Show Us a Better Way

What would you create with public information?

Ever been frustrated that you can't find out something that ought to be easy to find?  Ever been baffled by league tables or 'performance indicators'?  Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large?

The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here. If you can build it - even better - we have an additional £20,000 cash to give you.

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition.  Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people.

We're confident that you'll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don't have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.

Go on, Show Us A Better Way.

Progress on Show Us A Better Way and a beta report

Now it's been a little while since the winners were announced so it's about time for an update on what we've been up to, what's coming up and how you can get involved.

In developing your ideas we have needed to balance the speed of development with the need to maximise the impact we have. There are therefore a mixture of open and closed source products and some where we are still trying to work out how we can best help.

The list below gives a quick update on where we are on the winning ideas. These will then be fleshed out more fully in later blog updates.

• Can I Recycle It? - We are providing Search Engine Optimisation to www.recyclenow.com to build awareness
• UK Cycling - We are working out whether we can unlock cycle routes, and how we can help the very strong community
• Catchment Areas - We have created a tool to show catchment areas with no IP problems. These can then be used and reused freely
• Location of Postboxes - We are working with Royal Mail to understand the issues
• Loofinder - We are looking to expand the existing SatLav service to more councils through Mobile Directgov
• Road Works API - We are again looking at the data issues
• Oldienet - We will create a mockup and seek to partner with a charity
• Free Legal Web - With OPSI have provided extra support to help establish charity
• Allotment Manager - Working to find partners to develop this
• Where Does My Money Go - We are working with the Open Knowledge Foundation to build an open source tool

These were already up and running so just go and have a look

• UK School Maps (showing where the UK’s schools are - building on data released for the competition by the Department for Children, Schools and Families);
• School Guru, which helps determine whether your child could get into a school (in Hertfordshire only at present);
• Where’s the Path, with an Ordnance Survey map and Google Maps satellite picture of any spot; and
• UK Wreck Map, showing the location of undersea wrecks around Britain’s coast.

If you are interested in what we have done here you might like to read our draft report. It has been something of a labour of love over the past couple of months and we would be delighted if you could help us refine it with comments over the next week. We will then refine the draft to draw on the comments before submitting it to the Minister for Digital Engagement Tom Watson.

You're on the radio (now) ...

Apologies for the short post (and no picture) but I have just had it confirmed that the winner of Show Us A Better Way will be announced on Radio 4's PM  programme tonight.

Listen here

And the winners are ...

Congratulations to everyone who was involved in submitting ideas. Apparently there has been some other contest this week, but the one that has had us excited is who is going to win Show Us A Better Way?

Well after a long and fraught session of judging, the Taskforce managed to narrow down the shortlist to 5 ideas we will build, 5 ideas we will support and 4 models we would like to see built upon.

We would like to thank the Guardian and the Free Our Data blog for their help in garnering a people's vote to bring extra ideas to the judging meeting.

The overall winner for the best idea will be announced in the next few days (so don't delete your favourites yet). In the meantime, lease use the comments sections of the ideas to help us refine the ideas and even volunteer to help with development!

As announced this morning in the Guardian the winners are:

Ideas where we hope to create a fully working tool

• Can I Recycle It?
• UK Cycling
• Catchment Areas
• Location of Postboxes
• Loofinder

Ideas where we will develop the idea further

• Road Works API
• Oldienet
• Free Legal Web
• Allotment Manager,
• Where Does My Money Go

Prototypes we will be funding to be developed further

• UK School Maps (showing where the UK’s schools are - building on data released for the competition by the Department for Children, Schools and Families);
• School Guru, which helps determine whether your child could get into a school (in Hertfordshire only at present);
• Where’s the Path, with an Ordnance Survey map and Google Maps satellite picture of any spot; and
• UK Wreck Map, showing the location of undersea wrecks around Britain’s coast.