The British government is currently being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Thanks to the advice of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, amongst many others, the government is finally opening up some public data to the public.
Data.gov.uk is a new website that gives some (still limited) access to UK government data. As well as providing access to the data the site is highlighting some of the applications that the public are building with the data.
As usual mapping applications are proving very popular. Here is a round-up of some of the Google Maps mashups being built with the newly released UK data:
This Northern Ireland crime map is a heat map of criminal activity by ward from NISRA Statistics. Using a drop down menu it is possible to load heat maps for a number of different categories of crime, including robbery, fraud, theft etc.
One of the major problems with UK crime mapping is that the police only release data at a ward level. Hopefully, in the not too distant future, the now open UK government will start allowing the public to see the specific locations of individual crimes.
Safer Streets is a pilot project to enable better communication between local authorities and the public. The project is currently trialling in three UK towns, Brighton & Hove, Luton and Solihull.
The public can use Safer Streets to tell their local council and police teams where they feel safe or unsafe and to view local safety information. The site uses Google Maps to allow the public to indicate the locations where they feel unsafe and highlight why.
This site provides a single site for reporting potholes and other road hazards across the whole UK. The site is funded by the CTC, the UK's national cyclists' organisation, as a service for UK cyclists.
Users are able to search for and view road hazards via a Google Maps interface.
UK Schools Map
The UK Schools Map is a Google Maps mashup that allows parents to find local schools. The site uses Ofsted scores and Edubase so that parents can find the schools with the best educational performance in their catchment areas.
Post Box Finder
This Google Maps mashup allows the public to search for nearby unlocated postboxes.
Users can look up postboxes nearby by entering the first half of a postcode. The site also includes postbox last collection times, if known.
ZubedJobs is a Google Maps mashup that lets you search for job by type and location.