There’s a smart person in NSW Government

19 September 2009

Somebody in the NSW state government is a thinker.  They’re opening up their data and have launched a competition to promote new applications:

“Applications for New South Wales or apps4nsw is a new public competition to foster and promote the development of innovative digital applications and web services using public and government data relating to New South Wales.”

There’s $100,000 available for ideas or prototypes.

This is a great move. It’s infuriating that crown-owned and state-owned data isn’t available to the public and businesses.  Depending on the department, typically we’ve needed to buy a license or enter a tender process, limiting its application to businesses that recover that cost.  Making the catalogue open enables innovation.

Unfortunately, despite good intentions, there’s no data yet.  The competition was announced at the start of September 2009 but the searchable data catalogue isn’t live as far as I can tell.

More information: http://www.data.nsw.gov.au/