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| CURRENT SECTION :: News | UK's most visited IT Contractor Site - 250k unique visitors March 2008 |
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The government is looking to the public for ideas on how official data can be re-used online – and is offering a £20,000 fund as an incentive. In a competition set up by the new Power of Information taskforce – part of the Cabinet Office – ideas are being sought in the hope that it will spawn the next UpMyStreet.com – a website providing neighbourhood statistics based on public data – or TheyWorkForYou.com – a hugely successful online database that keeps tabs on MPs’ parliamentary activity. Ideas can be submitted by members of the public to the website ShowUsABetterWay.com. Submitted ideas will be available for visitors to comment on, and the ideas with the most positive feedback will be put forward to a judging panel, which will make a final decision. The £20,000 for the winning idea can be used on taking the idea forward with a development team. As part of the scheme, data that was never previously available in a usable format has been put online. The data includes Ordnance Survey mapping information, all official notices the government is obliged to publish in the London Gazette, and Transport Direct’s databases of bus stops and car parks. One of the major drivers of the project is Tom Watson, the Minister for Transformational Government within the Cabinet Office. At a recent reception for online entrepreneurs, he said: “It's about citizens working with public servants to design public services, using existing datasets or datasets that we've just revealed to the world for the first time.” He also indicated that more prizes may be put on offer. “The difficulty we've got is we've only got one prize of £20,000, and we've got some really good ideas, so I think I'm going to find some more prizes so we can work with some of them.” Some of the 150+ ideas put forward so far include a GPS-based service that would show the nearest ‘blue-plaque’ historical sites to a user, and a service mappings crime rates to social causes. Whilst the data being made available is not all in the RDF format favoured by proponents of the Semantic Web, the project is certain to be welcomed by the likes of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who only last week was enthusing about the benefits offered by making data available online for consumption by other applications. But not everyone is so impressed – one respondent wrote on Tom Watson’s blog that “as an ordinary taxpayer, I object strongly to data that I’ve helped pay for being given away free to ‘entrepreneurs’ who want to use it as the basis of products they’ll sell, they hope for large profits, to ordinary taxpayers like myself who’ve funded the data in the first place.” Overall, though, reaction has been positive, with the Guardian – which has campaigned for just such a move – commending ministers. Watson, a regular blogger with a keen interest in IT, has attracted acclaim in the blogosphere for his technology-literate approach to government. Since TheyWorkForYou.com opened its own API to third party developers, it has spawned a number of ‘mashup’ sites that make use of its data, including a Google Maps application displaying constituencies, a postcode lookup tool to find out how your MP voted on the proposed expenses reforms (titled ‘Is Your MP a Greedy Bastard?’) and even an ‘MP Fab Farts’ game. The competition will run until the end of September, with a winner being announced in October. Graham Taylor Jul 18, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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