While we're still waiting with bated breath for the details of the NSW Governments Apps4NSW competition, it appears that the NSW Government has released the first Dataset for third party use.

The Transport Data Exchange Programme is a programme to allow third party developers to build applications based on the Timetable and Service information released by the various Public Transport operators.

Below is a quick OOOG Review of the programme:

Open Source: 5

Over the past few months I've been asked about the range of Open Source Social Networking Tools, so I thought it might be an idea to put up a page which lists those that I know of with a brief description of each.

Drupal

Drupal is a general Content Management System, however with the use of a range of different third party modules, it can be turned into quite a decent "Social Networking" facility. If nothing else it integrates very well with other tools such as twitter, status.net, facebook, etc, etc.

Well just to prove that you have to be quick when you have a good idea, Premier Rees has just announced Apps4NSW.

Details are a little thin on the ground at the moment (the competition hasn't been officially launched), but here's what we do know:

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).

Over the past couple of years we've been helping out the Illawarra Breast Cancer Support Group, because they helped my mother in law during her cancer period and now because said mother in law is now president of the group :)

Yesterday we hit something that I believe perfectly illustrates the danger of closed standards and vendor lockin.

I've been remiss in not mentioning this before so here it is.

I've registered for the next Public Sphere event, this time we're going to be talking about the Australian ICT and Creative Industries and how they can be further developed.

What's even better is that this time, the event is going to be held in my home town of Wollongong. Yay for the short commute.

Yesterday I presented on OOOG at the 2nd Public Sphere event and I had some really good discussions about how it could be fine tuned and how the proposed OOOG Survey could operate.

Based on those discussions I'm looking at the following very tentative format for an OOOG Rating.

A Survey In Two Halves

Last night I posted my immediate thoughts about the Public Sphere event. However in my exhausted state I managed to miss the big announcement of the day - the launch of the governments Gov2.0 Taskforce.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and new Minister of State (read Minister without portfolio) Ludwig announced the creation of a 15 member Taskforce with the following Terms of Reference:

The Government 2.0 Taskforce (‘Taskforce’) will advise and assist the Government to: