European public bodies produce thousands of datasets every year. Open data re-use is a key element of the Digital Agenda for Europe.
Two open data competitions sought ideas from companies, programmers, researchers and the general public for creative re-use of this public sector and open cultural data.
Winning ideas for the Open Data Challenge included:
- an app to help citizens in Germany learn more about urban planning
- an app that visualises the current state of bike share systems in 30 cities around the world.
Winning ideas for the Hack4Europe! competition included:
- from Spain, a timebook for historical figures
- from Poland, an app that processes photographs of paintings, and describes them in any EU language
More information available from the EU.