iNews

Showing posts with label pic n mix. Show all posts

Still Picking and Mixing!

Posted on 09:30 No Comments
Labels: disruptive technologies, pic n mix

'Pic and Mix' Update - Help yourself to government data

Many of you will have heard about 'Pic and Mix', but for those of you who have managed to avoid my pleas for data, I’ll briefly re-cap on what the project is all about.

There’s a great deal of information and data available to the public, from bus routes and GP information, through to recycling statistics and Ofsted reports. All this information is freely available to the public but not necessarily easy to find. Part of the 'Pic and Mix' project looks to make this information accessible online from a single place. But in addition to making information available for download, 'Pic and Mix' makes the data available in a format which allows people to ‘mash’, personalise and share information.

Imagine being able to select data relating to care homes in Kent, adding inspection reports, and the location of nearby support services. Having easy access to this type of information would help people make decisions about things that really matter and more importantly, empower them to me more informed and engaged with their community.

That’s what 'Pic and Mix' is all about.

There are more than 350 datasets on the 'Pic and Mix' website and we have started to promote the site more widely than the pilot group. We’re getting great feedback to our Tweets and were even mentioned in a BBC article! The priority now is to get more people using the site and personalising our data. We’re also still on the never-ending hunt for more data so manage non-sensitive data that may be of interest to the people of Kent, please get in touch. Your feedback on what we’ve done so far would be great and you can keep up to date with the project by following our tweets.

- A special thank you to Paula Rixon for this update on the Pic N Mix project. If you would like to know more about the project, you can contact Paula at Paula.rixon@kent.gov.uk or 01622 696934.

Picture: A Pic N Mix stall showing a variety of sweets with metal scoops resting on top, with thanks to Christophe Dune for publishing on Flickr under a Creative Commons license some rights reserved.

What next?
• Subscribe to iNews
• Rate this article below
• E-mail us your ideas/thoughts

More Articles
• Pic and Mix your information
• Are you a young politician in the making?
• Are you experienced?

Data Mash-ups: Helping Granny and More

Posted on 15:09 No Comments
Labels: innovative products, pic n mix

The Pic & Mix Project - What is it?

Pic & Mix is a project to help anybody re-use publicly available electronic data. This becomes particularly interesting if the data can be re-used in a way perhaps not first intended or thought of. Organisations and local authorities are large organisations that hold all manner of electronic data which is routinely published for public use. The problem Pic & Mix is trying to solve, is that the data -say a School Governors report is usually done in a nice glitzy PDF file – which looks lovely but is only usable in that format.

Wouldn’t it be better to release the information in way that can be fed into a database? This way the data can be picked apart, then recombined with other data to get a different report. Mixing data together to produce something new is known as creating a mashup. This can be much more useful to the person seeking or mashing up the data. All of this can be done through an Internet browser, using any device that supports Internet access, at any time.

How could it be useful to me?

Ok for example, let’s assume I need to put Granny into a care home. Someone had uploaded the following data for care homes in Kent:

• Locations
• Manager details
• Any specialist care facilities

Someone else has also uploaded:

• The local bus time tables
• Bus routes for Kent.

I then take:

The care home data + the bus information + a map.
(mix the data together) = local care homes and their specialisms conveniently displayed on a map.

I also have contact details for all the managers and the bus service route to the home. It couldn't be easier to find the right place for Granny! If I was feeling generous I could publish this new data mashup for others to use.

When will it be ready to use?

Well Pic & Mix does exist. The technology has been set-up and is in place. A selection of useful information is currently being uploaded onto the system. The system will be used by a small pilot group of users to help us iron out the wrinkles, and then we can let an increasingly number of users have access to the system. Initially there will not be much data, but over time and as more people use it, more data will be available.

Watch this space for further instalments on the Pic & Mix story! What are you doing to make your data more useful? Comment or get in touch.

-Glyn Davies
-Edited by Claire Matthews

The Award Winning Pic & Mix

Posted on 12:00 No Comments
Labels: pic n mix, semantic web, web3.0

“Around the world, the first phase of Government use of the internet is coming to an end with public services and information largely online. We are now at the start of a new era, where Government starts to learn how to support citizens’ own ways of making, finding and re–using information online”

So says Tom Steinberg, founder and Director of mySociety on the publication of The Power of Information, a report by him and Ed Mayo, Chief Executive of the National Consumer Council, commissioned by Cabinet Office Minister Hilary Armstrong to ensure Government acted as a leader in understanding changes in communication and information technology. The report argues that government could now grasp the opportunities that are emerging in terms of the creation, consumption and re-use of information. Current policy and action is not yet adequate to grasp these opportunities.

Extract from: http://www.binarylaw.co.uk/index.php/2007/06/14/gov-20-power-to-the-people/

What did we do about it?

It was with this backdrop that in September 2008 the Change Through Innovation team at Kent County Council (KCC) entered the PIC 'n' MIX (latterly called Pic & Mix) concept into the Innovate08 competition. We won! Following this success the Pic & Mix project was born. As part of the prize KCC receives a number of days top consultancy from Microsoft. We also won several copies of Microsoft Office, which have been shared out to charity.

What is Pic & Mix?

Wrapped up within KCC business databases is a lot of publicly available information, though not necessarily in a re-usable format. To address this Pic & Mix has three primary objectives: 1. allow information to be published in a re-usable format – e.g. RSS feeds 2. provide mashup tools to “play” with this and other external information 3. provide guidance and self-help using this Web2.0 services through wiki and forums

What’s a mashup?

Using a Web 2.0 service Wikipedia, it has an entry for mashup which says:

"In web development, a mashup is a Web application that combines data from one or more sources into a single integrated tool."

By using KCC provided re-usable data, such as an address list of schools, this could be mashed up with other data, say Google Maps to make something more useful to the mashup creator. Pic & Mix will enable ordinary users, not just computer programmers, to re-use publicly published data in a new and creative way, probably not even considered when the data was first gathered or published. Great!

If you are interested in a future application for this project, then please contact us now at innovation@kent.gov.uk.

-Glyn Davies

Thank you to nataliej for photo(bad of pick and mix sweets) published on Flickr under Creative Commons licence, some rights reserved