The government has turned to crowd-sourcing for the development
of its latest website.
The Cabinet Office's
digital engagement blog has issued an invitation to all "open
data developers" to help build a new government website.
"We are inviting developers to show government how to get the
future public data site right - how to find and use public sector
information," the blog, by James T, said.
The move came in the wake several appeals to the developer
community, such as Show Us a
Better Way, the
Power of
Information Taskforce,
MySociety and
Rewired State for help to
"Code a
Better Country".
Developers who sign up to a members'-only
Google Group will be able to see and comment on an early
preview of the site.
The blog said the site would bring together over 1000 existing
data sets from seven departments in re-useable form for the first
time.
"We want developers to work with us to use the data to create
great applications, (to) give us feedback on the early operational
community, and tell us how to develop what we have into a single
point of access for government-held public data," it said.
In June prime minister Gordon Brown invited the creator of the
World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, to improve public access to
(non-sensitive) government information.
Apart from the Google Group, developers can follow events on
Twitter at #opendata