An Open Data Vision

Need something to tell you how many bikes might be available at the nearest bike share station, what kind of events are on around town and how many people are walking, at this moment, in a range of locations around the city? Would it be helpful if that tool could also help you plan your train trip? Want a weather update with that?

All this is offered by one of the standout projects of GovHack 2014 held around the country last week, The Living, Breathing Melbourne project was widely touted and collected $8000 for its developers.  Except there’s one catch - the data isn’t really real.

The dashboard, built by Steve Bennett, Yuri Feldman and Andrew Chin, displays data that is sourced from the bike stations and pedestrian counters the city already operates, but the data is not open to the public to use in real time. Mr Bennett said it is “real”, but not “live”.  “It’s a vision of what you can do with open data,” he said...