With the Gov2 Taskforce and keeping the business prospering I haven't had time to blog much recently on my own blog. It certainly isn't because there is nothing to say!

This is worth taking the time for.

The Taskforce today launched the Mashup Australia Competition and data.australia.gov.au. These two initiatives are both huge leaps forward in Government 2.0, open government, access to PSI and innovation.

mashupaustralia.org invites people to submit entries that use government datasets in innovative ways. There are some substantial prizes for the best ones.

Mashups? Take sets of data, mix and present in a meaningful way. (see mashupaustralia.org for a longer explanation)

To facilitate this data.australia.gov.au is setting data free. Lots of datasets so far, all released under Creative Commons licenses ready for mashing.

With the exception of some minor bumps and potholes, the Gov2 Taskforce road so far has been incredibly positive and there is a great deal of momentum and energy in the community. To me this means a great breath of creativity and imagination is about to be released.

Alongside openness and transparency, facilitating innovation is a major benefit of opening up public sector information. What people will invent in this process is unpredictable and exciting.

Tim Berners-Lee says "data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives and it happens because someone takes that data and does something useful with it".

I am tingly with anticipation about what the community will come up with.