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.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

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

4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
mike allen, 3 Jul 2008 @ 4:18am

I guess
sugestions like put in laptop then leave on train would not win.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
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
[ link to this | view in thread ]