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

from the about-time dept

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


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  1. identicon
    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 ]

  2. identicon
    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 ]

  3. identicon
    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 ]

  4. identicon
    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 ]


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