NSW launches 'Apps4NSW' with $100,000 in prizes

Launched by the NSW Premier at NSWSphere on Friday, Apps4NSW is the first Australian public competition for reusing online NSW government data to create useful applications for the public.

Quoting the new site,

In the competition, individuals and groups will compete for cash prizes by creating ideas and software application prototypes that can be used on websites and mobile devices. This competition will foster collaboration between NSW citizens and the Government as well as promote and highlight innovation in the digital media sector.

There will be two competition categories:

* ideas for applications or services based around public or government data, and
* prototype software applications that demonstrate the idea in action.

This reflects the App for America competition that has been running for two years in the US, and a similar competition recently run in the UK via the site Show us a better way.

In conjunction with this announcement, the NSW government has also announced the launch of data.nsw.gov.au, a site that will shortly begin providing access to NSW government data feeds available for reuse online. It even has a Twitter stream at dataNSW that will provide notifications as data feeds are released.