ACT Crime Stats data - ready for people to analyse and mashup

At GovHack a few weeks ago my team, The Hack Warriors, wanted to integrate ACT crime data into our project 'Where Should I?'

While the ACT makes the data available visually in the awesome Crime Statistics site, it wasn't available as open data from data.act.gov.au.

So during the weekend I went through the code for the Crime Statistics site and (with a little help) identified where the data was coming from. I was able to download the actual Crime Stats data and process it into a spreadsheet with all the figures by suburb.

For reuse purposes I put the data up as a public Google Fusion table, which anyone can now access via a search of Fusion tables, or via the direct web address: https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1Cztgi-LF4CtXtS-EbU1M6JXnZAzPt1wLAH5YdXnN#rows:id=1

What this means is that now anyone who wants to mine the crime statistics for the ACT can do so easily using this table - performing statistical analysis or mashing it up with other data and mapping it easily.

Even better I found that while the ACT Crime Statistics site allowed people to see data back to 2010, the actual data went all the way back to 2007 - providing more historical data than is visually available from the site.

So if you want to play with the actual numbers behind the ACT's Crime Statistics site - you could start with the table below.

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Don't help your official agency and Ministerial photos become parody memes through poor selection and timing

A challenge today for politicians and public servants is how easy it is for a photo or frame from a video to be reused out-of-context to parody, well, literally anything.

We've seen the increasing use of 'photoshopped' images on social media to support all kinds of political and social positions, ranging from the clever and amusing to the downright disturbing.

Two of the most notable examples - which have become memes in their own right - include the 'floating Chinese officials' from 2011, the result of the accidental upload of a poorly photoshopped image of three council officials (below).

The image appeared to show the officials (including the County mayor and vice-mayor) floating above the road and was immediately parodied by internet users, who placed the officials in a range of amusing and inappropriate locations, such as below.

The second example of a government photo-turned-meme was the phone call from David Cameron to President Obama in March this year, where the UK Prime Minister tweeted a serious photo of him listening to a landline phone, claiming he was on the phone to President Obama of the USA to discuss the Ukrainian situation (below).

I've been speaking to @BarackObama about the situation in Ukraine. We are united in condemnation of Russia's actions. pic.twitter.com/7Rk2k8iOIK
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 5, 2014

This was parodied by a range of people, who started by posting tweets of them speaking on the phone, and then on a variety of other items. It even attracted celebrity attention from people like Sir Patrick Stewart (as below), and in the end David Cameron played along and tweeted a photo of him meeting an ex-US President in person.

.@robdelaney @David_Cameron @BarackObama I'm now patched in as well. Sorry for the delay. pic.twitter.com/elLQcKcV3w
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) March 5, 2014

This second 'on the phone' meme was replicated a month after the Cameron call in Australia when the Prime Minister tweeted a serious photo of himself on the phone addressing the MH17 crisis. This was predictably mocked by many people online in the same vein.

Now while it isn't possible to prevent the 'photoshopping' of images and their reuse in parody form, it is possible for agencies and politicians to consider what images they wish to 'put out there' to reduce the prospect of having their message overshadowed by a clever, funny or touching parody.

This means avoiding deliberately publishing images which are obvious fodder for parody - anything related to being 'on the phone', 'inspecting developments' or easily misinterpreted facial expressions.

It is also important to avoid 'follow the leader' shots - where an Australian official is photographed in a similar pose, or doing a similar thing, to an overseas official who was recently parodied for the same pose (such as the Cameron - Abbott situation).

I saw one of these images yesterday from an Australian politician and decided to see how easy it would be to modify it for use in parody.

Using my trusty copy of Seashore - a free graphics editing tool with many of the same features of Photoshop, I was able to cut out the relevant parts of the original image within about 15 minutes.

It then took a simple Google image search to locate some freely available images and a matter of second to import and place the politicians within the scenes.

Below I've included a copy of the original image (in its original tweet), as well as several of the 'photoshopped' parody images.

Consider this what is possible by a relatively inexperienced user of a free graphic design program in under an hour - then consider what someone with more experience and more intent could do with images that make parody easy.

The original Tweet (with a 'watching infrastructure' image - a type very likely to be parodied):

Watching the NBN rollout with @peterdutton_mp at Murrumba Downs in Peter's electorate of Dickson. pic.twitter.com/IEbDp1TcZ1
— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) August 11, 2014

My (very quickly) 'photoshopped' images - starting with my favourite:

Now think about how you want your Minister and staff portrayed, and how you can minimise the likelihood of your official images being reused for parody purposes.

While you can't prevent this from happening, prudent image selection and advice can, at least, minimise the potential and help you retain control of your message.

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Watch the video of the GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards

The GovHack Red Carpet Awards was awesome (as you can see from the liveblog from Sunday).

If you weren't able to attend or watch the event's livestream, the video of the awards is now live at the GovHack site, and I've embedded it below for your convenience.

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GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards liveblog

Tonight I am attending the GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards night in Brisbane, and will be liveblogging the proceedings.

Keep an eye on my live blog (below) and the Twitter hashtag #GovHack for all the winners and happenings.

Live Blog GovHack Red Carpet Awards 2014

 

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GovHack 2014 winners to be announced on 10 August

GovHack 2014 was the largest open data in Australian history.

With over 1,300 participants across 10 locations, it set a new benchmark for engagement with, and reuse of, government data.

On Sunday evening the winners will be announced at a Red Carpet Awards Night in Brisbane. I'll be attending and liveblogging & tweeting the event, so keep an eye on eGovAU and on the hashtags #govhack, #govhackau and #govhack14.

If you want to check out the entries before the event, visit the complete list of GovHack projects at http://hackerspace.govhack.org/

Don't have time to look through 200-odd projects?

Here's some that the GovHack team has particularly noted (note this doesn't mean they will necessarily be finalists, there's a lot of good projects):

• Show the Gap - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/show-gap
• The Hack Report - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/tbd-0
• Energy Calculator and Comparison Tool - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/energy-calculator-and-comparison-tool
• Live Labor Force - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/live-labour-force
• Languages of Sydney - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/languages-sydney
• Data-by-region Comparator - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/data-region-comparator
• Mash Academy - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/mash-academy
• Hot News Time Machine - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/hot-news-time-machine
• Project Doom - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/project-doom
• Unlock Australia - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/unlockaustralia
• FixMyCity - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/fixmycity
• Empowered: - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/empowered 
• Stat.Map - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/statmap

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