Winners
The Government 2.0 Taskforce was thrilled with the reaction to the MashupAustralia contest. The 82 mashups entered into the contest helped to show the new and innovative applications which can result from releasing government data on open terms.
Thanks to everyone who got involved, including the mashup authors, the people who gave feedback on the mashups, our contest judges who volunteered their time, and also the agencies who released the data in the first place! Thanks should also go to everyone who organised or participated in one of the events held in support of the contest, including GovHack and the hack days organised by Google and the OpenAustralia Foundation.
The judging panel was impressed with the quality of the entries, and finally whittled down their shortlist to decide on the following winners. Without further ado, we give you…
The Mashies
Student Entry — Commendable Effort
Excellence in Mashing ($10,000 prize)
A mashup of different types of crime and census data that allows you to compare and contrast suburbs by a range of economic, education, safety and socio-economic indicators. The judges thought 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.
This entry bills itself as a prototype of a mashup of a range of open access government data based on postcodes so that you can truly know where you live. The judges loved the very citizen-centric “common questions” user experience of this app and the groovy, and again, selective repackaging of what could otherwise be considered (we’ll be honest here) slightly boring 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. Judges were disappointed that some of the data for states other than NSW wasn’t available for inclusion. The focus on compliance only with the most modern standards compliant browsers was not seen as detrimental to this mashup.
Highly Commendable Mashups ($5,000 prize)
geo2gov serves as an excellent example of what can be possible with open government data. This entry provided an online service that will take a location description in a wide range of formats, and map that location to the government. The testament to its utility was demonstrated by the fact that several other entries used geo2gov. Contest judge Mark Pesce said that this app that was such an impressive prototype of what was possible with government data that it made his geeky pants wet.
A timely entry that analyses notices from the state of New South Wales’ Rural Fire Service and sends you a tweet if you are at risk. The judges were particularly impressed with this entry’s use of different services and its real time web goodness. The ability for citizens to submit fire information and be notified of nearby fires was quite unique. The dual purpose – citizen to Government and Government to citizen – possibilities with this site made it one of the few submitted mashups to explore data in this way.
Notable Mashing Achievements ($2,500 prize)
In Their Honour brings together service records, maps and photographs for each of the service men and women who have died for Australia. The judging panel felt that although a similar service already exists provided by the Australian War Memorial, this entry explored the data in a noticeably different way attracting the opportunity for a different kind of engagement with the same datasets.
LobbyLens shows connections relevant to government business (e.g., government suppliers, government agencies, politician responsibilities, lobbyists etc.). For the judging panel, the relationship visualizations that this entry gave aligned well with much of purpose of Government 2.0 even if its usability needs a lot of work.
Flip Explorer combines an interactive online search interface, 3D tagcloud, and timeline widget, which allows you to browse through the Powerhouse Museum’s Collection as you would any physical book. Although not truly a mashup of more than one data source, the judges felt that this was an impressive use of a visual interface.
People’s Choice Award ($2,000 prize)
Once we adjusted for the malicious voting up and voting down (shame on you who partook), the clear winner of the People’s Choice Award was In Their Honour — which is consistent with the judge’s thoughts on its usability. As commenter Nerida Deane said, “I just looked up my Great Uncle Al and found the site easy to use and I liked the information it gave me. Maybe one day I’ll have a chance to visit his memorial.”
Best Student Entry ($2,000 prize)
The judges decided to award multiple Student Prizes as a way to encourage and congratulate student involvement in opening up government data:
Student Entry — Commendable Effort ($1,000 prize)
The judges also decided to award the following student-created mashups a $1,000 prize in recognition of their work:
Community Rivers — River Health Monitoring
Transformation Challenge ($1,000 prize)
This was a bonus prize for mashups which enhanced and/or made the provided data available for reuse programmatically.
This provides a pretty comprehensive set of transformation and API access to many of the data.australia.gov.au datasets in one place.
A nice conversion idea that needs a bit of work to make it more usable.
