Show Us a Better Way

Polluter Finder

Submitted by: Daniel Yates

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Polluter Finder will benchmark and plot various sources of pollution data, and empower users to act upon it.

Similar to the concept of 'crime mapping', Pollution Finder would show local sources of pollution with the aim of achieving an overall reduction. By reporting data on different types of pollution, the site would encourage users to focus on the greatest harm and the areas most at risk. The site would also identify polluters, exposing them to representations from concerned members of the public, similar to the current planning system.

The UK is in breach of various air-quality laws. It's time to harness the public's resources to police this issue.

Full disclosure: a similar resource www.scorecard.org already exists in the USA.

What information or services do you need?

OS maps, well structure regulated and unregulated pollution data (including name of polluter), developer support

WhoKnowsWho

Submitted by: Mr M Coupar

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This is something of a 6 degrees of separation idea, but not so intrusive. The basic idea is to help improve transparency in Government for the benefit of us all, by having an easily accessible database showing the relationships MPs/MEPs have. The initial data would be from public records, such as directorships of companies, details of politicians opposed in running for Parliament and so on. Users could then add their own data, wiki style, to generate a comprehensive relationship map of political Britain. I hope this would help to minimise sleaze.

What information or services do you need?

Databases of MP and MEP directorships, those contesting elections, memberships of political parties and groups within parties.

Free Car Checks

Submitted by: Gareth Oakley

Website: http://www.freecarcheck.org/

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This service would query the various vehicle databases kept by goverment departments and assemble a report with a relatively full history of a vehicle. Other companies charge for this service and add value - but basics of "Is a car reported stolen" really ought to be made available to the public to help cut vehicle crime.
The service could also allow users to report a vehicle stolen themselves - quicker to show than data from the police which may be out of date (see below)

What information or services do you need?

The DVLA and VOSA make a lot of information available about car registrations via their websites, but there is no free way of checking if a vehicle is stolen on the web. The US is about to make this data available freely - why can't we? As a worst case resort some agreement could be made with the police to receive a regularly updated list of cars reported stolen - other commercial organisations can already get this.

Responcity

Submitted by: Mr M Coupar

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Very simply, it is hard for ordinary people to find out who they should contact for advice, for complaints, for anything official. This information is spread across many different databases that may be private but are most often public, either national or local.

So, what I propose is a to create more or less an index to the UK for day to day issues. A sort of self help book. The contribution of public information can become a legal requirement, while the contribution of private information (especially from professional bodies) could be voluntary at first. Additionaly, I propose starting out with an index purely for determining/advising who is responsible for a given area, item of street furniture etc. Should this prove a success, I propose to follow this up with a similar index for professional services, and so on.

This will help ordinary people and the UK as a whole.

Ordinary people will benefit because right now they often cannot find out who to deal with, and even if they can it takes a lot of precious time and money.

The UK as a whole will benefit through improved efficiency and productivity.

An example of how this might work is my own experience with trying to get street lights fixed on a converted railway line. The police told that Railtrack was responsible, the Highways Agency told me that the County Council was responsible, and the City Council told me they didn't know who was responsible. Eventually I found that the City Parks Department was responsible. But it took hours of my time and was very frustrating. And I belive I was the only person able to get this far to ask for the lights to be fixed.

What information or services do you need?

Stage 1) Maps showing ownership and responsibility for a given area from central and local government, plus any quangos.

Stage 2) Dependent upon stage 1 success.

Public Transport Nodes and Timetables

Submitted by: Nick Burch

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

In order to help reduce our carbon footprint, we need to help people migrate from carbon intensive personal transit to carbon efficient public transport.

To help effect this change, we need to help connect people with public transport data. Where is the nearest bus stop to where they're stood? Nearest station? When's the next bus?

If we have that data, we can provide easy to use mobile applications, coupled with geolocation (eg gps, gsm cell location) to connect them with their nearest public transport nodes. We can then show them the times of transport, and help them make that switch.

If you knew it was 250m to a bus stop, bus in 10 minutes, you might take it. If you don't know where the bus stop is, or when the buses are, you're unlikely to.

What information or services do you need?

Free NAPTAN database of bus stops, tube stations, railway stations etc.

As much public transport timetables as possible (trains, tube, buses etc), but failing that general statistics (eg buses tend to be every 15 minutes from this bus stop, but only every hour from that one)

UK(2.5d)

Submitted by: Gordon Fletcher

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

UK(2.5d) takes the idea of the 2.5D game and applies this 'familiar', popular and intuitive interface to the visualisation of locality based information based on postcodes. Exemplar interfaces are found with Imperium, Yoville and Glam Lite from the University of Glamorgan as well a wide range of 'builder' games.

Taking this approach is a critical response to the more common approach employed by mashups of applying an online mapping applications that present a top-down view to locality information. This relies upon its users having sufficient spatial awareness of their locality. Rather than relying upon geographic accuracy UK(2.5d) employs combinations of visual cues to represent specific localities.

Users enter a room/space that represents a location of their choice (such as a home postcode identified as they enter the site in a manner similar to the BBC website). In this space the current demographic and services situation of the location is represented in a game like manner (e.g. a 2.5d bus stop or train station showing the services that operate through the location including an animation showing trains and buses as they are due to arrive and leave, key building or features such as schools scaled to represent the number of students, religious institutions representing the number of adherents in that location), a local noticeboard would also enable residents to add relevant local notices (after a suitable, verifiable joining procedure), imaginary boundaries including counties and municipalities, streetsigns to represent key roads/streets, feeds from local blogs and possibly an opportunity for local business to represent themselves. This information would also be represented in more than one language if there was preponderance of speakers of a language other than English in that locality. The room/space itself would also represent the surrounding physical environment and residency patterns with rural areas being 'open' while inner city areas may have a more enclosed or room-like feel. Each location would also contain exits to neighbouring locations based on the x,y centroids of each postcode in the UK.

This level of information would encourage residents to better understand their own community, students of social science could interactively explore the entire UK meaningfully and potential visitors and residents to the location could gauge their intended destination.

A key aspect of UK(2.5d) is that each location/room is mirrored with a "second level". Each real-time room has an exit accessed through a set of stairs leading up to what would initially be a mirror of the real-time room. This second room would be editable and enable registered users to engage in a discussion about how to alter the space. With a suitable consultation period (echoing planning approval) alterations to the real-time space would be implemented. Over time these mirrored room would diverge from the real-time room giving planning, politicians and local residents some indication of local aspirations and plans.

What information or services do you need?

OS, postcode, census information, council tax, public transport

Curry: Online legislation tracking and communications with elected officials.

Submitted by: Sarah Schacht

Website: http://knowledgeaspower.org

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Background

US-based Knowledge As Power (KAP), a nonpartisan charitable organization, has already created a powerful online system for citizens of Washington State to track legislative information (bills) and communicate with their electeds (via personalized "action centers" online).  KAP also provides legislators email management tools which reorganize their email into a workflow that makes reading and responding to emails simple, cutting email management time in half while increasing the quality of dialog between electeds and citizens. 

The Idea

Our idea is to build a similar online legislation tracking and communications system for the UK, called Curry.  We'd accomplish this by scaling our existing technology to meet the needs of the UK's parliamentary system. Through this, we could provide personalized legislation tracking by keyword, email updates, personalized time lines of bills, integrated relevant content from open government data, and an organized communications system between electeds and citizens.  In addition, we would work with Parliament's technology offices to implement web service technology built by Washington State's government (an online system which makes legislative information available in a timely and computer-readable format) so that Curry--and any other civic engagement service--can access parliamentary information more effectively

The Problems Curry Solves

Curry tackles two major problems in the democratic process:  1) Citizens are overwhelmed and intimidated by legislative information and the bureaucracy that surrounds it, because of this, citizens often opt-out of the process or take action at poor times or using ineffective methods.  2) Elected officials are overwhelmed by the increase of email their offices receive, unable to communicate effectively with their citizens, they miss the opportunity to dialog with their constituents.

To address both of these problems, KAP's Curry system would offer citizens an accessible, easy to use site personalized to their individual needs. As an online resource for citizens to track legislative information (bills/resolutions through Parliament or their local government), and communicate effectively with their elected representatives. The personalized communications system would send a user's emails on to their particular representatives on relevant bills.  These emails would be formatted in such a way that if a elected uses Curry's email management system or not, the emails would be easier to search through, read, and respond to. Citizens could then view how their elected voted on the bills they're watching, and share this information with friends via social networking sites. Integrating relevant data from UK public databases (such as those on schools, crime, etc.) the user can view a bill within the context of it's time line and government data on the topic.   

For elected officials, Curry enables better email management through their existing systems. Integrating the organized emails being sent from Curry's citizen users (and outside emails), electeds and their staff can spend less time organizing their emails and more time understanding where their constituents stand. Buoyed by data on the emails they receive, electeds can quickly see the positions their citizens have taken on bills, respond with more personalized emails (even to thousands of emails at a time), and engage in a dialog with citizens.

Who Curry Helps

Curry helps both sides of the democratic process build better understanding of each other and the issues before them in legislation.  By introducing Curry to the UK as an integrated legislation tracking and communications system, both sides can work more effectively together to build public policy reflective and responsive to public will.

What information or services do you need?

Data through Parliament.uk, for bill information.
Royal Mail's Postcode PAF, for correlating voting districts with the area Curry users live in.

Data services we could add in to enhance bill content, providing statistical or informational context to a bill:

Neighbourhood Statistics from ONS
Health care information, from NHS Choices
Lists of schools in England and Wales from the DCSF
Official Notices from the London Gazette

As more information services become available within the UK, they can be integrated in.

Better Management of Parking Suspensions

Submitted by: Iain Henderson

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

In areas where residents parking permits are in place (e.g. central London), the current process for managing parking suspensions places an unnecessary burden on the car owner to pro-actively look out for parking suspensions. This impact increases if the car owner is away on holiday/ business for a period and is unable to check their vehicle.

The suspension data must exist in a digital form, in order that the suspension signage be put in place/ taken down. If this was made available as a feed then end users could subscribe to be notified of upcoming suspensions in an area which the end user could define. Additionally, suspensions could be overlaid on a (google) map.

This would help car users avoid having their car towed/ impounded by providing them with 'push' information that would pre-warn of clashes. It would enable councils to focus on doing what they are supposed to do rather than being in the car removal business (of course the fines would reduce which may not be popular).

Data could presumably be made available earlier than the current notification (i.e. when the sign goes up); this would allow individuals more advance warning - useful if they are going away from home/ leaving their car behind. Even when a car user was away from home, having advance warning of a problem by e-mail/ RSS might enable preventative action - avoiding a missing car on their return.

What information or services do you need?

A data feed of upcoming parking suspensions with start date/ time, end date/ time and location.

LAA landmarks

Submitted by: Michael Clark

Website: http://N/A

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Local Area Agreements (LAAs) are the key policy framework for developing cross-organisational policy priorities and planning.  They show what have been chosen as priority issues for improvement in our communities by leaders of our statutory organisations.  The site would provide data on the contents of your locality's LAA (as has already been developed on one site) with up to date data on progress against targets as the data becomes available.  Crucially, the site would provide means of comparing what your policy leads have chosen as priorities and progress with comparison localities - comparable by neighbouring authority, and similar authorities in terms of other indices, such as deprivation scores.  Presenting this information in an accessible and engaging way would help to engage people in decisons about the future of their localities.  As the site developed, it could be enhanced with information about the performance of other statutory sector oganisations in your authority, such as police and health PCTs.

What information or services do you need?

The start would be a mapping process to identify your locality - which has already been developed on the existing LAA site.  Graphs and other graphical presentation of data would be used to display performance for LAA priorities, and comparison authority data.
Statistical data and a statistical process for identifying comparison sites would be needed, but starting data and processes exist.

A national directory of PSI

Submitted by: Richard Quarrell

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This database will enable those who wish to re-use PSI to begin to find the specific records they might need, and to identify and approach the particular holder of those records. It will help both holders and re-users of PSI because it will enable and streamline the proper identification of information assets and whether or not a particular asset is available for re-use. It will save time and money for both sides and facilitate the development of a market place for the re-use of PSI.

What information or services do you need?

Access to, and the cooperation of, PSI holders across the UK.

A directory of PSI.

Submitted by: Richard Quarrell

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

We are developing a software tool which can automatically index and identify the information assets held by public sector officials, without compromising data security.
Those PSI holders who participate will gain from knowing what they actually have, so that they can respond quickly and accurately to any requests for PSI from others. Knowing exactly what they do have will enable them to say whether they have a certain information or not, with some confidence.
It will save them time and money.

What information or services do you need?

Access to PSI holders across the UK and their enthusiastic cooperation to participate in this project.

Secure Information Collaboration

Submitted by: John Lewis

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

To manage any large event or resolve a serious crisis situation many agencies and organisations need to work together, sharing information with one another and obtaining information from elsewhere.  In addition, providing relevant information to the general public is key.  This idea is to allow organisations to make information available, in a secure way, to those users they are happy to allow access.  The access to the data could be controlled, for each data item, using simple rules so that only those with sufficient rights could gain access to a particular piece of data.  These secure data feeds, from multiple organisations, could be mashed with other publicly available data sets and feeds to provide powerful situation awareness, enabling:

• informed decision making by those involved in command and control
• controlled access to information for all other interested parties such as the media and the general public

As an example, various data could be made available by the ambulance service on causalities due to some crises.  Details on patients next-of-kin could be made available to the police (but not to other organisations with no requirement or right to access this); information on location of causalities could be made available to the police and fire service; and a summary of the number of causalities made available to the public.  All of this could happen seamlessly and invisibly to the ambulance service who could enter the information once, with pre-defined rules describing who could see which bits of that information. 

This addition of security to the mash-ups concept would help overcome the common concerns with data fidelity and security in mash-up (e.g. see http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19025516.400.html.)

What information or services do you need?

Maps (Ordnance Survey/Google or similar)
Aerial imagery
Live traffic, news, weather information.
Information on local events
Information from various organisations including the emergency services and others involved in the event or crises: expert opinions including outcome predictions for what if modelling.

aidinfo

Submitted by: Rob Tew

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

We envisage a world where information on international aid can be traced in real-time, from the countries giving the aid to the people benefitting from it.  The information can be presented on-line using a combination of interactive maps, charts and tables to show where aid is going, how it is being delivered and what it is being spent on.

The publishing of information in this way has many potential benefits, including:
� Enabling the giving of aid to be much more closely linked to results.
� Helping aid donors to better co-ordinate their efforts
� Giving developing country governments and those responsible for delivering aid-funded projects better information with which to plan their programmes.
� Improved performance of aid agencies
� Reducing inefficiency and limiting the scope for corruption
� Improved quality of investment decisions
� Better economic management
� Reduced overhead costs in aid
� More trust and stronger partnership between donors and recipient countries
� More research and evaluation leading to improved lesson�learning
� Increased public support for aid in donor countries

Better information on aid will help people both in the UK and in developing countries.  It will help ensure that essential services, medical assistance, etc gets to the people that really need it. This will also mean that ordinary citizens both in the UK and in developing countries are better able to hold governments and other agencies to account on how aid money is spent.

What information or services do you need?

This would require the release of UK government information on aid in as near to real-time as possible, in the form of a structured data feed.  Identifying the exact information that would be needed to improve planning for aid will require further analysis, but it can be reasonably expected to include:

� The exact purpose of the aid
� The place where the aid is to be delivered
� Details on actual monetary transactions (dates, amounts, who the money was paid to)
� A means of identifying the implementing agency and any intermediate agencies responsible for handling the aid money
� Any conditions attached to the aid
� Expected outcomes
� Detailed descriptions of the projects for which the aid is intended
� A means of uniquely identifying aid-funded projects
� Information on anticipated future aid disbursements

citivisons

Submitted by: Katherine Prescott

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Citivisions is a web based tool that is configurable for any city either within the UK or abroad.

The basic version provides an ex citing and innovative tool for anyone involved in any way with any ideas or plans for the city concerned. Citivisions displays a map of the city, showing a range of data in a pictorial format. Examples of the data used are air quality, traffic flow, footfall, wind direction etc. Citivisions takes this existing data and applies a set of translation processes to this in order that it may be shared and analysed by the system, displaying the resulting information in a graphical and visual manner.

Citivisons includes a full administrations suite with an intelligent permissions matrix to enable various data owners access to upload their data as required, combined with a set of automatic push and pull data transfer mechanisms to ensure all data used is up to date, valid and reliable.

Once the data has been translated, it is applied to a map of the city, utilising either Googlemaps or openstreetmaps to enable users to locate locations and zoom in for closer views. Users are then able to apply any of the data to the maps, generating immediately an easy to understand picture of this data. Ie: by applying the air quality filter, the air quality data is taken, translated, and displayed onto the map of the city in a way that makes it easy to see where the air is clear etc.

By then offering a tool to enable users to create and submit their own plans and ideas for buildings or locations, citivisions enables them to put their idea in place, then apply the filters to the 'virtual' map that includes their plan, thus seeing immediately the impact of their plan on the city.

This facility offers an unrivalled opportunity for people to be able to test out the effects of their ideas before investing any time or money in their development. The pictorial representation of these impacts makes ideas easy to share with others, making the communication of the effects of their plans quick and unambiguous.

The final jewel in citivisions' crown is how it can be used by city planners. Every time someone wants to share an idea or plan, they can submit it to citivisions. This can be passed through the formal planning permission process, or simply submitted as an idea.
City planners are then able to view all the various ideas, at any stage of the process, and see the overall impact of these plans.

This enables them to see areas of opportunity and identify areas of risk or potential duplication of effort or expense.

Planning meetings can take a form of a more visual evaluation of plans, more quickly and easily visualised and demonstrated, and synchronicity and co-ordiantion of services can be more easily and cost effectively achieved.

In summary, Citivisions capitalises on exciting emerging technologies, a widespread desire to forge collaborations between the general community, academia and commerce, and the growing adoption of internet based information sharing protocols.

Furthermore, these areas converge within citivisions to create an unrivalled opportunity to visualise plans and ideas for city planning, inform decision making, influence the planning and creativity of planners, and attract investment opportunities to the city.

Buy adopting a web2 approach and encouraging a wide range of people from schools and universities to corporate planners and councils, a full and rich picture of the potential for a city can be seen.

Once completed, citivisions can be packed and marketed to other cities, thus promising a hugely commercially viable proposal.

What information or services do you need?

Citivisions needs any information atall that is in any way relevant to those interested in developing a city. This includes not only environmental and geographical data such as air quality, traffic quality, footfall etc, but also data that can be used to formulate intelligent algorithms to apply to plans such as the laws governing marketing, attraction to locations etc.

By applying such data, citivisions will be able to predict social and piolitical effects of plans, not only environmental and geographical ones.

Medi-Eyes

Submitted by: Putu Diah Permata

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

MEDI-EYES
is a global scale programme that constructed to be used to save patient medical reports.

Medi-eyes will be using retina eye sensor as a password. Where on mean time will used by using the patient eye.

MEDI-EYES MISION

Medi-eyes mision is to made live easier by protect all the medical data being lost, or damaged.
For example of what data is strored on medi-eyes are rotge date, blood type, and the lastest medical check up of the patient.

Helping police get the medical data to helping their investigation.

To make the doctor immediately get all the medical data of the patient to help cure the patient in the emergency.

MEDI-EYES VISION

Medi-eye not only help the patient, but also the hospital and clinic. It is because medi-eye will be a standarized data for all the hospital and the clinic on all country in the world.

It can be true because medi-eye contain a complete medical data of the patient so the doctor can take all the data that necessary to him to know
about the patient.

And also for the patient who want to get a treatment overseas, the medi-eye data will be a great help by using medi-eye the doctor where the patient will get the treatment will receive full medical data that he needs for healing the patient.

What information or services do you need?

medical report, biography of the patience, data of hospitals and clinics.

SeeCCTV

Submitted by: Hwa Young Jung

Website: http://www.seecctv.org.uk

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Government reports argue that CCTV footage is useful in protecting the public and assisting the police to investigate crime. However, public access is limited by the relative anonymity of the camera operators; this undermines the stated goals of safety and accountability. The surveillance social contract is one-sided.  Instead of the usual emotionally-driven reactions to a nanny state, or fear of Big Brother, a transparent and informative public portal about public surveillance will balance the contract back towards public utility, and allow contact between the watchers and the surveilled.

SeeCCTV is a mobile application and a website. The mobile application uses GPS enabled devices to locate and display CCTV cameras in a given area, as well as add new cameras to the database. This information is also available on the SeeCCTV website, where more in-depth contact and analysis tools are available.

Information about how to access footage, your civil rights, and crime statistics will be available through an easy to understand interface. By combining crime statistic overlays and third-party mapping systems, it would provide solid metrics to further inform the debate about the adoption, effectiveness and our relationship to CCTV in the most heavily surveilled society in the world. It would make it possible for people to benefit from CCTV and their rights under it, rather than be passive subjects of it.

What information or services do you need?

Royal Mail's Postcode PAF file
Neighbourhood Statistics from the ONS
National Public Transport Access Node database
Third Party Mapping system

Integrated Travel Manager

Submitted by: Alistair Hann

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

The Integrated Travel Manager launches a multi-modal transport search from any UK postcode to either another UK postcode, or a major European city. The cost, duration, and carbon footprints of the entire routes are calculated and the 'best three' routes displayed (greenest, fastest, cheapest). The routes may for example involve taxi and train, rail and international coach, or driving airport parking and flights.

Users can filter and tune the routes, expressing preferences regarding modes of transport, miles per gallon, railcards, check-in times, etc. Additional decision making tools give statistics about the reliability of the route such as punctuality of a particular train, as well as feedback/tips from other travellers who have been on the route.

Once a route is selected it is easy to print an itinerary, arrange tickets, and there is an email and mobile messaging service to warn of any problems such as extra traffic due to an accident, or train delays.

As well as a standalone site the service is available as a widget to make it easy to embed the functionality into other sites e.g. 'how to get to our campus', as well as offering an API to the search/data to encourage further innovation.

The service helps people to plan a European trip with minimum effort.  It encourages people to reduce their carbon footprint by showing low carbon usage or public transport based options, such as routes to European cities entirely by rail. It also helps UK tourism by providing a way for people across Europe to plan and book travel to exact locations in the UK.

The service is distinct from the existing Transport Direct service in several ways: it provides prices for every component of the route, there is community sharing of feedback, users are updated about problems affected their planned route in real time, there is an open interface to enable further innovation, and the focus is on national travel and connecting to Europe.

What information or services do you need?

Transport direct API
API's and pricing information for other transport services e.g. TFL journey planner
DFT National Coach Services Database
Live station arrival/departure feeds
Live airport arrival/departure feeds
Road traffic feeds (police/DFT/bbc)
Carbon calculator API
NaPTAN and NPTG databases
National Grid mapping
The National Car Park Register
The National Public Transport Data Repository feed
Local government taxi pricing rules.
ATOC rail times/price data

Neighbourhood Renewal Communication Map

Submitted by: Rob Annable

Website: http://blurtonvision.co.uk

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

As architects and urban designers we need tools for enquiry that allow us to understand the issues that are most important to a community's future. Online techniques of communication allow us to provide greater and more diverse discussions with residents and community groups. The low cost of these tools allow us to consider them as a long term investment to be endowed to a community for use long after the enquiries and design proposals have been completed.

The information that ties these two groups together is maps. Maps loaded with data about the existing neighbourhood and the proposed changes. Our submission proposes to develop ideas already explored on our live projects using project web sites to consult and report on the ideas for change, but taking it to the next level with web2.0 techniques allowing more freedom of content and a greater number of authors.

The consultation tool would begin by using an open map system, developing it in as much detail as possible with the help of the community and then using it as the backdrop for discussion. The 1st stage of the process would see the community submit comments and questions by marking up the map and describing their neighbourhood, followed by the design team making proposals using web2 techniques to connect drawings, videos and photos to the map; inviting feedback, criticism and ultimately approval. The background of data collection assisting the design team to better collate the findings of the consultation. Moving from enquiry to delivery then the proposals are developed for real, their progress can continue to be charted in the communication tool.

When the project moves into stage 2 the authorship of the system can be handed to the community, turning the map into a discussion and publishing tool for resident groups, schools and clubs. It would continue to develop alongside the data being inputted by the design team about changes to landscape and buildings.

The open map content creation represents the base that allows web2.0 techniques like phonecams, blogs, RSS feeds and info widgets to grow around the community, beacons of activity engaging all levels of community role and age. By seizing control of the map we create communication freedom.

Other proposals for Show Us A Better Way would compliment this idea, such as Widget factory and Neighbourhood Watch Widget.

This proposal can offer an existing project precedent that has already experienced stage 1 (the consultation) which now looks towards stage 2 - the community publishing tool. Development of the core tool would also allow the system to be deployed on other projects just beginning their journey. Blurtonvision.co.uk shows an example of a web site that demonstrated the possibilities; with improvements from the data transparency provided by web2.0 we can take it to the next step.

What information or services do you need?

• Open map tool - openstreetmap.org or OS version to be explored
• GPS tools
• Top-down information streams - traffic, health, crime etc
• Complimentary Show Us Widgets!

Public-Sector Jobs Database

Submitted by: John Geddes

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

We establish an "Open Source" national Repository that will hold details of every job vacancy in national government, local government, quangos - and any job in any other organisation (eg a charity) where the post is even partly financed from public funds.

For major categories (eg schools, universities, NHS) there would be specific vocabularies and nomenclatures, along with links to static data on the organisation - so that one could search for jobs teaching geography suitable for someone with 2 years' experience, in a school with a sixth-form, with at least 1200 pupils and an Ofsted rating of at "Satisfactory" or better, within 30 miles of a specific postcode.

The government-sponsored scheme should include a basic search engine (with the facility to generate a user ID that allows the user to save their search and to reject vacancies they have seen but rejected - on their next visit they can see just the new vacancies matching their criteria). But the long-term aim would be for this engine to be discontinued as soon as the commercial and/or voluntary sectors have developed applications drawing on the Repository data that deliver at least as much functionality.

The requirement to file details of every vacancy to the repository, before it is published anywhere else (online or in print) would be enforced by making a £200 charge for listing vacancies that had not been filed properly, with £100 being kept to help fund the Repository and the other £100 going to whoever first reported a non-conforming ad, providing an incentive for individuals to police the system.

The requirement to list jobs that have been financed with public funds would work rather like the "General Public License" (GPL) works with software code. Each time funds are given by one body to another, the recipient has to agree that they will pass on the obligation to list funded posts (or to pay the late-filing fee) to those to whom they give the funds - the requirement would flow with the money so that a charity receiving a grant from the local PCT to fund an information worker would find the listing requirement as part of the terms of the grant.

User Benefit - an easier way for busy people to find publicly-funded jobs.

Public Benefits -  increasing the average quality of appointees to publicly-funded jobs (as more-talented people will be the most likely not to bother if finding out is time-consuming). AND a massive potential saving in not having to advertise jobs elsewhere. With EVERY teaching job (for example) guaranteed to be listed on the Repository, then anyone looking for a teaching job will be sure to consult a job search engine that uses the Repository. And if every teacher is going to do that, there is no need for schools to pay to advertise in print, or on fee-charging job sites. The saving in public expenditure could be enormous.

What information or services do you need?

A record (using a standard schema) for each publicly-funded job vacancy.

Static data covering schools, hospitals, universities etc

Swans Fly High in the Kingdom of Vesta

Submitted by: Adrian Ashurst

Website: http://www.swansflyhigh.org.uk

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Users can accesses a calculator to model  greenhouse gas emissions for their local airport. Select a mix of aircraft, distances and the total number of ATMs (air traffic movements) to show the greenhouse emissions for a local airport with an energy calculator, and taking into account the maximum allowed level of ATMs (and any proposals to increase number of ATMs). Yahoo finance provides an equivalent cost of the jet fuel in any currency - the calculator module will be open source so governments outside the UK can adopt the same scheme, thus allowing calculations for destination airports to be made. Google charts provides an easy to understand chart from the model which is output. Users can find the location of their local airport together with interesting information such as weathers using, Google map Metairs and postcodes.  Constructors and Operators of airline fleets with new technology such as geared turbofans would show up well in calculations. Government inspectors would be able to forecast accurate greenhouse gas at enquiries into new airport terminals. Airport protestors and nearby local authorities could be engaged in the decision process. Any company or individual making individual carbon footprint calculations would have access to accurate data. Airport developers wishing to increase number of ATMs will be encouraged to show how they will be visited by more energy efficient aircraft types in future years so as to show that they have allowed for sustainable growth. Examples of modelling for Heathrow (LHR inventory) is included in
Calculations for "Revision to the Method of Estimating Emissions from Aircraft in the UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory (RMP/2106) Defra

What information or services do you need?

Calculations for "Revision to the Method of Estimating Emissions from Aircraft in the UK Greenhouse Gas Inventory (RMP/2106) Defra
CORINAIR (Core Inventory of Air Emissions in Europe) manual (2001)
Google Maps
Yahoo Finance
Google charts
current ATMs for UK airports
Metairs weather data
Royal Mail postcode data
Data on restrictions on use of airports e.g. weight limits, ATMS

VoloMed

Submitted by: Darren Pearce

Website: http://www.volomed.com

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

VoloMed merges networking, healthcare related news and an SME resource directory within one site. The site is free to join for all healthcare professionals, healthcare organisations, political parties, healthcare unions and health based charities.It is an independent platform that also is looking to work with key government departments in providing news that is relevant to the user base. Because the site is independent we feel that there is an impartiality that is crucial to user participation. The site aims to connect people across both the healthcare and business sectors to help develop new contacts and supplier relationships. The news section can also be used by health based charities to raise campaign awareness and promote their core activities.

What information or services do you need?

VoloMed is looking to publish all healthcare related news that is produced by the various government departments. The site will also publish statistical data relating to NHS activities.

Easy EPC

Submitted by: Adrian Ashurst

Website: http://www.planet4sale.co.uk

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Occupiers of a new or refurbished building enter their post code, and a quick check is made if the building is on an independent gas transporter network, if the building have an electricity only supply, if an energy performance certificate is available, also if the building was constructed without cavity wall insulation. A degree days chart can be constructed with Google Charts using Met Office data. A carbon footprint calculator would enable office based calculations for a tenant of a government building (for example) with main supply meter data compared with smart meter for area occupied by a tenant. Yahoo finance converts costs to any currency for overseas companies wish to see up business in the UK. Customers would be able to use this data in an application for funding from energy supplies. Assessors for energy performance certificates would gain basic information towards carrying out a survey and thus reduce costs to customer. Where enough information is available an indication of the potential rating of a building would be provided and based on a post code a Google map showing local assessors will be provided. Drupal CMS forum or polls will enable a calculation on how the scheme might be rolled out from commercial buildings to public and reassure journalists etc. re: any concerns over how data is used.

What information or services do you need?

post code and new build data from Royal Mail
met office data
ecoes (electricity central online enquiries service)
government data on energy use for their buildings
Google charts and maps
Yahoo finance
Drupal CMS
Government data on energy consumption for a building - for example where the building is let by Crown Estates

Come and get it

Submitted by: Adrian Ashurst

Website: http://www.bvrecycle.co.uk

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Local organisations, charities, etc. input their recyclable materials into a personal account which shows the value of materials they hold in recycling credits, and the equivalent savings in carbon dioxide by recycling, and Yahoo finance converts metals to a financial value. Users can optionally show their location on a Google map. Geographic information would be used to calculate savings in carbon dioxide by recycling, and demonstrate to recyclers where materials can be recycled. On the polluter pays principle, waste companies and manufacturers can register to show their  willingness to "come and get it". Google charts can be combined with Google Maps to show how much material is being recycled through "come and get it" with the number of recycling credits earnt etc.

What information or services do you need?

Public bodies such as schools can contribute to the waste bank and start to earn recycling credits.
Google Maps and Charts, Yahoo Finance
Royal Mail post code data
Recycling Credit Rates
Lifecycle analysis for recyclable materials
Location of local authority sorting and transfer stations,
Location of recycling and composting plants

Mapping Public Services

Submitted by: annamarie cumiskey

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Imagine I am a married, working, mother of three children at school age and I have just moved to a new area. I am information poor, time poor. I need to inform myself quickly about local schools, afterschool clubs, childminders, job centre, council tax office, doctors, dentists, parking permit offices, polling stations, refuse dumps, police stations, hospitals and more. It would be so much easier if I could open an online map of my area with all of these places on it and a short description with link to website. Less time spent browsing the web would give me more time with my family.

What information or services do you need?

Maps & Addresses

Making democracy work

Submitted by: Chris Riley

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Democratic governments put power in the hands of the people. We all have a chance to vote and it is our votes that decide the make up of the government. Democracy has many advantages, for instance everyone's vote carries equal weight and accountability is made a central part of government.

However democratic systems also have a number of limitations. One of the biggest problems with democracy is that most people vote without a clear understanding of the policy of the candidates or party they vote for. The factors that have a bigger influence on peoples voting behavior, including the physical attractiveness of candidates, their tone of voice, marketing campaigns, etc. As implementing policy and making laws is arguably the most important role of a member of parliament, the lack of political awareness of most voters is an inherent problem with democracy.

It is unreasonable to expect everyone to read all the policy documentation of all candidates standing in their constituency, so a more accessible information system is needed. The ideal approach would be tool that gave people the information about the candidates in their constituency, summarizing the issues that most concern them. Such a system could be implemented. An online tool could asked people to list the top 5 or 10 issues they feel most strongly about. The tool could then search information sources, such as candidates' speeches, their voting behavior in government and their position on key issues, to provide an outline of candidates positions in these key areas. Using technology like natural language processing and semantic analysis apaches, the system could extract key statements from candidates on a particular issues. This could then be presented to the user, so they could very quickly get an idea about candidates policies and where they stand on particular issues. Potentially, a 'score' could be given to each candidate, reflecting the similarity or overlap between the users views and the candidates views. This system would help people make a more informed choice about who they vote for.

This approach would have several advantages. Firstly it would make it much easier to compare the candidates standing in your area. Arguably, it would enable a fairer systems as information for all candidates would be included. This approach would be scalable and would apply equally to local elections and general elections. An online 'candidate picker' may also be appealing to younger votes and would help engage people in the electoral and voting processes.

What information or services do you need?

This data mash-up of political and policy information would be based on currently available data sources. For instance the web site www.theyworkforyou.com records candidates speeches and MP's voting behavior and much of the information need is in the public domain.

A text processing tool would also be needed, such as a natural language processing system.

Local Announcements.gov.uk

Submitted by: Adrian Drewett

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Anyone will be able to enter their postcode into the site, and see all planning applications (proposed, approved and in progress), road works/closures (inc. carnivals, etc), public house licence changes (applied, approved, rejected etc), planned works (ie. cutdown of trees, changing lights etc).  All the above will be visible on a google/OS map, showing the affected roads, location of premises etc.  The tags will be color coded to reflect there type.  Clicking on a tag will provide more information on the application/event, including who to contact etc.

Potentially, users will agree to register, and opt-in for weekly emails containing the maps and a table of all events within 2 miles of their location.

The idea:
+ Improves the government (aka.councils) ability to communicate local information and planning applications to a wider audience.  instead of being dependent on newspaper adverts and lamppost signs.
+ It significantly improves the general populations ability to see events particular to them, and play a more active part either through awareness or ability to support and/or object.

What information or services do you need?

The site will likely use Google Maps.  It is dependent on local planning offices and public offices agreeing to update and/or provide data on planning applications, advance notice of roadworks, roadclosures, licencing etc in a repeatable format. 

If this data is not immediately available, the site can be developed to 'collect' this data, and the deployment of the site phased across multiple agencies and councils.

School performance

Submitted by: sharron page

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Publish all the findings in a bar chart. eg by attendance, how well each school is doing, did for exams, what are the favourite subjects. Then this can be compared per area. It will give parents an overall view of what people/pupils think of the schools in the area. It will also help the schools which aren't doing so well to improve.

What information or services do you need?

Maps, statistics, opinions from parents/children.

Put your money where your 'map' is...

Submitted by: Rebecca Pyne

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

The idea is to take London's newly developed 'crime map' and make it more useful and relevant to communities and citizens who are both the victims and perpetrators of crime.

Intention:

To help create a wider understanding that crime is more complex than being just a single act that is 'intentionally committed'. To explore and perhaps expose the connections and links between the spending per head in an area and the crime committed (or rather reported). Everything would be searchable by postcode - in effect the idea is to transform London's existing 'crime map.

The map would also show the data on the number of youth facilities in that area - on the one hand its use will be to see what existing provision there is for young people and to analyse any potential connections in the data mash up; and on the other the evidence could be useful to evaluate public money provision and how responsibly it has been spent. Can and should changes to the system happen, and what should these structural adaptations entail?

This 'new wave crime map' would show the data on local amenities and investigate the connections between community provision and crime; the importance of a good clean and strong environment and crime; and school and school performance(league tables as one indicator) and crime.

Do richer areas get more money?
What does the money provide?
What are the links between crime and government spending?

This information could help organisations like the Youth Opportunity Fund and others as it would help with a more accurate assessment of need in the community.

What information or services do you need?

http://maps.met.police.uk/
Google maps
Crime Maps
PESA Stats on Local Authorities
Crime data with location
Data on publicly funded youth facilities, spaces and schemes in single area.
Data on Local Amenities - publicly funded facilities (parks, open spaces etc)
League table stats

Have you voted?

The guardian and the Free Our Data campaign are running a public vote on your ideas to select 5 or so ideas to carry through to the short list stage.

The full post on picking a peoples shortlist is well worth a read. However in their own words:

The question is, which one do you think has the X Factor that means it should go forward to the final judging? Do, please, let us know, by heading over to the voting area at uservoice.com, having a read of the entries, and casting your vote. If you want, you can roll a pen around your mouth and be rude about the ones you don't like. It's meant to be an enjoyable process, after all.

That is precisely what we are looking to find from this process - What are the ideas that speak to YOU? Are there ideas where you went "That is so powerfully simple" or "I wish we had that now"? If so you should head over to http://suabw.uservoice.com/ where you can register your vote.

Vote now!

Who Cares?

Submitted by: Tom Andrews and Veronique Jochum

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

We will work with professional artists to communicate and illustrate the state of society and the contribution of civil society. It will focus on both public statistics, and stories of individuals and organisations making a positive difference to their own lives and the lives of others.

It is being developed by NCVO (National Council for Voluntary Organisations) and arts organisation People United.

This project meets two key needs:

- The lack of succinct, accessible statistics relating to social issues, civil engagement and well-being.

- The lack of positive stories celebrating the diversity,vibrancy and impact of the voluntary and community sector.

The project will cover a range of areas including:
- Volunteering
- Civic engagement
- Neighbourliness
- Social capital and trust
- Campaigning
- Donations
- Well-being
- Ethical consumerism
- Corporate social responsibility
- Social and environmental responsibility
- Caring and helping others (including informally)

By visually representing these topics we believe we can bring them to the attention of people who are not usually receptive to presentations or simple narrative. The website and linked publication, as well as being engaging, inspiring and challenging, will also be very useful to policy-makers, voluntary and community organisations and the general public. It will lead to:

- Greater knowledge of up-to-date social factors and public attitudes that will inform the work of voluntary and community organisations and policy-makers
- Increased awareness of the variety of work across the voluntary and community sector
- Renewed inspiration and motivation to become involved in a community setting
- Better understanding of how to get involved in a community setting and where to go for more information.

Through NCVO's links and associated networks the content will be distributed widely and in many forms (from web pages, annual booklets and posters).

The project has already received support from the Arts Council and the Office of National Statistics, we now need assistance to enable it to be realised and developed.

What information or services do you need?

A range of public statistics including:

ONS Social Trends
Neighbourhood Statistics
DCLG Citizenship Survey
British Social Attitudes Survey
General Household Survey

EnviCare

Submitted by: Putu Diah Permata

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Now there news about global warming in every news media. how can we prevent it by taking care our environment.

Concept idea:

Simple
Usefull
Interactive
Protect the environment from two ways/sides (goverment and people)

Content that I want to do :

a. A forum that can be discussed by people and environment scientist.

Is a forum between people and environment scientist that very helpfull as a material/media for facing the environtmet problem and helps goverment to protect the environment.
This forum can make people consultating about the environment problem in his area easier, because it save much time and money by using internet (website / forum) as a comunication media

b. Specific contact info

on this contact info we can put some corporation or organization that related woth this environtment problem, such as :
a. garbage cleaner
b. florist / gardener
c. pest / bug exterminator
d. police
e. fire fighter
f. ect.

c. Award

award is motivator for people to be more proactive to report their environtment problem. This is a suggestion some of the award that can be gifted to people :
a. the most environment caring award : gifted to people that ...
b. the environment saver award : to people that...
c. the most clean environment award :

d. Community centre

Community center can be added to make people more commited for saving / reparing their environment. This community center also as a media for gathering the people who aware of thier environment.

e. Gallery

gallery is a interesting content. Because it contain environment picture that uploaded by the people. Also is a media for people (youngster) to compete make a best picture of the month. (that can be divided by picture that the problem already solved and the problem not yet solved)
Inside the Gallery we can make a photography competition. Why photography? Because this time many youngster made photography as their hobby. So from this competition we can make youngster to care about their environment problem.

f.Tips

in this content we can write down some tips from govement to take care the environment or tips to face the current environment issue.

g. Voting

on this voting, goverment can ask people about their idea or action to protect their environment. People can response by answer the votting wheter they agree or disagree.

h. 24 hours call service

This phone call service we provided because sometimes something happen anytime.

What information or services do you need?

maps, statistic, contact number of the private company (florist, bugs exterminator, etc.)

Dial-a-ride journeys (DRT) on web map

Submitted by: Ryota Oda

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

My Idea

Display driving information on the website by Using web map and bus information.
Bus information is bus route, demand points, bus position and bus speed etc.

How does it work?

For example,
Display the bus route like Google Maps Direction.
Route of DRT is dynamic, so web map is useful to display route of DRT.
The icon of the bus is displayed on the Web site. When the icon is clicked, an actual driving speed, a traffic state and the arrival time are displayed. It needs to get the bus position by using GPS.

Who does it help?

It helps passengers. If the bus information is displayed on the website, the passengers can see the bus information and the bus is approaching or not.

What information or services do you need?

Web map, dial-a-ride journeys information, bus information and route that the bus can drive.

Put your money where your 'map' is...

Submitted by: Rebecca Pyne (RSA)

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

The idea is to take London's newly developed 'crime map' and make it more useful and relevant to communities and citizens who are both the victims and perpertrators of crime.

Intention:

To help create a wider understanding that crime is more complex than being just a single act that is 'intentionaly commited'. To explore and perhaps expose the connections and links between the spending per head in an area and the crime committed (or rather reported). Everything would be searchable by postcode - in effect the idea is to transform London's existing 'crime map.

The map would also show the data on the number of youth facilities in that area - on the one hand its use will be to see what existing provision there is for young people and to analyse any potential connections in the data mash up; and on the other the evidence could be useful to evaluate public money provision and how responsibly it has been spent. Can and should changes to the system happen, and what should these structural adaptions entail?

This 'new wave crime map' would show the data on local amenties and investigate the connections between communityy provision and crime; the importance of a good clean and strong envrionment and crime; and school and school performance(league tables as one indicator) and crime.

Do richer areas get more money?
What does the money provide?
What are the links between crime and government spending?

This information could help organisations like the Youth Opportunity Fund and others as it would help with a more accurate assessment of need in the community.

What information or services do you need?

http://maps.met.police.uk/
Google maps
Crime Maps
PESA Stats on Local Authorities
Crime data with location
Data on publically funded youth facilities, spaces and schemes in single area.
Data on Local Amenties - publically funded facilities (parks, open spaces etc)
League table stats

PSIKEY

Submitted by: Adrian R D Norman

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Public sector information cannot be re-used until (1) it has been found and (2) the holder and re-user agree the commercial and other terms on which it is made available. The key to unlocking PSI, PSIKEY, is to set up a market similar to those which the City hosts for stocks and shares, insurance and shipping.

At present, PSIKEY is an idea in search of funding to create a prototype. It is an idea "on how to reuse, represent, mashup or combine the information the government holds to make it useful". It should be considered along with PSIDER, which can automatically harvest metadata for storing in PSIKEY. PSIDER is a candidate for the "New £20,000 prize for prototypes".

PSIKEY will list all PSI holdings in a standard format and thereby provide all pertinent metadata on which a re-use contract can be based. This list is like the British Library's union catalogue of books in UK libraries, which in effect made it possible to borrow and read any title in any collection without having to contact possible holders individually and fruitlessly.

PSIKEY records the agreed terms of every bargain. The early deals set precedents for others to follow and ensure compliance with the non-discrimination regulation in the 2003 EU Directive on Re-use of PSI. Representatives of holders and re-users will negotiate model agreements. (The Office of Public Sector Information has effectively done so for the IARs listed by Inforoute.)

PSIKEY will not be limited to the UK. Re-users will be world-wide. The European Directive applies to holders in nearly 30 Member and associated States (and the PSI held by the Commission). Most OECD and Commonwealth nations hold PSI which could be re-used.

Holders and re-users, the sellers and buyers in the market, can update and search respectively the information in the PSIKEY database without significant transaction costs. Most consequent deals will be made on standard terms or follow a precedent, again avoiding high transaction costs. Nevertheless, the re-user may have to pay the cost of providing the information under the agreement.

What information or services do you need?

Comprehensive information asset registers (IARs) from all 10 thousand holders of re--usable PSI.

General Academic Database

Submitted by: Levent Neyse

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

As a post graduate student from Istanbul, I can observe an international common needs of researchers. "An information dirt" with another meaning "an useless mass of information" is one of the biggest problem of researchers. There are online databases of universities and also in libraries there are available databases. But unfortunately there are not enough accredited documents to be refered in new academic writings.
Simply: A database, including a strong and accredited, worldwide information in the searched subject. (Information: Thesis, articles, books, essays etc...)

What information or services do you need?

Database: For files and writings
Statistics: For finding out the origins of sources
Maps: A shortcut to search
Forum: To exchange the information and ideas
A running center: For accrediting the scientific and academic level and being in touch with universities.
And of course: Developers to make the idea alive

Revelution

Submitted by: Charlotte Depin

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Based on the French Constitution, the project needs to be adapted to the UK Government, and the way laws are made in UK. The concept is to deliver informations on laws to the citizen, adapted to what interest him. Indeed, the official government often deliver impersonal news: here, the website is divided in three steps, to bring the customer to the information he needs.
A part of the site is dedicated to the laws under debate, with daily news, to enhance the work of the Parliament.Starting from theses laws, the citizen can discover through animations how the law is done, on which step is the one interesting him. Organised on a wide map, the institutions appear to show the different links between legal and executive power. This way, the user of Revelution better understands "who's who", and "who does what". Finaly, a press review enlights the project law, links it with the daily life and tends to give very different views to the citizen on this law.

What information or services do you need?

The project was created in France last summer, and still under work, therefore, it needs first to be adapt to the UK Constitution. Otherwise, the way we organized it in France was quite light, as the website was mostly based on RSS flows organised together. To summarize it, we need daily communication from the Parliament about the debate, which already exists on their website. The map to show how decisions are taken, and who it impacts would also be something to draw for the English version.

Free Car Checks

Submitted by: Gaz

Website: http://www.freecarcheck.org/

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Every day many people want to buy a used car but without incurring some expenses or digging around it is difficult to check the documentation for a vehicle.

Lots of information about registered vehicles is available freely from various different governmental websites. The DVLA offers a service for displaying various physical information about a vehicle (colour, body type) as well as taxation details. VOSA also offer a service for verifying MOT documents and obtaining a full MOT history.

The free car check service would submit the registration plate and other required details from a vehicle logbook to the different governmental sources and collate it all together in a simple and easy to understand report. A prototype has been developed already and can submit requests to the DVLA and VOSA services.

The service could also offer users the ability to check if a vehicle is reported stolen. This requires data from the police. Users could also alternatively submit a stolen vehicle report themselves allowing a report to show up instantly on the site.

What information or services do you need?

Information from the DVLA and VOSA could be obtained in a much more consistant and reliable manner if an API was in place to query them or if a data dump was available. The DVLA appear to have a much more detailed database available at cost to marketing firms.

The police currently do not make available online details of stolen vehicles, though they will usually however offer concerned consumers free checks from the PNC if a consumer visits a police station. For some strange reason commercial entities can obtain a list of vehicles reported stolen and make that data available themselves! (Worse still they can then profit from publicly reported data)

An ideal service would allow consumers to search a local copy of vehicles currently reported stolen. This would require cooperation with the police.

Real-time Travel Advisor

Submitted by: Alan Ward, BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Recently we have seen a significant push from the government to encourage people to use public transport (for many reasons such as reducing CO2 emissions, optimising the use of transport infrastructure). Investment has been made in services for door-to-door journey planning, such as the web service from Transports Direct. This service is multi-modal i.e. offers a range of travel options for an end user to choose from i.e. bus, train, underground etc. Currently these door-to-door itineraries are based on timetables. However, often in reality there are problems e.g. delays, or changes to the itinerary due to missed connections, etc. This significantly reduces the utility of these services.

The real-time travel advisor is a system to address this issue by tracking an itinerary in real-time and advising the user (via a mobile phone or PDA) of any delays or proposed changes to the route. The ingredients for such a real-time travel advisor exist already: 1) Transport Direct door-to-door journey planning service 2) Real-time data from hundreds of providers (trains, buses, parking, underground etc) 3) SDKs from telco service providers allowing communication with end users (voice or messaging). Therefore a Web 2.0 approach could be used to glue together the above components and create a valuable real-time travel advisor for end users.

To use the service a person requests a door-to-door travel plan (itinerary) and then registers/saves it with the real-time travel advisor. Shortly before the start time for the journey the real-time travel advisor begins monitoring the hundreds of real-time data streams and, if it detects an event that affects the saved itinerary, appropriate actions are taken. These could include sending a message to the user or suggesting new itinerary (re-route), etc.

Currently real-time travel data is not owned by a single party but by hundreds of individual parties. There are two ways to approach this. 1) Act as a broker across many real-time data providers or 2) Use a search engine approach (as the data is already published on web sites). Such an innovative (e.g. real-time) search engine will have to monitor Web sites for changes in the data much more often that Internet search engines (e.g every 5 min, etc.).

What information or services do you need?

Transports Direct offers web service for the journey planning
Filtered news feeds
Trafficmaster -- road sensors
Events
Weather

'Let Me be Involved'

Submitted by: Alan Ward, BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This is an idea to make individuals feel more involved in the political process. Users could post messages (or videos) of ideas, feedback or problems for their MPs and local councillors on a website. The individuals could also vote on which ideas or problems they feel should be of highest priority for government. MPs and local councillors could also post responses to enable the individuals to see that their voice is heard and their opinions are important.

What information or services do you need?

Parliamentary documents -- current topics of discussion etc.
Committee reports from local and central government

Build my property.com

Submitted by: Alan Ward, BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This would be a collection of information and collaboration services that relate to the entire process of building or extending a property. In particular it would enable people to be aware of when land is available; provide 'user' ratings of an area on well being and 'quality of life indicators; provide the ability to see similar houses or projects; collate data on planning applications or permissions for similar projects, in particular to view those that fail and the reasons why; provide information to keep up-to-date with current legislation.

The service would benefit the experts by allowing them to better target those most likely to be in need of their services or advice. The consumers of relevant Services could rate providers on the website enabling customer loyalty rating to be built up. This would allow consumers to make more informed decisions regarding purchasing services or accepting advice.

In addition, the website could provide visibility of estimated costs against the end-end process. These costs could be a best estimate based on the aggregation of the costs estimated by people in similar situations. The benefit here is that the costs may influence early decisions.

What information or services do you need?

Land registry/House Prices
Maps
Legislation -- e.g. electrical regulations
Planning permission approvals and denials

Life-changing events.com

Submitted by: Alan Ward, BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This is an idea designed to support citizens at important times in their life ie points at which life changing events happen; be that birth, marriage, starting university or moving house.

When we make these transitions in our lives access to the right current information sources to inform decisions would be invaluable however this idea need not be confined to static data, nor does it need to be one way. For example consider perhaps the most important life-changing event -- death! Good ideas have already been submitted to this competition to assemble data and advice on the process and procedures involved in registering deaths and coping with the aftermath of such a trauma but perhaps these could be extended. Offering a service to link obituaries and death certification to utility services that need to be ceased and to provide early notification of death certification (by doctors with appropriate authentication facilities) to service providers would be invaluable in reducing the incidence of 'inappropriate literature' being sent to individuals who have recently died. This is the cause of much heartache for families today. This interactive facility combined with access to appropriate information and even approved service provider contact details or contacts for appropriate self-help groups would be very beneficial. A published and pseudo-realtime information feed would also be advantageous to government in reducing fraudulent claims without upsetting innocent families at a difficult time of life.

Although this idea has been explained for the most final of life-changing moments similar principles apply to other stages. Designing Government portals and information feeds around life-changes and in a way that is interactive should prove accessible and customer-friendly for the users

What information or services do you need?

'Provisional' and actual death registry, approved service providers, appropriate government literature

Rogue Trader.com

Submitted by: Alan Ward, BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

Allowing citizens to make informed decisions is an important Government responsibility. Important areas where this can be applied include trading standards and Health and safety. Providing the public real-time and up to date access to recent relevant data on official inspections eg Health inspections for restaurants and information relating to known traders with a poor record of compliance to regulations and good work practice (rogue traders) would be very valuable. This could include added pictures of food/kitchens and buildings as well as the link to public health inspection, or in the case of rogue traders pictures of recently undertaken work. Clearly this data could be mashed with other relevant information; Craftsman's guilds, local service directories, restaurant and café guides etc.

This idea could also be extended to larger businesses, perhaps providing portals to allow the general public to check the 'green credentials' of businesses that trade against a brand that purports to aspire to a Green agenda.

What information or services do you need?

Health and safety reports, trading standards reports, public provided pictures, company reports

Best use of assets

Submitted by: Alan Ward. BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This idea concerns making better use of key community assets. Better utilisation of school/community resources; perhaps private use of schools, village halls etc.

The concept is to provide an information feed as to the facilities available in a locality including any special features eg this hall has a sprung dance floor. Key to the idea is the concept of a real-time diary management system and the ability to search both on features and on availability both at specific times and within a range

What information or services do you need?

Community assets and diary.

Community Bartering

Submitted by: Alan Ward, BT

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

It is important to government to provide a strong sense of community and belonging and also to provide access to essential services to the community in a cost efficient manner, especially for the more vulnerable in society. This idea promotes these concepts.

The idea is to provide information feeds and a 'marketplace' for exchange of services through bartering and payment in kind. A community site where individuals could offer their availability to undertake certain tasks in return for other services or even 'community service credits' for example ; I am available to iron now or baby sit tomorrow but I would like someone to collect a parcel for me on Wednesday. It is important for success that there is a 'pay back' from the scheme to the volunteer. This comes for the ability to take other services in return for their contributions.

If this scheme were extended to volunteers and self help groups to offer some important community services it may be a way for local authorities to reduce costs of caring while perhaps improving the accessibility of services. The propensity to support charity and important voluntary organisations has always been a strong feature of British way of life. This idea is a means to continue that tradition.

The important role for government, in addition to providing the infrastructure and information feeds on availability of services would be the ability to add specific information feeds on suitability of services on offer eg police checks. advice on appropriate regulation and also rating of the providers of services by users.

What information or services do you need?

Available services feed, regulation information

MyGov Personal Government

Submitted by: Andreas Rindler

Website: http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/OmCollab

Describe your idea. How does it work and who does it help?

This would be an interactive website with social networking where users are allowed to build/create what they want to display on 'their' Government portal choosing from a list of available mashup widgets and topics from different government departments. Think about all of the cool ideas that have been submitted to the "Show Us a Better Way" competition. We need a platform that could host these ideas, where users can pick and chose which of the services they want to see on their own personalised page, share/recommend services to their friends, family or business partners etc. So I propose to create a platform that enables users and developers to configure, develop or share whatever service they want.

Here are the key features of the site:

• Government IT has a platform to publish and document their data services
• Government departments can create and publish their own widgets to interact with the public
• Developers can find data source, develop their own widgets and publish them for users to select
• Users can find services and widgets published by the government and by developers, create a personal site which displays exactly what they want to know, share services, data or widgets with others, discuss services with other users or give feedback to the government department which published the service/data/widget in the first place
• Government departments can publicise new information, consult with the public on new policies (e.g. the Cabinet Office which has a requirement for a public consultation period) and solicit responses

This way, the Government does not need to make any assumption on what the public would like to see. It would purely be down to what the public likes and their preferences of accessing the Government information.

We have built an extensible collaboration platform called omCollab that is open source and freely available to the public. It provides wiki, blogs, mashup, search, social networking and other functionality. It also provides a framework to built new extensions (the widgets that I have described above) and make them available to users. The personalisation of what widgets a user would like to have isn't fully completed yet, but we would use the prize money to build this functionality.

What information or services do you need?

The community would build and share whatever services they think are the most valuable. I can see many people turning the great ideas of this competition into widgets and publishing and sharing it on MyGov.