Brilliant. The Power of Information Taskforce has created a £20,000 prize fund for people who want to develop new ways to use publicly owned data for public benefit. You submit ideas through the website boldly called showusabetterway, indicating a fresh attitude which is summed up by this quote:

We’re confident that you’ll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.Go on, Show Us A Better Way.

The newly released data includes information from the NHS and detailed maps from the Ordnance Survey. At the moment that is a little limited – but within government points need to proved, cases made and the Cabinet Office is clearly serious a about experimenting with open sourcing ideas and freeing data.

Thinking cap tip Bill Thompson and I’ll update with links to other blog post below as they emerge:

Justin Pickard: “This is what it’s all about”.

Shane McC: “Surely this can’t be government? But it is…Brilliant”

Guardian Tech: ” It would be fantastic if a Guardian Tech reader could win this”

The Semantic Puzzle: “They are looking for mashups”

Online Journalism Blog: “if we don’t make the most of this opportunity, we’ll have no excuse when the government decides to withdraw the offer”
Ideal Government: “we offered an OS map and a Google lava lamp”

Richard’s Kingdom: “what’s even better is that this competition is accompanied by a whole raft of new public APIs”

Ed Parsons: “I’m Impressed”

Skuds Sister: “I have more confidence in motivated geeks than in large companies”

Daveyp “does this mark a sea change”

Ideal Government: “Power of Information work is gathering pace and getting quite exciting”

Bob Piper: “My suggestion was going to be ‘Where’s my bloody post office gone’.”

Open: ” it behoves me to offer a little praise when they get things right”

100 ideas already Tom Watson: “we might have to find some more prizes.”

Personal Democracy: “Kudos to all!”

Web Monkey: “welcome news to mashup artists, whose work is sometimes restricted by the amount of data available.”

Peter Suber: “Do you think that better use of public information could improve health, education, justice or society at large? … ”

Tom Loosemore: Richard Stirling, John Sheridan, William Perrin and others – I salute you.