The Task Force is delighted to announce the launch of ShowUsABetterWay.com , a competition inviting the public to suggest ideas for new products which re-use public information
There’s a prize fund of up to £20,000 to take the best ideas to the next stage of their development, and the competition if open until the end of September.
Go on, Show Us A Better Way…
10 Comments
July 2, 2008 at 12:15 pm
[...] Power of Information Task Force, championed by Tom Watson MP, has announced a fantastic new Open Government initiative: a public-data mashup [...]
July 2, 2008 at 3:26 pm
[...] Tom Watson, the first government minister to understand what a blog is for, announces a whole £20,000, yes, that’s a £20,000 prize [...]
July 2, 2008 at 9:14 pm
[...] Governments Power of Information Taskforce has created a £20,000 prize fund for people who want to develop new ways to use publicly owned [...]
July 2, 2008 at 9:23 pm
[...] The Power of Information Taskforce has created a £20,000 prize fund for people who want to develop new ways to use publicly owned [...]
July 3, 2008 at 6:35 pm
[...] UK Minister for Transformational Government, and (still) prolific blogger, Tom Watson, on the announcement of a £20,000 public competition to find innovative ways of using Government [...]
July 3, 2008 at 11:17 pm
While it is of course flattering that the Government should choose to list farmsubsidy.org as an example of what can be done by ‘citizen hacktivists’ when we get our hands on government-held data, it is slightly ironic, given that for the past 30 months I’ve been fighting an FOI case against the Government on exactly the issue of farm payment information.
Currently the Government refuses to disclose any point geographic information on farm payment recipients (incidentally, it’s not actually released any new data since 2006. The most recent data relates to payments made in 2004-5).
This means we can’t do any mapping work at all using the UK data! By contrast the Swedish government has released post code information and that has allowed us to plot 2 million payments on a Google map, see http://maps.farmsubsidy.org/sweden
In 2005 I asked for geographic information from the UK government, and which the government is required by law to maintain, and it refused to give it to me. The Information Commissioner is considering the case, and has had it for 30 months. A ruling could come at any time, although to be honest I’ve rather given up waiting.
Anyway, our example shows that while one part of HMG might talk a good game, other parts of HMG are definitely not delivering the basic raw materials (data) needed to make this a reality.
July 6, 2008 at 11:00 pm
I recommend Task Force look at replicating the Netherlands’ Digital Pioneers Fund:
http://www.digitalpioneers.org/Program
The Digital Pioneers Fund acknowledges that IT project’s fail a high rate, so a good strategy is to fund many small innovative IT projects, rather than a few very expensive procurements.
July 7, 2008 at 4:45 am
Would you mind if I set this as an exercise for students at the Australian National Unviersity?
Each year I teach about 100 undergraduate, postgraduate students and in service public servants about the use of e-documents. Because I have a government background, I give them mostly public sector exercises to do. Usually these are real problems to solve.
Many go on to work in the Australian government, or for company producing software and services for government.
July 7, 2008 at 8:59 am
[...] late on this one, but hey ho. The Power of Information Taskforce has launched a new initiative, which many commentators have ikened to the BBC Backstage project, to [...]
July 7, 2008 at 12:12 pm
@Tom Worthington: We’d be *delighted* if you set this as an exercise for your student – we’re accepting entries from around the world, though they must affect and be implemented in the UK.