collected data, and many projects may come to a standstill.
International shipping may be affected – The government website which supplies Harmonized System (HS) codes for internationally-shipped-products is shut down, meaning that if the HS code is not already recorded internally within a company, there may be complications with international shipments.
Product development – Because the FCC is shut down, the status of licensure approval of radio components cannot be checked, which could potentially affect product development processes for us and other companies.
Agriculture customers may lose data – Many of our agriculture customers are researchers funded by the U.S. government, and if their research is shut down at this critical harvest time, they may be unable to collect this year’s data. This could result in high costs and could potentially affect agricultural funding in the future.
There are countless other ways the government shutdown affects us in the data collection industry, many of which may remain to be seen. All we can say is that we hope things will resume as normal in the near future.
Have you felt the effects of the government shutdown? How has it affected you?
