Thursday, August 14, 2014

NSW highlights open data as one of four focuses in the Premier's Innovation Initiative

The NSW government today launched the NSW Premier's Innovation Initiative, a program seeking expressions of interest in projects that support NSW government innovation in four focal areas - Congestion, Social Housing Assets, Open Ideas and Open Data.

The process will invite organisations and individuals to submit Expressions of Interest setting out proposals the government could consider in one or more focal area.

Following this, selected respondents will be invited to submit full proposals for funding and implementation consideration.

While this process is far more complex and bureaucratic that similar processes I've seen run in the US, UK and other nations , it is great to see a government in Australia taking the step to formally ask the community for ideas and proposals to improve aspects of the state and government.

The inclusion of Open Data is quite notable. This looks like a genuine and sophisticated attempt to accelerate the NSW open data agenda, involving the consumers of the data in the process of defining what data is released and how.

Given the significant economic value attributed to opening up public sector data it is good to see both the attention and the funding placed behind this initiative - in too many cases we see only one, or neither of these, with open data catalogues run on a shoestring and their managers required to cajole and beg government agencies into participating by supplying data.

1 comment:

  1. This is a welcomed initiative. Big Data is transforming every industry, government, profession and society. Leading organisations and government departments across the globe are turning to data and analytics as a source of growth and innovation. Data is massively available from an overwhelming amount of sources. Leaders know all of this data presents a big opportunity. They want it set up and analysed in ways that create customer-driven innovations, new products and services, new business partnerships and other transformational outcomes.

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