As a follow up to the Google Developer Day event last week , Silicon.com has a great article on the adoption of mash-up culture at the BBC and their brilliant backstage project.
For other content owning organisations BBC Backstage sets a great example highlighting the way that forward thinking licensing of information can really aid the innovation process and develop truly useful new content driven sites.
During my time at the OS we made no secret of the fact that Backstage was an inspiration to the OpenSpace project.
Just imagine the mashups which could be created if other content owners in the public sector were as open.. indeed in just this last week, we are beginning to see a more innovative approach to publishing content with the reporting of Brents use of google maps and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency decision to publish some of it’s charts in KML.
A point I made during last weeks London Keynote (about 30 mins in, but its well worth listening to the great Chris di Bona) is that there are still huge amounts of geographic information still to be liberated from existing corporate silos, in addition to the user generated content we are beginning to provide the tools to create.
When you think about it, this is less a technology issue that it has even been – this is now really about information policy..
Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.