The best thing that I took from this week’s 2gether08 event was yesterday’s announcement by blogging MP Tom Watson and Ofcom’s blogging Tom Loosemore of Show Us a Better Way.

The site (also a blog – notice a pattern here?) is releasing a range of public data and inviting people to mash them up, or come up with ideas to do so. In their words:

The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government’s behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here. 

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition.

While the US has a strong tradition of making public data available, which has enabled the likes of Adrian Holovaty to create pioneering mashups like ChicagoCrime.org and Everyblock, the UK’s public data has been much less open.

But that is changing. The Guardian’s ‘Free Our Data’ campaign has successfully heaped a lot of pressure on government to “Make taxpayers’ data available to them”, and when I was recently invited to take part in a government white paper workshop around “community empowerment”, I got the impression that I was knocking at a semi-open door when I said that public availability of data would be my number one priority (more on that workshop here).

Anyway, back to that new website. Murray Dick has already come up with some stonking ideas, and I would suggest every journalist in the country with any interest in the future of journalism should at the very least be watching this and thinking about the possibilities in their area. The Power of Information Task Force blog is well worth following for further examples internationally.

If you think FOI requests have transformed journalism in recent years, and the battle to retain those, think about this: if we don’t make the most of this opportunity, we’ll have no excuse when the government decides to withdraw the offer.

• Related links (via Nick Booth):

Bill Thompson

Justin Pickard: “This is what it’s all about”.

Shane McC: “Surely this can’t be government? But it is…Brilliant”

Guardian Tech: ” It would be fantastic if a Guardian Tech reader could win this”

Ideal Government: “we offered an OS map and a Google lava lamp”

Richard’s Kingdom: “what’s even better is that this competition is accompanied by a whole raft of new public APIs”

Ed Parsons: “I’m Impressed”

Skuds Sister: “I have more confidence in motivated geeks than in large companies”

Daveyp “does this mark a sea change”

Ideal Government: “Power of Information work is gathering pace and getting quite exciting”

Bob Piper: “My suggestion was going to be ‘Where’s my bloody post office gone’.”

Open: ” it behoves me to offer a little praise when they get things right”

100 ideas already Tom Watson: “we might have to find some more prizes.”

Personal Democracy: “Kudos to all!”

PHP Freelancer

I’m not the only one to have noticed an unusual surge of people signing up to Twitter recently. But today, Downing Street started using it. And when the UK government signs up to Twitter, you know it’s hit the mainstream.

Oh, and where did I hear this? On Twitter.

Anyway, turns out it’s just Twitter shovelware using Twitterfeed, though that’s not bad in itself, and actually shows a higher level of tech savviness than simply twittering.

Meanwhile, those who want mobile updates on government matters now have it, which is pretty good. Marshall Manson suggests Brown may be the first head of state to use the tool, while Luke Pollard adds “to be fair both Obama and Clinton are well progressed and twittering a plenty in their fight for the democratic nomination – here and here – and arguably have a better Twitter pedigree”.

Since I posted this Bloggers Blog have added some more information about US politicians’ use of the tool, although Tweetscan reveals they are wrong about the twitterer who broke the news: that honour goes to Dave Briggs Simon Dickson (and as an aside, what sort of Bloggers Blog doesn’t allow comments?).

Dickson has previously blogged about the first twittering MP and other political uses of the tool in Britain.
Any journalists who weren’t signed up to Twitter before have little excuse now: this may just be a repurposed RSS feed, but receiving updates on your mobile means a journalist is less likely to miss out on announcements.

And it’s a signal of things to come: expect more direct communication with the electorate using this and similar channels. How journalists change their role from information processors (gatekeepers) to after-the-fact analysts – or another role – is a key question of our time.

Meanwhile, it would be great if No.10 started ‘following’ other twitterers to present the semblance of conversation (and some amusement for satirists), but I live in hope... No.10 has started following other twitterers, including the Telegraph’s Ian Douglas, political blogger Matt Wardman and ‘regimeofterror‘.

For the record, I was follower no.38 – it’s gone up to 64 in the time I’ve edited this post. Word’s spreading fast.

More here.

PHP Freelancer