Showcasing the co-creation initiative data.gov.sg at the eGov Global Exchange.

Locating amenities at Pasir Ris Park, finding out which school is nearest to the home or checking out parking rates in central Singapore – these are some of the value-added services that have resulted from co-creation efforts tapping on publicly-available government data.

To date, more than 5,000 datasets from over 50 public agencies have been made available via data.gov.sg, the first-stop portal for discovering publicly-available government data. It is one of two new public services launched on 20 June 2011 in line with the co-creation thrust of the new e-Government masterplan eGov2015. The other service is mGov@SG, which aggregates different types of government mobile services.

data.gov.sg

At data.gov.sg , users can search for available government datasets using the Data Catalogue and download the data for research purposes or to create applications. The data is available in various machine-readable formats such as textual or spatial data, and resources such as application programming interfaces can also be downloaded via the portal to support application development. Members of the public can look up the list of available applications on the portal’s Applications Showcase.

Examples of data that can be used to create applications include weather data from the National Environment Agency (NEA), geospatial data on amenities ranging from kindergartens and childcare centres to hawker centres and recycling bins, and real-time traffic data such as the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) traffic camera updates.

“When we combine public sector data with private sector data, the value of the data increases,” said Mr James Kang, Assistant Chief Executive, Government Chief Information Office, Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

At the recent AppVenture Challenge 2011 organised by the Mobile Alliance of Singapore, startups and students had the opportunity to develop applications using government data available.

Mr Lai Poh Hing, Director of the School of Information Technology at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP), said the initiative “opened up a whole new window of opportunities for software and mobile applications that need integration with timely data”.

Students from NYP made use of data from OneMap and the National Parks Board to develop Parks “Live” @ SG, an application which helps visitors to locate park attractions and amenities such as restrooms, shelters and barbeque pits. The application, which is being piloted at Pasir Ris Park, topped the Individual/Student category at AppVenture Challenge. It has an augmented reality function which also taps on global positioning system (GPS) technology to give users exact directions and distances to attractions, amenities and facilities within the park.

Runner-up in the category was SG Parking, a mobile application that tapped on data from the Land Transport Authority to help users find out the parking rates and the availability of lots in specific carparks in central Singapore.

Another award-wining application was ShowNearby, which topped the Company category. The mapping application combines data from the government and private data sources to provide users with information about points of interest vis-a-vis their current location.

mGov@SG

mGov@SG is a one-stop government mobile site that allows individuals and businesses to discover, identify and access government mobile services (m-services) that can be used on their mobile devices. It brings together more than 40 m-services including mobile browser-based, native application-based and SMS-based services.

The aim of mGov@SG is to make it easy for users to gain access to government m-services just by keying in one URL. Once at the mGov@SG portal, there are various ways for users to search for the m-services that they want. For example, they can browse through categories such as Business, Community & Housing, Travel & Leisure, Defence & Security, Education & Learning, General, Health, Jobs & Money and Transport, or they can look up an agency under Organisations to browse through its m-service offerings. Users can also use a search tool to locate a specific government m-service, or choose to view, at one glance, all the m-service offerings that they can access via their mobile device.

mGov@SG supports major mobile platforms such as iOS, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry and Android. With its device-aware capability, different m-services are made available to users depending on the mobile platforms they are using.