Government launches data mash-up
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7484131.stm
The UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways
of using the m***** of data it collects.
It is hoping to find new uses for public information in the areas of
criminal justice, health and education.
The Power of Information Taskforce - headed by cabinet office minister
Tom Watson - is offering a =A320,000 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.
To help inspire ideas the team behind the idea has put dozens of
examples of innovative ways of reusing public information on its
Taskforce wiki.
These include a website which maps crimes around the UK, the
FixMyStreet website, which allows users to alert others to litter,
vandalism and graffiti in their local environment, and the prototype
RateMyPrison, which invites those who visit friends and families in
jail to comment on the experience.
Technology commentator Bill Thompson was one of the first to see the
Show Us a Better Way website, which details the competition.
"It's great to see a government department with enough sense to
realise that it doesn't have all the good ideas," he said.
"There are terabytes of expensively ac***ulated information sitting in
databases, but it goes unused and unexploited because of restrictive
licenses and lack of awareness," he added.
The government will evaluate the ideas over the course of the summer.
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