Digital Engagement

Part 2 UK@SHANGHAI EXPO 2010:Social Networking in China- the UK@Expo experience

 The UK is a committed promoter of freedom of speech in China, welcoming progress where it occurs and condemning repression. At our last bilateral human rights dialogue with China, we lobbied specifically on internet access. We also hold an annual UK/China internet forum to address challenges as well as opportunities for business and Government.

The UK Expo team is working exclusively with Chinese sites for its Expo campaigns. Many of the foreign hosted sites like Facebook and MySpace have problematic access issues in China; but there are also distinctly different preferences among the Chinese user for the look, the feel and most of all the functionality of such sites. As a result, most networking in China now takes place on homegrown Chinese sites, and those sites are our primary partners for the Shanghai Expo. At first glance, established Chinese social networking sites seem quite similar to Western ones, perhaps because their initial designs were often direct copies of the more familiar Western sites. They were also initially very derivative in terms of content (hosting blogs, photo archives and messaging/networking). More recently developed Chinese sites are very different: they love clutter — the more stuff on the page, the better; and they are more likely to favour bulletin boards (BBS) and games than any other functions. Many Chinese users spend long periods online: 44% of Chinese users spend 3-8 hours, and 15% of users are on BBS sites for more than 8 hours each day. Research shows users tend to trust BBS sites because they are thought to be first-hand and presented in a comfortable, community environment. The next phase of our online campaign will involve increased blogging by team members and partners on these boards, to engage directly across all aspects of our Expo programme.

Chinese social networks are also pursuing very different business models to their American counterparts, relying more on revenue from micro payments for virtual goods than on ad revenue. At this stage, this means that we have to fund our online campaigns; but as interest in what the UK is doing at Expo grows (and as some sites choose to copy our ideas, e.g. on a nickname campaign as mentioned in the post above) we hope to leverage more partnership opportunities with specific sites to keep costs down.

In the West, networks of friends on social networking sites tend to be an online representation of our real-world networks, whereas in China it is much more common to create new networks online, and to be aspirational in creating an online identity. Shaping a (new) identity online is an important feature, and Chinese “netizens” are willing to pay real money for clothes or jewelry for their networking avatar. Users will also pay to take part in games, and to add value to their gaming experience by paying to enter enhanced levels, or purchase additional game features. As a result, Chinese social networking sites cite huge profits: while social networking sites in the West are struggling to turn a profit, some of China’s homegrown sites are very profitable. Tencent, China’s largest internet portal mostly known for its hugely popular instant messenger product QQ, is the largest social networking site, instant messaging and gaming platform in China with over 300 million active users; and profits of over $500 million last year (which is 4 x Facebook’s total revenue).

Carma Elliot is HM Consul-General in Shanghai

Part 1 UK@SHANGHAI EXPO 2010: How we are using Social Networking

Shanghai Expo 2010 will run for 6 months, from May to October; and is expected to attract upwards of 70 million visitors over those six months. The UK has a truly exciting pavilion, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, on the Expo site – able to accommodate up to 40,000 visitors a day (5-7 million over 6 months). In addition, there will be an extensive programme of business and public events, showcasing the UK’s sectoral strengths and business expertise, the arts, culture, science, innovation and our low carbon agenda. For the first time in the history of Expos, there will also be an online Expo; and the UK is developing its own ambitious Expo website to maximize contact with the growing web population in China.
 
It is the last of these 3 platforms which offers the UK the greatest potential to extend the reach of its public diplomacy messages in China. China has around 340 million internet users: this number is growing at about 6 million every month. Following the introduction of 3G, almost 50% of users now use mobile internet and Chinese “netizens” are on-line for increasingly extended periods with this mobile access. With such a massive user base and a huge number of very active networking sites, the UK Expo team has worked hard to identify those sites most likely to be used by our Expo target audience (young/middle class users) to have a conversation about the UK, as a creative, innovative nation – diverse and open to business, students and tourists. We are able to present the UK as a preferred partner for China, and Chinese people; and one which seeks to engage with our Expo target groups in their own preferred networking media.

Since early December 2009, the UK Shanghai Expo project team has been running a marketing campaign on Chinese social media sites designed to drive traffic to the main UK Shanghai Expo website and to create an added “buzz” around the UK’s programme at Expo. The response so far illustrates the huge potential of using these channels in China for public diplomacy purposes.  Not only does social networking allow us to engage directly, and to grow our audience in China; but experience shows that we can get our softer messages across to segmented audiences most effectively, and directly, by working with specific sites.  We are also able to mediate, and shape, the responses to our messages.

The Chinese target audience for Expo has in many respects bypassed the traditional media age, using digital media instead in unprecedented numbers. The UK Expo marketing communications effort builds on our awareness of this growing consumer trend, rather than (just) working through more traditional public diplomacy media channels. Our research shows that we are the only national level participant at Shanghai Expo to have invested such significant resource in digital media presence. By leading the way in using digital media to reach our audience, this in itself is demonstrating to a wide audience the UK’s position as an innovator, at the forefront of technical developments. 

Our Expo website incorporates the functionality that Chinese users respond to; but it is our work on digital marketing campaigns that truly sets us apart. Since starting our UK@Expo “buzz” campaigns to coincide with the launch of the Expo website, expectations have been far exceeded: we have received nearly half a million effective viewers. The number of people who have engaged on the topic of the design of the UK pavilion, and the search for a nickname for it, has been 1500% above our objectives; and the total number of clicks/views almost 350% of target (with 42,000 views and 2500 comments). 90% of all comments have been positive about the UK pavilion; with the remaining 10% neutral. Discussions for a nickname for our Expo pavilion already run to 67 pages on one site; the same site has also recently launched its own nickname campaign for the top 10 Expo pavilions, very much following our lead with a successful idea.

It’s been important in our approach to reflect the distinctly different preferences among Chinese users for the look, feel and most of all the functionality of social networking sites. We’ve done a separate post on this.

Next steps

The functionality provided by the UK Expo website offers huge potential to develop much more ambitious FCO/HMG marketing campaigns in China; and the team will be encouraging Expo stakeholders (both private and public sector) to leverage this potential to the full for their own benefit.  To tap into the most popular functions, the team is developing competitions and games which could both generate revenue and offer further sponsorship opportunities. Phase 3 of the UK Expo website which goes live with Expo in May will incorporate a knowledge bank (funded by NINJ/UKTI) highlighting the UK’s sectoral strengths. Research has helped the team identify the most appropriate social media partners to work with to promote this core knowledge bank to segmented audiences.

There is potential to take established work in new directions too: most bulletin boards require real name registrations, generating the option of working together with hosts to build databases, and set up newsletters and online communities with a declared interest in the UK.

Carma Elliot is HM Consul-General in Shanghai

Applications: the real stars of the data.gov.uk launch

Sir Tim Berners-Lee said at the launch of the beta site of data.gov.uk last week, "This is very much the beginning. Hopefully, this is the tip of the iceberg. There is a whole lot more to do." But what a beginning!

The range of applications made available in the week before launch outstripped our expectations and clearly impressed Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt at the launch event hosted at the Guardian’s offices in Kings Cross. To date there are already 28 applications on the data.gov.uk site with more being added every day.

In his address Tim explained why putting public data on the web is so valuable: "If you put data on what your Department looks after on the web, people can see what you have been doing over time. Then you are able to compare this against other data to find trends, compare locations, run statistical analysis and maybe find new unexpected links to other data that the original Department had never envisaged."

Nigel Shadbolt continued "Seeing applications added (to the data.gov.uk site) within 40 minutes of each other this morning indicates the appetite of the developer community. This project did not just engage the developer community but was pushed and prodded by them."

Indeed the showcase of applications produced by those developers who had seen an earlier version of the site back in September pointed to some really interesting and unexpected uses of the data made available.

Developers who presented their work at the launch included Christian Heilmann (Yahoo!), Chris Osborne (ITOworld), David McCandless (Information is Beautiful), Richard Pope (ScraperWiki), Matthew Sommerville (Mysociety), Tom Taylor (Newspaper Club) and Simon Willison (The Guardian).

Christian Heilmann produced a graphic means of showing change in house prices over time with an app that used house price data from data.gov.uk. Perhaps most impressive was his ability to ‘clean up’ his app in the time it took to travel from Covent Garden to Piccadilly on the Underground! His blog features a very useful explanation of how the app was put together.

Chris Osborne introduced ITOworld’s work on an automated transport mapping system which featured the ability to add layers for shops and services on top of local transport services data. These could then be customised by the user to produce Harry Beck style maps of local transport for any location in the UK. While the version shown was still in development and some of the data required is, as yet, unavailable it clearly indicated the potential for developers to produce applications that can make a significant difference for people even when offline.

David McCandless showed some of his stunning visualisations from his Information is Beautiful blog, one of which, the Billion-Pound-O-Gram, makes use of HM Treasury data.

Perhaps one of our favourites (although not currently on data.gov.uk) was the app shown by Simon Willison of the Guardian allowing users to tag the location of species on a map. Who knew there was a 41m strong shrew population in the UK?

Government launches one-stop shop for data

Today we are making the beta of data.gov.uk available for general access. It contains more than 2500 sets of data from across government.  All of the data is non-personal and in a format that can be reused by any individual or business to create innovative new software tools, such as applications about house prices, local amenities and services, or access to local hospitals. This delivers on the commitment in “Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government” to go live with data.gov.uk, as well as to integrate data from the Publications Hub for National Statistics and release more health data.

It's now just over 7 months since the Prime Minister appointed Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt to help drive the Government's programme to free up its public data for re-use. And indeed just over 7 months since I took up my role as Director for Digital Engagement. We have involved over 2,400 people in our developer community to learn what data they want and how they want to access it; and we have brought together into one place an initial collection of over 2500 datasets from across government which can be re-used freely and easily.

“Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government”, published in December, set out the overall strategy on Public Data. It published key principles for the release and reuse of Government's non-personal data; a commitment to release certain key, and much requested, datasets on weather, transport and health over the next few months, and consultation on freeing up some of the products of the Ordnance Survey; providing data under a licence interoperable with the internationally-recognised Creative Commons model; and an initiative to work with local government to extend Public Data principles there, through a Local Public Data Panel which Professor Nigel Shadbolt chairs. We are also moving towards greater use of Linked Data standards.

Freeing up public data is a journey, and today marks another step along the path: making the "beta" of data.gov.uk available to everyone, in the wider community of interest as well as developers who have already worked with it.  Thanks to the advice and feedback that our previewers have given us, there are a number of new features on the site which we have been working on and improving over the last few months. These include:

Datasets – we have both increased the number of datasets available on the site and made the information about each dataset more extensive.

Browsing – you can now browse datasets by subject tags

Wiki - The site has now integrated a wiki which enables the sharing of community knowledge. Every dataset now links to a corresponding wiki page: this will encourage information about using the data with sample queries and example source code to be shared.

Forum – The site now has a forum which allows registered users to discuss aspects of the project in more depth.

Over the next few months we will build on this beta with more functionality. We are already working with departments, agencies and local authorities to release more data month by month and we will increase the use of Linked Data standards.

The benefits of blogging

It’s been about 15 months now since we got into blogging here at the Department for International Development (DFID). I say “we” - actually, it’s our staff around the world who write the blogs while we support them through style tips and technical help.

So what spurred us to join the blogosphere in the first place? The big idea for us was to give our web visitors another channel, beyond the main website, where they can get the real-life story of our work from those who are actually out there doing it and to allow visitors to ask questions directly and continue the debate. We wanted to move away from a purely one-way online presence, to a two-way interaction with our audience.

As with much of the social media we’ve ventured into (including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr) it’s been a learning curve as we’ve gone along. That’s not to say we hadn’t scoped it out beforehand (far from it), but we have realised that social media is very much about the doing (rather than just planning).

Once we’d figured out the mechanics of the blog and had a platform we were happy with (we use WordPress, tailored to our needs thanks to the skills of Puffbox) we soon realised the biggest challenge was the ongoing management of bloggers and the actual content.

In terms of the latter, our first issue became apparent as soon as we mentioned the project to our colleagues in the Press Team – and gave a few of them a mild heart murmur (“…so let me get this straight, you want to let our staff write what they want about their work, then make it public?!”).

I’m hamming it up here a bit of course, but the point is you may face some valid internal concerns about giving staff free reign to publish. But it shouldn’t be an insurmountable obstacle. After consulting with our Press colleagues further and agreeing on some sensible precautions we’ve come up with a solution that everyone’s happy with.

The other big ‘lesson learnt’ was management of the bloggers and the supply of content. We help to support them to develop their own style and to get the best out of their blogs with practical tips such as linking, using photos, incorporating a story, etc.

With this support, several bloggers have taken to it easily and require little management. Some may also be bloggers in their spare time or have a keen personal interest so run away with it. However, we like to ensure we have a range of bloggers, and that also means a range of abilities and time to upload the blog themselves.

For us, we think getting the range of content is crucial (for example, from the heads of our offices down to the programme workers), so we’ve tried to adapt our approach to support bloggers on their terms. What this means is that if a blogger is happy to do it all themselves, they’re free to do so. If they’re tight for time and can only bash out the text of a blog in between other commitments, they can send it to us and we do the rest: format it, add photos and upload it to our system.

So basically, once the blog is up and running, we’ve found it’s still a hands-on process. And it will vary from blogger to blogger. I know it’s been a different experience for other departments and agencies, and it makes sense that organisations adapt their strategy according to their staff, purpose and audience.

And of course we are still refining the process, so it would be great to hear what approaches others have taken and the lessons they’ve learnt as we try to improve. Any thoughts anyone?

While we’re looking to do better, we’re happy to be reaping the benefits of our blog already. Since we began we’ve had more than 50,000 visits to the site and our number of daily visits has steadily climbed, roughly doubling since October 2008.

It’s not just numbers. There is a real engagement with our audience now, with several comments being posted, many beyond the UK (who’d have guessed Nepal would be such a hotbed of discussion?). For one reader, it even gave him “an emotional connection to a government department – something I never thought I would say!”

Our bloggers are also making new connections – for example, Martin Leach’s blog on the Rwandan genocide prompted a researcher from the London School of Economics (LSE) to get in touch, while Emily Poskett’s post on the Comic Relief celebrity climb of Mt Kilimanjaro broadened our exposure to thousands of visitors beyond our typical audience.

But see for yourself and let us know what you think we could do to improve. And, if you’re a fan, let us know which you think was the best DFID blog of last year in our round-up on Facebook.

 Julia Chandler and Simon Davis are members of the Department for International Development's Online Content team

Met Office releases first Weather Widget

The Met Office generates vast quantities of data on the way to delivering forecasts and climate predictions. Much of this data (more than 60Gb per day) is distributed already in some way — either to other meteorological and climate organisations, or to people for whom the weather can have an impact. The Met Office website is also very popular, especially at times of significant weather events, such as the snow of February 2009 when there were nearly 20 million visits to the site. This year the Met Office has significantly expanded capabilities to distribute data with advisories, warnings and alerts available as RSS feeds, email, Twitter (and, via Twitter, SMS), and a range of platform specific tools such as those for Google, Firefox and Windows Vista/7. Forecast information will also be using these channels early next year. See here for more information.

The interpretation of weather data can be a highly skilled task, particularly if that data is computer generated model outputs or observation data such as satellite or radar information. Research suggests many requests for data are not to re-use or add value to the data in any way, but simply to visualise it. Many websites would like to offer their users local or contextual weather and, until now, the only choice available to them has been to develop their own web-based weather visualisation applications based on a subscribed weather data feed. The Met Office will continue to supply weather data and indeed plans to widen the catalogue of data available to the general public over the coming months, but this is often not what website owners want.

To meet this need, the Met Office has released the first of a new series of “Weather Widgets”. These tools are primarily aimed at website owners and operators who may only have a limited web development capability. A simple to use web wizard here, walks users through the configuration of a weather visualisation tool. It is possible to select the location of interest, number of forecast days and more besides. It is even possible to include simple radar imagery, animated precipitation forecasts, isobaric charts and temperature maps into the widget. When the configuration is completed, a small piece of script is generated that can be embedded into the host website, allowing the user to present a professional and polished weather tool at no cost to them. As the Met Office serves the content on behalf of the host site, there are also no ongoing running costs to the host website.

Much of the technology to support the gadgets was developed in the Met Office public innovation environment, called “Invent”, where new ways to visualise and distribute weather content are always being developed and tested — so visit often to catch the latest in weather technology.

Charlie Ewen - Head of Web Business and Service at the Met Office.

Local Government Data

The Prime Minister said that "there are many hundreds more datasets that can be opened up - not only from central government but also from local councils, the NHS, police and education authorities."; and the Secretary of State for Communities said "we plan to give local people far better access to information held by local public organisations so they can challenge, compare or scrutinise their local services in order to drive up standards in their area."

The Government will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton has been asked to head up a panel of experts to oversee the release of local public data and ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the Local Government Association, government departments and agencies.

The Local Public Data Panel members will include:

• Tim Allen, Programme Director for Analysis and Research, Local Government Association
• Roger Hampson, Chief Executive of Redbridge
• Dave Smith, Chief Executive of Sunderland City Council
• Janet Hughes, Head of Scrutiny and Investigations at the Greater London Authority
• Jos Creese, Head of IT at Hampshire County Council
• Nick Aldridge, CEO of Mission Fish UK (eBay for Charity)
• William Perrin - Government web innovator and community activist
• Chris Taggart - web developer and founder of OpenlyLocal.com

The Panel will work closely with local authorities, strategic partners, government departments and agencies, developers and community organisations to help improve local public services and empower citizens. The Panel will operate for a two year period to the end of 2011. It is expected to hold its first meeting in January 2010. Key aims are to:

• Ensure understanding of the case for making local public data freely available for re-use
• Promote innovative uses of local public data
• Sponsor the further development of a single place on line (‘data.gov.uk’)for all public sector data, while meeting the specific needs of the local government sector
• Encourage agreed standards for greater data and information sharing by local strategic partnerships.

Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government

This morning the Prime Minister launched Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government. You can read his speech on the No. 10 website

The document sets out plans for strengthening the role of citizens and civic society; recasting the relationships between the centre and the frontline and between the citizen and the State; and streamlining government. It is the culmination of work carried out across the public sector over the past year, including the Power of Information Taskforce Report, and thanks are given for the vision and advice received from industry leaders and distinguished public sector thinkers - including Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt on radically opening up publicly held data to promote transparency.

A major theme of "Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government" is radically opening up data and public information to promote transparent and effective government and social innovation. Significant announcements on the Public Data theme include:

Establishing Public Data Principles

• Public data will be published in reusable, machine-readable form
• Public data will be available and easy to find through a single easy to use online access point (http://www.data.gov.uk/)
• Public data will be published using open standards and following the recommendations of the World Wide Web Consortium
• Any 'raw' dataset will be re-presented in linked data form
• More public data will be released under an open licence which enables free reuse, including commercial reuse
• Data underlying the Government's own websites will be published in reusable form for others to use
• Personal, classified, commercially sensitive and third-party data will continue to be protected

Opening up specific datasets and promoting transparency

The Government will release valuable public datasets and making them free for re-use, including:

• Releasing health data such as the NHS Choices data
• Consulting on making Ordnance Survey mapping and postcode datasets available for free reuse from April 2010
• Increasing access to and reuse of public transport data including the National Public Transport Access Node database, with information available to the development community by April 2010
• Opening Met Office Public Weather Service data to include: releasing significant underlying data for weather forecasts for free download and reuse by April 2010, and working to further expand the release of weather data, while recognising all public safety considerations; and making available more information on Met Office scientists, their work and scientific papers, free of charge
• Publishing, by spring 2010, details of how the fiscal stimulus announced in the Pre-Budget Report 2008 has been spent, disaggregated to local level
• Launching a public consultation early in 2010 to seek views on how we could publish further financial data so that it is user-friendly and accessible, with a view to putting a live system in place by summer 2010
• Integrating ONS data with http://www.data.gov.uk/ from January 2010.

Encompassing local government and the wider public sector

• The Government will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor Nigel Shadbolt will lead a local public data panel to ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the Local Government Association, government departments and agencies.
• The Prime Minister said that "there are many hundreds more datasets that can be opened up - not only from central government but also from local councils, the NHS, police and education authorities."
• More details about the Local Public Data Panel.

Actively publishing comparative data

The Government will make it easier to compare performance across frontline services, by publishing data on public service performance, citizen outcomes and value for money in achieving those outcomes. This data will be published in reusable form on www.data.gov.uk by 2011. Specifically this means that:

• In local government we will work with the sector to develop comparable measures of value for money across a range of local government services. We will consult on these from spring 2010 and publish them in 2011.
• In the health sector, we will publish hospital-trust-level reference costs for specific treatment categories (or healthcare resource groups) online in early 2010.
• In education, we will publish as much data as possible from the National Pupil Database and other sources that is relevant and compatible with preserving individual anonymity from April 2010 onwards.
• In the criminal justice system, we will benchmark offender management in prisons and probation during 2010, and benchmark the whole of the prison and probation system, by the end of 2011.
• For police force performance, we will publish quarterly 12-month moving average crime data at police authority level, by 2010, and develop value for money data which will enable comparison of forces’ costs and productivity.

"Raw data now"

Some of the data promised today will not be available for a few months. However to go alongside the launch we've been working with the data teams around Whitehall to put another 146 raw data sets live on our developer preview data site right now.

Finally as the Prime Minister said this morning:

“Releasing data can and must unleash the innovation and entrepreneurship at which Britain excels - one of the most powerful forces of change we can harness.”

Thinking Big

The Bebo social networking website recently hosted a major competition, called the Big Think, to find new, practical ideas from young people on how to tackle the specific issues of climate change, crime and careers. The best three ideas were presented by their authors to the Prime Minister and Cabinet last week.

Big Think authors visit Number 10.

With approximately 8 million unique users, most of whom are in their teens or early twenties, Bebo provided a direct link to the target audience – and was the perfect medium to listen to the aspirations and concerns of young Britain in a credible, youth-led, non PR-driven context. 

This search for practical solutions to some of the major challenges facing Britain followed on from the Big Think’s two week online debate on young people’s priorities held earlier in the summer. Both phases are part of the wider consultation held around the Building Britain’s Future programme. This first phase culminated with 10 young ambassadors and 5 Bebo competition winners having the chance to meet the Prime Minister to discuss their ideas.

For the second phase of the Big Think the Cabinet Office, in partnership with No10, Bebo and Livity (a non-profit social enterprise agency) sought to stimulate thought, interest and discussions by posting various polls to the Big Think main profile page on Bebo. In total we received over 12,000 votes across all polls in reply to questions on how to improve schools, concepts of identity and whether Britain ought to have a death penalty.

The polls, in turn, drove young people to want to contribute more on a serious debatable topic. Rather than giving a simple yes or no answer they commented to explain their opinions and provide new ideas. In total the Bebo profile page had 6,798 comments while the Big Think teaser video that was added to the Bebo homepage was viewed 1,592,643 times.

We received many ideas of which the best six were chosen to go through to the next stage. Their authors were then invited to travel to Westminster to meet with expert mentors Henry Bonsu, co-founder of Colourful Radio and Andy Hamflett, Chief Executive of the UK Youth Parliament, who coached them on the best way to present their ideas to a panel.

After their coaching session it was time to pitch their ideas to a high profile panel led by the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Tessa Jowell, and including drum ‘n’ bass star Goldie and record-breaking young mountaineer Jake Meyer. The panel then decided on the top three ideas with their authors then given the task of presenting them to the PM and Cabinet!

The Big Think represents an excellent example of the real capability of social media for Government not only to gather feedback and participate in discussions with previously difficult to reach stakeholder groups but also to engage with the replies it receives. The Big Think demonstrates the Government’s commitment to begin the journey to move its public interaction from broadcast to conversation and collaboration.

Stephen Timms reports progress on Making Public Data Public

Yesterday the Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, gave the keynote speech for the RSA/Intellect “Technology in a Cold Climate” symposium in which he outlined progress to date on the HMG data site.

“Information is the essential “raw material” of a new digital society, opening up solutions to these kind of challenges.  And Government must play its part by setting a framework for new approaches to using data – and, as they say, “mashing” data from different sources to provide new services which enhance our lives.  In particular, we want Government information to be accessible and useful for the widest possible spectrum of people. 

That is why the Prime Minister asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee to advise on how Government can best use the internet to make non-personal public data as widely available as possible.  We are supporting Sir Tim in a major new project, aiming for a single online point of contact for government data, and to extend access to data from the wider public sector.  We want this project for “Making Public Data Public” to put UK businesses and other organisations at the forefront of the new semantic web, and to be a platform for developing new technologies and new services.”

So far our request for developers to “get excited and make things” has exceeded our initial expectations. Not only is the number of people signing up to the developer forum higher (currently more than 1,300), but also the discussion board is very active with a healthy list of ideas for the site and, perhaps most excitingly, a few applications are beginning to see the light of day.

Working in partnership with Guardian Professional, we held 3 developer days hosted at The Guardian's Kings Place offices in central London on the 14th-16th September. As an organisation they were best placed to help us undertake this task, having built a community of talented developers and opened up their API. You can have a look here at the excellent postcode paper concept and the rather wonderful traffic data visualisations here, which were just two of the many ideas for applications that emerged over the course of the camp. Ideas about their priorities for further data releases (to add to the 1,100 datasets currently on the site) were shared and important foundations for further iterations of the HMG Data site were laid.