Sorry for the delayed response. Short answer — yes, we’d love to encourage as many entries as possible so want to find a way to get your mashup entered.

Two little things that probably need to be considered: (1) the rules (see cl 3) say that all entries must include at least one dataset that we “liberated” for the contest. We did this because the contest is, in part, a demonstration exercise — how do we go about releasing data by govt and what can the community do with it. Any chance you can find one of the datasets on data.australia.gov.au or the ABS to include in yours? (2) those pesky rules also require (see cl 8 ) that you have permission to use and submit the data in a mashup for the contest. The main data I can see in your mashup seems to be published for “personal, in-house or non-commercial use” without alteration only, which would typically exclude mashing it up and posting it publicly online. I assume you have some separate permission to use it in your mashup but you probably want to check that this permission extends to the contest before submitting it.

Thanks, Mia

As a starting point we’d recommend that you look at IP Australia’s website, particularly the list of useful addresses at the bottom.

I’m scraping the data myself and transforming it to JSON + KML, so I think my mashup would fall under the transformation challenge.

Is it possible to submit my entry to the competition?

Look forward to your reply

1. You are welcome to make a Silverlight or Flash RIA but if you do you need to ensure that it does things that require those technologies. You could even use Processing. Uniqueness, purpose and usefulness (either for citizens, organisations or government) will probably, in the judges eyes, trump visual design.

2. The judges will be using modern browsers with current Flash, Silverlight etc – don’t worry, we won’t be using standard issue Government SOEs with IE6!

3. Fully working ideas which demonstrate usefulness will trump run of the mill polished mashups. It does have to work though – an idea alone is not enough. If programming is tricky then I’d suggest forming or joining a team.

4. We will not be giving feedback before judging begins but you are welcome to resubmit your applications at anytime up to the closing date and time. Bear in mind that other mashup people and interested parties *will* be looking at the submitted mashups as they come in and may give useful feedback which allows you to improve and iterate your work before the closing date. (Judges won’t be leaving comments before the closing date though in fairness to others!)

Seb Chan

Quality and design (including standards compliance)

2. Will we get marked down or disqualified for using the latest RIA plugin (likely that the judges may not have installed yet) eg Flash 10 or Silverlight 3 ?

3. Are you looking for interesting concepts or completed polished sites? Do we put our effort into the ideas or into the plumbing?

4. Will their be any feedback cycle? For example if we submit our mashup early and we have done something that would disqualify us will you let us know so we could remove that data or fix the attribution? (This could provide an incentive to submit entries earlier)

I just wanted to follow up this thread — though I know it deals with “boring” licensing issues. Like Cameron I’d be more than happy to take this up off-line if that were better (please drop me an email — my last email address for you is a CC one which I assume is no longer operational).

Rather than express an opinion here I just wanted to make sure you were aware of the work Open Data Commons has been doing to produce data(base)-specific open licenses (the motivation here is that CC licenses which are designed for content don’t map well to data — just as CC’s existence was motivated by the fact that open-source licenses for code weren’t appropriate for content …).

Over the last couple of years ODC has developed and released 1.0 versions of:

The Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) – as the name suggests this puts the material in the public domain.

The Open Database License (ODbL) – this is “Attribution, Share-Alike” for data.

These licenses have been specifically design to work with data and databases and the rights that may exist therein (whether sui generis or otherwise). The licenses have been designed for international applicability but we’d obviously be very interested to have any feedback on the situation vis-a-vis Australia.

On a second point, (as should be clear) neither of the current ODC licenses is a pure attribution license. However, ODC is considering developing one (this would be fairly easy — the hard work was done for the ODbL!), and it sounds like there is a need for such a license. Going forward would this be of any interest within the Australian context?

The process for providing context to data is similar to making notes in programming code, so other programmers understand the logic – or making file notes on conversations – or recording processes and job descriptions so anyone can understand the role.

There’s a long tradition of the public service being diligent in documenting its activities as a risk mitigation approach and to ensure that appropriate records are kept for governance purposes.

If providing context to data was coached in similar terminology – making it contextually clear to people 30 years from now – and made a criteria of appropriate record keeping for government (the record has to be stored in a form that is accessible, discoverable and UNDERSTANDABLE into the future) I think we’d see less obfuscation.

It would also help government run smoother – people across departments and over time would understand and be able to apply data series appropriately, leading to better policy and service outcomes.