Friday 4 September 2009

More about Australia's Digital Regions Initiative


I attended a briefing about Australia's Digitial Regions Initiative which is co-funding projects to help regional education, health, and disaster response projects. (previous description).
The key take home points for me were:
  • The Expression of Interest, due 14 September 2009, is aimed at identifying potential projects, and giving parties the opportunity to find each other and collaborate on the final proposal, to be lodged by 14 October.
  • I asked whether it was in scope to propose an Open Street Map style application, which facilitates community collection, cleaning, and collaboration around spatial and attribute data. This was certainly considered in scope, if the value to communities could be demonstrated. Value is based upon the number of people serviced, the value presented to each person, and whether the service is filling an existing gap.
  • The initiative is expecting to fund 50% of multi-million dollar projects. However, smaller projects will be considered, so long as they can demonstrate appropriate value. External funding sources (and I'm specifically thinking about co-funding with international government programs) would be acceptable.

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