Rewired State: Hack the government tomorrow

Final frantic preparations, well I cancelled supper tonight and we are meeting in an hour. Thought that you might like to check out the suggestions so far, and if anyone wants it, the Press release:

On Saturday 7th March will be holding “Rewired State: National Hack The Government Day” at The Guardian Offices.

Rewired State, the brainchild of James Darling, Richard Pope and Emma Mulqueeny is a free invite-only event to demonstrate the creative use of public data by great technical minds.

100 developers, designers, hackers and geeks, with support from a few government officials will evaluate government data to see how they could best use this information.

We expect the output of the day to expose better processes, application and ways of working for better use of public data as well as to expose government officials to the concept of allowing great creative minds to play with the data to provide interesting and creative  solutions.

The event received interest from over 350 interested techies who wanted to attend to play with the data to see what they could make.

We expect government officials to come away with a clear understanding that opening up public data for creative development by anyone can produce real solutions, quickly, effectively and inexpensively for themselves, local communities, the country and the world.

http://rewiredstate.org/

http://wiki.rewiredstate.org/?page=Main+page

Notes to editors:
Bios
James Darling is a 21 year old freelance web developer who likes to do good things. Experienced in the technology, government, music and business continuity worlds. Half-accidentily helped set up a 10,000 person London Underground drinking party.

Emma Mulqueeny is a public sector digital bod of 10 years, currently developing the Social Media Strategy for the Home Office (amongst other things transformational).

Richard Pope is a freelance developer and interaction designer. He has been building useful civic websites for over 5 years including PlanningAlerts.com and GroupsNearYou.com, as well as working with mySociety.org and FarmSubsidy.org. His most recent project is StreetWire.org, a hyper-local information website, and is the Director of Consumer Focus Labs, a project to take the e-democracy model to companies and products.

The term “Hack”
The term “hacking” in this context means ‘to play with technology’. Popular culture has associated hacking with ‘cracking’ (The illegal access to computers) by mainstream media, but this has not happened in the IT sector, where “Hacker” has more affectionate denotations of “technology hobbyist”.