UK Gov't Throws Open Data For Mashups; Offers Prize Money For Best Results

from the about-time dept

Wed, Jul 2nd 2008 9:16pm — Mike Masnick

We were just complaining about the fact that governments should be exposing APIs on certain government data so that people can create more useful services out of them -- and it appears that someone in the UK was having similar thoughts. The government is now opening up a bunch of data to whoever wants to play with it. Not only is the gov't encouraging people to make mash-ups with the data, it's actually offering cash prizes to those who come up with the best results. Nice to see a government doing something smart.

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Filed Under: apis, data, government, mashups, uk

4 Comments

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Ben, 3 Jul 2008 @ 2:13am

Not their idea
It might be a smart thing to do but it is not the goverments bright idea to do this. The guradian has been running a free our data campaign for years proposing that they do something like this.
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mike allen, 3 Jul 2008 @ 4:18am

I guess
sugestions like put in laptop then leave on train would not win.
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Martin, 3 Jul 2008 @ 5:08am

Not actually smart
This isn't a smart idea. It just shows that the government collects more data than they really need, even more than they can handle themselves. This is sad.
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Peter Corbett, 24 Oct 2008 @ 4:47pm

Apps for Democracy is doing this in the US
We're doing this in the US and believe it's very important to the health of our democracy, innovation and saving tax payer dollars! CHeck out http://www.appsfordemocracy.org. We've got $20,000 in prize to give out by 11/12. Peter http://www.istrategylabs.com
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