Mashing up with the Australian Government
One of the things on the 'to-do' list leading up to the Nestoria Australia launch is to collect as much interesting geo-spatial data as possible to add to our maps. Quite a lot of this information is owned by some facet of the Australian government and they're not always entirely trusting when it comes to entrusting people with it, despite the existence of the Australian Gov. 2.0 Taskforce, which is supposed to be all about online engagement between the public sector and public sector information, and the individual. These are the guys who can help free up the information we'd like.
While part of the engagement process is about freeing up access to data, there's another side of it, proved by Google's Public Sector help page, and that's encouraging government agencies to use other web tools to add relevance to their sites and present their own data in interesting ways. The 2.0 Taskforce were the organisers of the MashupAustralia Competition which was supposed to encourage people to use government data in an interesting way, so it's interesting to see some government agencies using Google Maps as templates for presenting their own data.
The Anzac spirit is one of the few non sport related sentiments that the majority of Australians are united on, and this site, created by the National Archives of Australia, arranges the details of the 375,900 servicemen and women against a Google generated map of where each one was born or enlisted.
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- Anzacs from Western Australia
Australian's World Heritage List
The Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts presents its information about Australia's 28 World heritage Listed sites (from Kakadu National Park to the Sydney Opera House) pinned onto a Google Map as well as in a list.
- Queenland's Heritage Listed sites
NSW Government Stimulus Snapshot Map
And the NSW Government has made some coloured warratah icons to use as pins to map out the different kinds of projects its $62.9 billion Economic Stimulus package will be spent on. [Red is for education and purple is for transport.]
