Brussels, 24 June 2011

(by Ton Zijlstra)

Last week at the Digital Agenda Assembly (DAA) the winners of the Europe wide Open Data Challenge were announced. EC VP Neelie Kroes personally handed the awards to the winners.

The Open Data Challenge was organized as part of the run-up to the DAA by the Open Knowledge Foundation and connected to the SharePSI efforts. Jonathan Gray of the OKF posted about the Open Data Challenge in the Guardian Data Blog. The Open Data Challenge has been covered by various press outlets.

With 430 submissions from 24 countries the response to the challenge has been impressive.

Participants could enter into four categories, Ideas, Applications, Data Visualizations and Data sets

The winners and runner-ups in the four categories were:

Ideas

• 1st prize bePart, mobile eParticipation for Urban Development (Germany)
• 2nd prize Nomen est Omen (Finland), what do European public databases say about your family name?
• 3rd prize European Union Dashboard (Belgium), how does your country contribute to and benefit from different European policies

Applications

• 1st prize ZnasichDani (Slovakia), uncovers influential people behind the companies successful in securing contracts with the state.
• 2nd prize Live London Underground Tube Map (UK)
• 3rd prize OpenCorporates (UK), exposes company data on the web in an open, easy to use form, allowing connections between companies to be crowdsourced.

Data visualization

• 1st prize Bike Share Map (UK), shows the current state of bike share systems in over 30 cities.
• shared 2nd prize Mapping Europe's Carbon Dioxide Emissions (UK)
• shared 2nd prize Evolution of European Union Legislation (Denmark)
• 3rd prize Politiek Inzicht (Netherlands) shows what politicians in Dutch parliament are saying by showing word clouds

Data sets

• Better Data Award: eHarta Historical Maps (Romania), a collection of thousands of old georeferenced maps, published and documented with the help of the community.
• Open Data Award: Points of interest for the Municipality of Örebro (Sweden)
• Linked Data Award: Greater Manchester Bus Timetable Linked Data (UK)

But not just the winners are of interest here! All 430 submissions show the level of creativity, inspiration, skills and commitment that opening government data is attracting. A lot of the entries will be published at PublicData.eu, and it is well worth some time to browse through what is being showcased there already.