Something Changed

£20,000 prize for innovative ways to use UK public data

The UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of using the masses of data it collects.

It is hoping to find new uses for public information in the areas of criminal justice, health and education.

The Power of Information Taskforce - headed by cabinet office minister Tom Watson - is offering a £20,000 prize fund for the best ideas. To help with the task, the government is opening up gigabytes of information from a variety of sources.

This includes mapping information from the Ordnance Survey, medical information from the NHS, neighbourhood statistics from the Office for National Statistics and a carbon calculator from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).None of the data will be personal information, the government is keen to stress.

Mr Watson is hoping to attract a wide range of people from “the technology community we already work with, to hard-core coders to adolescents in their bedroom”.

He admits that throwing open public data could be a risk but he believes that it will yield results. “If someone comes up with a great idea we will make a prototype and then hopefully a fully-fledged piece of technology that will make peoples’ lives better,” he said.Via BBC via Tom Watson MP