Stap isi

28 June 2009

In an aroused state

Although the Government 2.0 Taskforce is a welcome initiative, the most exciting developments of late have been at OpenAustralia.

OpenAustralia is a volunteer-run open-source organisation that came together to port TheyWorkForYou to the Australian Parliament. They’re currently transforming the Hansard into a searchable, commentable and alertable document, and they’ll soon offer proceedings from State parliaments.

(And if you want to keep an eye on them, just look.)

What’s getting the sloop pointing north is their work on:

• making existing spatial information more useful – myrepresentatives.org has local government area lookups on the to-do list; and
• adapting FixMyStreet as an Australian iPhone app.

Last year I wrote out a story for a FixMyStreet derivative I called TakeMyWaste. It’s the type of web service that councils shouldn’t build in isolation. Back then I thought a local government peak body could drive it. But now I’m convinced that groups like OpenAustralia are better positioned to move such projects forward.

Open source software development is not without its difficulties but it seems infinitely preferable to monolithic projects that require years to specify, tender and deploy – and don’t necessarily succeed.

This particular project could be kicked along with some funding from the peak bodies and possibly one or more councils. Developers might come from the community, councils and/or commercial concerns. Early adopters would help troubleshoot and refine the service. Individual councils could come onboard when they’re ready and their data is accessible.

As well as a FixMyStreet and TakeMyWaste, I’d like to see a location-based planning alert service, like the UK-based Twitterplan built off the PlanningAlerts.com API.

There are some big wins just waiting to be claimed.

— b3rn   innovation, open data, open source   Jun 28, 06:57 PM   #   Comment [1]