Planning Alerts, State Contracts then The World
Presented by
Ben Minerds
Monday
4:30 p.m.–5 p.m.
Target audience:
Community
Abstract
How does a council scraping initiative started in the UK evolve to influence and inform how the Victorian Government manages its information? Planning Alerts was originally a UK service to allow people to subscribe to be notified when there was a planning application near them regardless of council boundaries. It's success has also been replicated (and improved) in Australia. It seems obvious to many of us that a significant factor is that the initial project and those that followed it were Open Source and open to the Communities they served. How can we better demonstrate to government the value of Open Standards and Open Data than by making it happen?
Presented by
Ben Minerds
Ben graduated with a Bachelor of Arts/Information systems from LaTrobe University where he studied software development, logic and linguistics. He is a developer with over 9 years experience at the intersection of regulatory compliance and technology. He has a strong interest in the impacts software and technological advances make to our rights and liberties and believes an open government and open software are two key components in maintaining our human rights. He is a polyglot developer with experience in Java, C/C++, Haskell, Ruby, JS+HTML5, Node and a sprinkling of Python and R amongst others. He has developed projects and apps that help connect communities, enable discovery of local landmarks and facilitate easier communication about available services. Ben is currently on the Code for Australia Fellowship program working with the Department of Treasury and Finance on a project to increase participation, transparency and reporting of government construction projects.