UK and DC Government Data Mash-ups: Winning Ideas

Both the United Kingdom and District of Columbia (USA) governments held contests this year challenging citizens to dream up useful new web applications using publicly available data, and each has recently announced its winners.

In the UK's ShowUsABetterWay challenge, contestants had only to propose an idea. The top winner proposed a "Can I Recycle It" application showing users the nearest recycling center and what materials it accepts. Other winners range from a proposed Loofinder to a Free Legal Web. Descriptions of the winning ideas are linked from the ShowUsABetterWay announcement. Winners are to receive support for developing their ideas into products.

The UK contest was held by the government-sponsored Power of Information Task Force, which apparently did not foresee a licensing problem with the Ordnance Survey data needed for most of the winning ideas. The Free Our Data blog detailed the problem, which concerns the Ordnance Survey's objection to Google Maps terms, in its post Are the Show Us A Better Way winners safe from Ordnance Survey.

The District of Columbia's Apps for Democracy contest called for web developers to "compete by creating web applications, widgets, Google Maps mash-ups, iPhone apps, Facebook apps, and other digital utilities" using the city's  OCTO’s Data Catalog, which provides real-time data from multiple agencies to citizens.

The winner in the submitted-by-an-individual category is iLive.at (contest entry), which displays city data relevant to your street address. The submitted-by-a-firm winner is D.C. Historic Tours (contest entry), which provides information for planning a self-guided walking tour. The contest website carries the full list of winners.

In a sign that things are not so different on the other side of the pond, runners-up from both the UK and DC proposed showing how taxpayer money is spent:

• For the UK: Where Does My Money Go?
• For DC: Where's My Money, DC?

Comments

[Peter Corbett]

Thanks for posting about our Apps for Democracy contest! We were really happy to see a diversity of living, breathing applications submitted for awards and it certainly is interesting that both groups of citizen are focused on how money is being spent.

While not confirmed yet, if we hold a round two of this contest, maybe there's a way for us to focus a little deeper on the spending side of things - sunlight is the best disinfectant right?

Cheers,

Peter