[LINK] Competition to free-up government information

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Hi all,

As a result of a U.K. Cabinet Office initiative, one year ago the U.K. 
Government announced, "The Power of Information Review, looking at how
non–personal public sector information can be re–used and reinvigorated
outside of the U.K. government to generate public and economic value .."

In other words, make gov public data free and available to search/mash-up,
and thus referenced in all sorts of new ways.. imagine science alone would 
love spotting all the health macro trends (isn't that how they spotted the 
cause of the black death, narrowing it down to specific city water wells?)
Whatever but imagine all the information just waiting to be computer-mined 

The UK government established a Wordpress website (..they are way ahead :)

  http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/

five days ago, and to ask for ideas regarding mash-ups of the Gigabytes of
newly freed government data, they've just today announced this new website

  http://showusabetterway.com/

which reports that Australia, and Queensland, and the Queensland University
of Technology, are currently a world leader regards free public information

Rah QUT :-)

Anyway, here's the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7484131.stm

The UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of
using the masses of data it collects. It is hoping to find new uses for
public information ..

The Power of Information Taskforce - headed by U.K. Cabinet Office Minister
Tom Watson - is offering a £20,000 prize fund for the best ideas. 

To help with the task, the government is opening up gigabytes of 
information from a variety of sources ..

This includes mapping information from the Ordnance Survey, medical 
information from the NHS , neighbourhood statistics from the Office for 
National Statistics and a carbon calculator from the Department for 
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). 

None of the data will be personal information, the government is keen to 
stress. 

Mr Watson is hoping to attract a wide range of people from "the technology 
community we already work with, to hard-core coders to adolescents in 
their bedroom". 

He admits that throwing open public data could be a risk but he believes 
that it will yield results. 

"If someone comes up with a great idea we will make a prototype and then 
hopefully a fully-fledged piece of technology that will make peoples' 
lives better," he said. 

"I strongly believe in co-design and in the digital age it makes sense to 
work with citizens to make public service better," he added. "It's great 
to see a government department with enough sense to realise that it 
doesn't have all the good ideas .."
--

Just a thought, what if the Australia2020 Summit had been a wordpress site?

Cheers people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria Australia