Last Friday I presented at the third Publicsphere event in Wollongong. My talk was on tackling the cultural cringe within the arena of Government Procurement and it's effect on the local ICT industry. I know, on paper it sounds like an edge of your seat, thrill a minute topic. However if you can contain your excitement and enthusiasm for a moment, I would like to talk about an idea I had while doing the research for that talk (at 9:30 the night before).

While I was hunting around I came across this site. This is a competition being run by the Sunlight Foundation to highlight the data that is available from the United States Federal Government web site - data.gov

What they're looking for are real apps that demonstrate the opportunities that open access to government data pose. We'll be finding out who won on the 7th of September at the Gov2.0 Showcase and Expo in Washington DC.

So with the background set, I give you:

AuApps (pronounced Ow-Apps)

The idea is essentially the same as the Sunlight Foundations Apps For America. You point eager developers at Government data and offer them cash and prizes for the best effort. While we don't have our own version of data.gov yet, it's been demonstrated time and again that it's possible to scrape data and build something worthwhile out of it.

I'm tossing up as to whether it should be split into different catagories or just pick the best of the lot.

I haven't got details finalised, however I thought I would run this up the flagpole and see who saluted.