Warwickshire News Mine

The Openly Local website (http://openlylocal.com/councils/open) names Warwickshire County Council as one of only eight local authorities to make its data available in this way, out of a total of 434 authorities in the country.

Warwickshire is one of only two West Midlands authorities named in the list, the other being Lichfield District Council.

Other authorities around the country sharing open data, according to the Openly Local website, are Bournemouth Borough Council, Eden District Council, the Greater London Authority, Lincoln City Council, the London Borough of Brent and West Berkshire Council.

Warwickshire County Council launched its Open Data website (http://opendata.warwickshire.gov.uk) in April, which is making many of the council’s previously unreleased datasets, on everything from the number of school exclusions to bridge height restrictions, freely available to the public for the first time.

The council recently launched a competition called “Hack Warwickshire”, which encourages the technologically minded to ‘mash up’ its data and think about how technology can deliver better public services – challenging them to come up with applications that do just that. There are only two weeks left before the competition closes.

Data mashing involves combining data or the functions of two or more sources to create a new service, which is the aim of “Hack Warwickshire”. The grand prize is a brand new Apple iPad, the latest technological must-have.

Entrants are being encouraged to think about developing map visualizations, iPhone applications, ways of integrating the data with social networking and much more in their bid to win the competition.

There are also two new categories sponsored by Yahoo! An iPod shuffle is up for grabs in a new category for the not-so technically minded – simply come up with an idea for a great application or website using our open data. And there is further category, also sponsored by Yahoo! for the best use of YQL language. Entries need to be received by Friday 25th June 2010.

Cllr Martin Heatley, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for Resources, said: “This is not only about making our work more transparent, but also about making the information we hold as a county council more useful to people.

“Making our data freely available was just the first step. Now we want you to identify other methods of making this information available, bringing it together in dynamic ways that people can interact with.”

A shortlist of ten finalists will be selected, before a grand final is held in July, with the ultimate winner chosen by a panel of Warwickshire County Council and industry experts.

For more information see http://warwickshireopendata.wordpress.com/hack-warwickshire/.
Join the Warwickshire Open Data community at http://opendata.warwickshire.gov.uk/pages/community
Email opendata@warwickshire.gov.uk
Follow @wccopendata on Twitter (hashtag: #hackwarwickshire).

Link to WCC