Apps4Finland 2010 boosts Finnish information society

The Apps4Finland 2010 competition is now underway. The goal of the competition is to find new ways to utilize public sector’s data sources. It also aims to speed up activities that turn lively discussion around open data into concrete services and applications.

The Apps4Finland competition is now being held for the second time. It is organized by The Finnish Society for Online Democracy (Suomen Verkkodemokratiaseura) and Forum Virium Helsinki, which will also be on the competition’s panel of judges.

The Apps4Finland competition is open to all, and it has its own categories for individuals and enterprises. One of the goals is to provide visibility for young talents and application designers. A successful, interesting competition entry will serve as a business card for its creator. The competition gives developers a possibility to further develop their concepts, which will hopefully lead into new start-ups and businesses.

“The opening of data collected by the public sector will facilitate significant new services for citizens. Finnish companies have a unique opportunity to create revolutionary new services by combining data that has previously been unavailable. At best these innovations could give rise to international high-growth enterprises,” says competition patron Risto Siilasmaa from F-Secure Corporation.

The closing date for competition entries is 31 August. The competition culminates at the MindTrek conference in Tampere on 7 October when a total of 13 000 Euros will be awarded to the winners.

Utilizing public sector data

It is evident that concrete applications and excellent ideas encourage the public administration to open up their data resources without charge, in an electronic form for free use and utilization. However, there is also a lot of uncertainty in terms of knowing what data is open and how it can be utilized. Services built on open data increase the awareness - but no examples are born without data being opened first.

The Apps4Finland competition addresses these challenges by bringing together idea-rich citizens and open public data sources. The competition encourages people and enterprises to brainstorm ideas and applications that use public sector data. The competition also aims to boost public administration to open and publish more data sources.

In relation to the competition, resources that are open and free-to-use will be collected on Suomi.fi website and mapped as a part of the Helsinki Region Infoshare project.

See the Apps4Finland 2010 competition homepage for more information of the competition, its rules and how to participate.

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