The Government 2.0 Taskforce announced the winners of the MashupAustralia contest, which asked Australians to combine and add to government datasets to create publicly useable online applications.

The contest, which ran between October 7 and November 13, was designed to help the taskforce demonstrate why open access to Australian government information is good for the economy and society. “Open access” means releasing government information on terms and in formats that permit and enable use and reuse.

Eighty-two entries were received, making the MashupAustralia one of the most successful contests of its type globally and demonstrating the ability for open government data to drive innovation.

A key contributor to its success was a series of “hackfests” which were held during the contest. These “hackfests” bring together online designers, developers and other experts to build applications and mashups in a 24 hour period. The taskforce sponsored one “hackfest” – Govhack held in Canberra – and community groups organised three similar events in Sydney and one in Melbourne.

For their excellence in mashing government datasets into user-friendly formats ‘Suburban Trends’ and ‘Know Where You Live’ were announced at the winners of the Mashies trophies.

Surburban Trends, created by students Alejandro Metke and Michael Henderson, mashes-up various types of crime and census data to graphically illustrate comparisons and contrasts of suburbs by a range of economic, education, safety and socio-economic indicators.

“The judges found the ability to compare suburbs visually, combined with the selective choice of statistics was excellent, especially in a field dominated by many entries using similar datasets,” said Dr Nicholas Gruen, chairman of the taskforce.

‘Know Where You Live,’ created by Eric Auld, David Lewis, Simon Wright, bills itself as a prototype of a mashup of a range of open access government data based on postcodes so that users can truly know the area they live in.

“The judges loved the very citizen-centric ‘common questions’ user experience of this application and the groovy cool selective repackaging of what could otherwise be considered uninteresting data. The integration of publicly-held historical photographs and rental price data was a nice touch as was the use of Google’s satellite images in the header,” said Dr Gruen.

Along with the main awards, the taskforce also awarded Highly Commendable to geo2gov and Firemash, with Notable Awards going to In Their Honour, LobbyLens and FlipExplorer. The People’s Choice Awards, selected by visitors to the www.gov2.net.au site was In Their Honour.

The Student Prize was awarded to Suburban Trends and Suburban Matchmaker with partial student prizes going to Earth:Australia and Community Rivers for their commendable efforts. The Transformation Challenge for entries that enhance and/or make datasets available for re-use programmatically – the bonus prizes are awarded to geo2gov, Neogopher and absxml.

“The entire MashupAustralia contest has been a huge success. The number and quality of entries received for this contest has been fabulous,” said Dr Gruen.

“They helped us show what I’ve always argued, in this area enthusiasm is the engine of reform.”

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About MashupAustralia
The judges of the MashupAustralia contest were:
• Seb Chan (Taskforce member, Head of Digital, Social and Emerging Technologiesat the Powerhouse Museum),
• Mark Pesce (Futurist/Author/Judge of ABC’s New Inventors),
• Nathan Yergler (Creative Commons Chief Technology Officer),
• Abigail Thomas (Head of Strategic Development, ABC Innovation),
• Regina Kraayenbrink (Web Futures Strategy Team, Australian Bureau of Statistics),
• Richard Allan (Director of Policy, Facebook, and former Chair of the UK Power of Information Taskforce).

About the Government 2.0 Taskforce
The Government 2.0 Taskforce is made up of policy and technical experts and entrepreneurs from government, business, academia, and cultural institutions. Its work falls into two streams. The first relates to increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information. The second stream is concerned with encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.

About Suburban Trends
Surburban Trends mashes-up datasets including Crime Incident Data – 2004 International Crime Victimisation Survey (CVS), NSW Bureau for Crime Statistics and Research – Recorded Crime Dataset, Census of Population and Housing: Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA – 2006, Census of Population and Housing: Census Geographic Areas Digital Boundaries, and ABS Postal Area Concordances. to compare and contrast Australian suburbs. Graphical indicators reveal different aspects of each suburb, including socio-economic standing, education levels and perceived safety levels. For suburbs within NSW, crime trends are also available. Additionally, a Web Services API allows this data to be easily reused.

mashupaustralia.org/mashups/suburban-trends/

About Know Where You Live
Know Where You Live is the prototype of a data mashup that displays a range of Australian Government data based on your geographic location along with a Google satellite map and relevant photo from the Powerhouse Museum Collection, the State Records NSW or the State Library of New South Wales collection. The initial prototype was created in under 24 hours as part of the inaugural GovHack event in Canberra in October, 2009. The application was built using datasets from Australian Bureau of Statistics 2006, Census NSW Crime Data Powerhouse, Museum Collection State Records, Office NSW State Library of New South Wales Collection.

mashupaustralia.org/mashups/know-where-you-live/

For further information on other winners:
• geo2gov: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/geo2gov/
• Firemash: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/firemash/
• In Their Honour: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/in-their-honour/
• LobbyLens: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/lobbylens/
• FlipExplorer: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/flip-explorer/
• Suburban Matchmaker: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/suburb-matchmaker/
• Earth:Australia: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/earthaustralia/
• Community Rivers: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/community-rivers-river-health-monitoring/
• Neogopher: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/neogopher-16-lists-and-26-http-apis/
• absxml: mashupaustralia.org/mashups/absxml/

What is Web 2.0 and Government 2.0?
Web 2.0 uses platforms which people can use to connect and collaborate. These include Facebook, blogs, wikis and Twitter. Typically they are open source and free to use. Government 2.0 involves the incorporation of Web 2.0 tools and approaches in government practice to enable new internal tools to increase productivity and efficiency, as well as opening up greater collaboration capabilities with citizen. Examples might include the release of data on terms of authorising a remix and online collaboration by governments in forums like blogs.

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