I'm thrilled to see a great initiative in Victoria. Premier John Brumby has announced that 90 new Victorian Government datasets have been released and set free for public access and consumption from www.data.vic.gov.au. That's 90 new ways to kick start innovation.
Premier Brumby has also launched App My State to encourage Victorians to use these 90 datasets to create new services to help Victorians. There are $100000 in prizes up for grabs, entries close on April 23rd.
At Google we're big believers that information is more powerful when it's set free. Much of the effort of the Government 2.0 Taskforce I took part in last year was put into making public sector information freely accessible to everyone. I firmly believe that there's no point keeping publicly funded, non-confidential public data (such as transit information, post box locations, recycling and waste collection information, public school catchment areas and countless others) locked up behind a Government firewall, of little use to anyone. I want to see this PSI freely available to all. It will promote great social benefits, not least the immense potential for innovative new products and services to be developed here. We saw some great mash ups come out of our Hackfest competition.
Showing posts with label PSI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PSI. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Two great hackfest days!
This is a guest cross post from blog.openaustralia.org
Last weekend, OpenAustralia held its second hackfest at Google's Sydney office. If you haven't come across OpenAustralia.org before, it's a volunteer run website which helps you to find out what your representatives get up to in parliament with the aim of bridging the growing democratic disconnect that many people feel.
This time we went all out with a two day hackfest - 10:30am till 8pm both days. That's over 18 hours of hacking! As well as the venue and a fabulous team of volunteers, which included Tim Ansell, James Polley and Pamela Fox, Google provided lunch and snacks for both days. Thank you to Google for supporting this community!
It was an amazing turnout by an incredibly talented group of people. Over 90 people took part, including a surprise group from CSIRO who happened to be wandering past and dropped in to see what we were up to. We were also delighted to have 30 people take part in the first ever retroactively-named OpenAustralia installfest - installing the development virtual machine onto their laptops, and walking through the first steps showing how they can make changes to the code, test locally, and then submit to our repository on github. During the course of the hackfest, we had half a dozen or so patches pushed to us - we're still working through the process of accepting them all! We also had 40-odd updates to bugs on our tracker.
Photos by Halans. For more fabulous photos by Halans and others see Flickr.
This hackfest was timed to coincide with the Gov2.0 Taskforce MashupAustralia competition, and we encouraged people to work on mashups for the competition, OpenAustralia itself, or any other civic-minded project.
At the same time hacking on MashupAustralia on the weekend was the #melbhack session, organised by Lonely Planet and the GovHack folks.
If people weren't in the mood for hacking, either on a mashup or OpenAustralia, we had presentations and directed hacking sessions scheduled throughout both days. Plenty for all to do.
We gave out small prizes (donated by Google) to some of our favourite mashups created over the weekend. Working demos, however rough, won out over plans, however well-formed.
Our favourite mashup, the "Suburb Matchmaker", was created over the weekend by Raul Alberto Caceres (@totocol), Daniela Fernandez (@danira_98) and Roberto Arias Alegria (@roberto8080). It was particularly impressive that this team met over lunch on the first day and decided on the spot to work together. "Suburb Matchmaker" helps you find the suburb that's right for you by answering some simple questions.
Second place went to the "Frog Census" by Simon Swain (@psi6030). See where and when different frogs have been spotted in South Australia.
The irreverant "Bouncing Teapots" by Dan Bethell (@fxmonkeydan) and Ray Haleblian (@rhaleblian) came third. The "Bouncing Teapots" simulated members of the House of Representatives as teapots falling where the more time they spoke in parliament the more bouncy they were.
We hope that one of these or one the many other projects that were worked on over the weekend will win the MashupAustralia competition!
To follow OpenAustralia's progress and find out when we'll be running the next Hackfest near you please read our blog, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or join our community mailing list on Google Groups!
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
Last weekend, OpenAustralia held its second hackfest at Google's Sydney office. If you haven't come across OpenAustralia.org before, it's a volunteer run website which helps you to find out what your representatives get up to in parliament with the aim of bridging the growing democratic disconnect that many people feel.
This time we went all out with a two day hackfest - 10:30am till 8pm both days. That's over 18 hours of hacking! As well as the venue and a fabulous team of volunteers, which included Tim Ansell, James Polley and Pamela Fox, Google provided lunch and snacks for both days. Thank you to Google for supporting this community!
It was an amazing turnout by an incredibly talented group of people. Over 90 people took part, including a surprise group from CSIRO who happened to be wandering past and dropped in to see what we were up to. We were also delighted to have 30 people take part in the first ever retroactively-named OpenAustralia installfest - installing the development virtual machine onto their laptops, and walking through the first steps showing how they can make changes to the code, test locally, and then submit to our repository on github. During the course of the hackfest, we had half a dozen or so patches pushed to us - we're still working through the process of accepting them all! We also had 40-odd updates to bugs on our tracker.
Photos by Halans. For more fabulous photos by Halans and others see Flickr.
This hackfest was timed to coincide with the Gov2.0 Taskforce MashupAustralia competition, and we encouraged people to work on mashups for the competition, OpenAustralia itself, or any other civic-minded project.
At the same time hacking on MashupAustralia on the weekend was the #melbhack session, organised by Lonely Planet and the GovHack folks.
If people weren't in the mood for hacking, either on a mashup or OpenAustralia, we had presentations and directed hacking sessions scheduled throughout both days. Plenty for all to do.
We gave out small prizes (donated by Google) to some of our favourite mashups created over the weekend. Working demos, however rough, won out over plans, however well-formed.
Our favourite mashup, the "Suburb Matchmaker", was created over the weekend by Raul Alberto Caceres (@totocol), Daniela Fernandez (@danira_98) and Roberto Arias Alegria (@roberto8080). It was particularly impressive that this team met over lunch on the first day and decided on the spot to work together. "Suburb Matchmaker" helps you find the suburb that's right for you by answering some simple questions.
Second place went to the "Frog Census" by Simon Swain (@psi6030). See where and when different frogs have been spotted in South Australia.
The irreverant "Bouncing Teapots" by Dan Bethell (@fxmonkeydan) and Ray Haleblian (@rhaleblian) came third. The "Bouncing Teapots" simulated members of the House of Representatives as teapots falling where the more time they spoke in parliament the more bouncy they were.
We hope that one of these or one the many other projects that were worked on over the weekend will win the MashupAustralia competition!
To follow OpenAustralia's progress and find out when we'll be running the next Hackfest near you please read our blog, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or join our community mailing list on Google Groups!
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
OpenAustralia Hackfest in Google Sydney
We're delighted to host the OpenAustralia Hackfest - The MashupAustralia Edition on 7-8 November in Google's office in Sydney. It's a free all-weekend hacking competition where you get to build cool applications using data from data.australia.gov.au, with the chance to win prizes, including a $10,000 first prize.
I've been banging on for ages about the benefits of freeing public sector information such as public transport data and making it accessible to all. Information is more powerful when it's set free and PSI is publicly funded, intended for public consumption and of great benefit to society.
I'm particularly excited about what Open Australia is doing to make our democracy more accountable by making Parliamentary records more accessible to Australians. There's no better way to show the value of opening up government data than by creating a practical demonstration and I can't wait to see what you come up with!
I've been banging on for ages about the benefits of freeing public sector information such as public transport data and making it accessible to all. Information is more powerful when it's set free and PSI is publicly funded, intended for public consumption and of great benefit to society.
I'm particularly excited about what Open Australia is doing to make our democracy more accountable by making Parliamentary records more accessible to Australians. There's no better way to show the value of opening up government data than by creating a practical demonstration and I can't wait to see what you come up with!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Victorian Parliament opens up for question time
Today, Premier Brumby has joined the video democracy in the cloud and opened up his YouTube channel for question time. Victorians can submit their questions and vote on the ones they want answered.
One issue that may well attract some questions is online access to public data.
Information is becoming a pervasive and free resource, driving the growth of the digital economy worldwide. And yet very useful, publicly funded, non-confidential public sector information (PSI), such as public transport data, still isn't made available to all. With open access to this information there's immense potential for innovative new products and services to be developed here, promoting great social benefits. Google's Victorian bushfires map is a great example, and was only possible because the Victorian Country Fire Authority had the foresight to put an RSS feed on their site.
At Google we're always interested to hear about Government embracing online communications and information sharing. We were pleased to see that the Victorian Parliament recently released the report on its Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data with a key recommendation that the Victorian Government establish an Information Management Framework (IMF) with open access to Government information at no or marginal cost.
The Victorian Parliament's inquiry into access of this public information is a great step in the right direction.
One issue that may well attract some questions is online access to public data.
Information is becoming a pervasive and free resource, driving the growth of the digital economy worldwide. And yet very useful, publicly funded, non-confidential public sector information (PSI), such as public transport data, still isn't made available to all. With open access to this information there's immense potential for innovative new products and services to be developed here, promoting great social benefits. Google's Victorian bushfires map is a great example, and was only possible because the Victorian Country Fire Authority had the foresight to put an RSS feed on their site.
At Google we're always interested to hear about Government embracing online communications and information sharing. We were pleased to see that the Victorian Parliament recently released the report on its Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data with a key recommendation that the Victorian Government establish an Information Management Framework (IMF) with open access to Government information at no or marginal cost.
The Victorian Parliament's inquiry into access of this public information is a great step in the right direction.
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