From Smashup to Mashup

As somebody who is not wont to restrain himself when the UK government gets it hideously wrong on the IT front (hello, ID cards), it behoves me to offer a little praise when they get things right. This seems to be a rare and therefore welcome case of the latter:

The UK Government wants to hear your ideas for new products that could improve the way public information is communicated. The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the Government's behalf, and we have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level. You can see the type of thing we are are looking for here.

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition. Rest assured, this competition does not include personal information about people.

We're confident that you'll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don't have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.

This is absolutely the kind of stuff that the powers-that-be should be encouraging. I'm not exactly wildly optimistic it will lead to a sea-change in their attitude to openness in general, but it's start. If you've ever had to suppress that wild urge to (s)mash up the UK government - and let's face it, who hasn't? - here's your big chance.