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2018 was massive for the Open Data and Innovation Team. We had an incredibly busy year organising innovation challenges and other open data initiatives while keeping our real-time data running and releasing many new datasets and resources. In 2018 we ran five innovation challenges, one hackathon (our very first) and published more than forty-five new datasets. We also endorsed four new apps that were successfully incubated and launched as part of our innovation challenges.

The Trip Planner API has multiple endpoints that offer different capabilities and simplifies a lot of the functions that are popular in public transport apps. This makes developing your application much easier and faster. One of the most popular function requests and questions that we receive is about the departure board. Now, thanks to the Trip Planner API, building your own departure board is relatively easy, providing you are familiar with some PHP and basic HTML and CSS styling.

Here is a list of the top 5 most used APIs by our open data community:

#5. Public Transport - Realtime Vehicle Positions - Light Rail

Average of 1.6 - 1.7 million API calls per week

The Open Data Team was at the Sydney Boat Show in July to help launch the apps Boatable and Deckee following their incubation and endorsement from the Boating Companion Innovation Challenge. The Sydney Boat Show was the perfect occasion to officially launch the apps to market and to signify the completion of another successful innovation challenge. Some members of the Open Data and Innovation Team were there to help out at the Boatable and Deckee booths and to showcase the possibilities and opportunities that come from using open data.

Transport for NSW endorses products that are of high quality, innovative and solve customer problems using transport open data and innovative ways of using technology. What do you actually gain from being endorsed by Transport for NSW though?

Our portal is where we provide all the data and APIs you need to create the next awesome public transport application! As a blanket rule, we do not offer programming guidance and assistance as our focus is on finding as much data as possible and publishing it on the Open Data Hub, thus, we leave the coding up to you. However, we do get asked a lot on how to use our data to develop applications.

Making data as open and transparent as possible is one of Transport for NSW's main goals and part of the overall data policy set out by the government as part of the Future Transport strategy. However, making data open doesn't come without risk. The Transport for NSW Open Data Team must ensure that all the data that is published doesn't put people's lives at risk, doesn't compromise any of the city's security and doesn't violate any privacy laws.

As part of the Open Data Program, Transport for NSW runs various innovation challenges throughout the year to encourage innovation through healthy competition and fast track any potential apps or products to market. Learn more about innovation challenges below.

Earlier this year, we ran the Boating Companion Innovation Challenge. It was a very successful event where we invited 11 submissions to pitch their ideas in front of a panel of judges. Three of these ideas were invited to take part in an incubation program, with two successfully being endorsed by Transport for NSW and launched to the public.