Category: Data Policy

Categories
Data Policy

Data driven development in Kenya

If you are interested in finding out how data can make a real change to peoples lives in Kenya, come along and find out about Gather a startup I have been helping over the last few months…

Gather is holding its first public launch on Tuesday 20th June at 7.00pm at the Urban Innovation Centre in London.

The evening will be a great opportunity to learn more about Gather and meet our wider team as we launch our demo platform.

Doors will open from 6.30pm and refreshments will be provided.

To RSVP, please email john@gatherhub.org. We look forward to welcoming you on 20th June.

About Gather:
Gather uses data to transform city sanitation. Gather’s platform will visualise the areas of greatest need, provide insight and track progress towards providing sanitation for everyone in cities, starting in Nairobi, Kenya. For more information, please visit www.gatherhub.org/about.

Categories
Data Policy

NRE App – just wrong !

Today National Rail Enquires have released a free iPhone app for real time train information. Hang-on you may say, I though that app already existed.. well it does !

For the last few years National Rail Enquires (NRE)  have been licensing at some considerable cost it’s information to independent software developers for them to develop their own apps, indeed one of my favourite all time apps is UK Train Times developed by Dave Addey and his team at Agant.

Todays release is clearly a case of channel conflict by a Quasi-Government organisation, and I would suggest anti-competitive.

NRE should not be developing an app and competing with it’s “partners” who have developed a range of apps for the last few years. NRE should just release the data under an Open Gov Licence and let the ecosystem develop !

So much for the release of government data empowering the software industry, my old friends at Ordnance Survey always recognised this was an issue and kept out of their partners space, not developing a mobile OS maps application despite what I might have argued at the time 🙂

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Categories
Data Policy INSPIRE

EU Hackathon, Google can help you get there..

Google is supporting the EU Hackathon in November and is offering travel expenses to selected individuals !

The deadline to apply is October 17, and the Hackathon takes place November 8th and 9th, at the European Parliament in Brussels.
Applicants must be citizens or residents of the EU.
All expenses will be covered for selected hackers, and winners along each of the two tracks will receive €3,000.

Application, and more info, here.
Written and submitted from the Google Offices, Dubai (25.095N, 55.162E)