The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.
There are currently 10 days left to enter the Open Data Challenge, Europe’s biggest open data competition to date!
You can submit ideas, applications, visualisations and datasets until the 5th June 2011 via the following link.
- We’d be very grateful for any help in spreading the news about the competition during the final countdown.
We asked several of Europe’s leading voices on open data what kinds of things they wanted to see come out of the competition. So if you’re still thinking of submitting something, but you’ve not yet decided what – perhaps you might find some inspiration below!
What would you like to see come out of the Open Data Challenge?
Simon Rogers, Guardian Datablog (UK)
Governments have thrown open their vaults, publishing thousands of data sets on every aspect of our lives – from transport to health, via economy and defence. But how many people out there in the world know what they really mean? I really hope we see something to bring those datasets to life, to show how our governments act in our name – and engage and entertain in the process.
I want to see things which are useful and make people wonder why they hadn’t thought of it, apps that weave their way into our lives without us even realising.
We’ve seen a lot in the areas of transport and public spending already – but what about all those other things governments measure and are important to us? I’d like to see great apps and services in education, health and welfare – these are huge parts of the public sector and really neglected.
Alek Tarkowski, Advisor to the Polish Prime Minister + Centrum Cyfrowe Projekt: Polska (Poland)
I’m hoping that the Challenge will make Eurostat data more accessible to citizens. Eurostat makes available a wealth of data, but it’s mainly presented through everpresent bar graphs presenting values for EU27 states, from lowest to highest. It’s high time to try to do something more creative with these statistics.
One interesting idea would be to build tools that would simplify the creation of composite indexes on the basis of selected Eurostat data – and allow for other ways of mashing European statistics up.
Sören Auer, LOD2 + DBpedia (Germany)
Open Data is gaining more and more traction, but still the potential of integrating information from various sources (and showcasing the benefits) is largely unexplored. The Open Data Challenge is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the added value, which Open Data mashups can provide.
Ton Zijlstra, ePSIplatform (Netherlands)
I’d like to see applications that combine multiple data sources, and create a real service with it, solving a problem the developers themselves have. Too often apps take one single data source and do something relatively simple with it, involving basic mapping or visualization. Let’s move beyond that!
Peter Krantz, Swedish Government + OpenGov.se (Sweden)
I hope to see applications that increase interest in Europe. Our daily lives are affected by what goes on in Europe. Can access to data create new visualisations that lead to a better understanding and more interest in EU policy making? I would like to see young entrepreneurs create new businesses based on public data. The benefit of data appears when it is used. Easier access to data means more people can create services based on it. Additional services can lead to increased benefit in our lives.
Lorenzo Benussi, TOPIX (Italy)
I hope to see new apps that are able to manage and mix huge amount of data to create something that can have a real impact on markets and society. I am waiting for ideas that, standing on the shoulders of public data giants, will show innovative models of extracting value from public sector information by defying new rules and practices of data management.
Dr. Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris). More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org and he tweets at @jwyg.
