What opportunities do you see in this new data availability?

[3Six]

Substantial quantities of UK government data is going to be made available on the net in due course. Article.

A new website, data.gov.uk, will offer reams of public sector data, ranging from traffic statistics to crime figures, for private or commercial use.
The target is to kickstart a new wave of services that find novel ways to make use of the information.

Brainstorming anyone? How can we make money out of this? And is anyone looking for a partner with some web savvy who can part finance?

For example, in the trial period developers have already built a site that displays the location of a school according to ratings assigned by Ofsted inspectors. I know property sites are integrating that data into house listings to give homebuyers an idea of all the local schools and how they perform.

But new data is going to include everything from how many gloves your local hospital is ordering to which street has a pothole. Opportunities for mashups are huge.

Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions? Would you be keen to capitalise on this?

[Clinton]

What data is available? The data sets are here for anyone who's interested. Some samples:

Medical
Abortion rates in different areas
A&E admissions
Accidents in the home
much more. And that's just the A's.

Education
Number getting free school meals
Absenteeism
Admission Appeals (lots of companies springing up offering appeal services)
lots more

There's tons and tons of stuff, and some of it goes back several years. Do have a look, guys!

And don't forget to use the search feature to find data in your niche.

There's also a section where you can submit your own ideas though it's empty at the moment.

Here are some sample apps already created.

[3Six]

Oh well

I thought they'd be huge interest in this.

[tke71709]

I looked at the data 3six and so much of it is so esoteric that I just don't know how much of it could be monetized.

Abortion rates?
Accidents in the home?

I did find some interesting databases on data.gov (the us version) that might pan out though. I'm currently getting a script written that will allow me to create content sites based around database information using Wordpress as a back end.

Even if the content itself never ranks for anything I'll still be able to leverage it to generate backlinks other to sites that need the help.

[Jeff2869]

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I can't seem to get hold of the data in XML form. If I could find this, then I might have a go at hacking together a couple of mash ups - just for fun!

But I think tke71709 is probably right - in this case less might well be more.

Jeff

[tke71709]

I'm currently getting a script written that will allow me to create content sites based around database information using Wordpress as a back end.

Bah and I, of course, jinxed myself...

Got the quote, then I send him a slightly more detailed spec and he comes back with "how much are you willing to pay" to which I respond "what you asked for" to which his response is "I can't do this for that much, sorry".

Then wtf did you tell me that you would? My own fault for being cheap of course, but it's still frustrating.

[Clinton]

Abortion rates?
Accidents in the home?

That's just on the first page. Say I'm considering moving. And I have kids. If you think private schools, coaching for the 11+ entrance exam, no good secondary schools nearby, my child has special needs or I want to avoid a school that has a music specialisation, available info includes:

Academic Achievement in State Schools by area
Pupil Teacher Ratios
Age of School
Past Alumni
Parliamentary Constituency
Subject Specialisations
Achievement and Attainment Tables
Percentage Getting Free Meals
Distribution of Special Needs
Percentage of Special Needs Children
Travellers' (gypsies) Education

Also cross matching with child mortality, child protection, child-friendly recreation facilities...

How much do private schools pay per lead?

Related apps: Find a school based on OFSTED score.

I was going to quickly also check potential for medical insurance related mashups to drive traffic to my recently acquired finance network but I ran out of time, have to pick one of my kids up from nursery in a few minutes.

[Clinton]

Met someone at a wake yesterday who is using this data to help Conservative candidates flag local issues to fight the coming general election on. It won't be a publicly available tool but from his description it does look like a killer application!

[3Six]

Breaking News: This is an interesting development for anybody looking for mashup ideas:

Google sexes up stats with Public Data Explorer — 10 live demos

[Clinton]

A related opportunity: Huge NEW release of data from the new UK government. BBC

This morning, the Treasury has released a tranche of data from its Coins (Combined Online Information System) database, which contains details of public spending across Whitehall.

This represents a reversal of the policy adopted by the Labour government, which in the past few months turned down freedom-of-information requests from myself and others ...

There's a lot of information there (and some background here), and it's not easy to work out its significance. So please explore it yourself; my colleagues and I would be very grateful to know if you spot something you think is interesting or come up with good ways to analyse it....