About the Challenge
We would love for our data consumers to easily find, understand, view and use data that we have published on the Open Data Hub. Right now, data is disparate and may not be complete or could be in multiple places and hard to find. This can make using the Open Data Hub difficult and frustrating for data consumers. Transport for NSW (TfNSW) asked innovators to pitch us solutions to help make using data on our Open Data Hub a better experience.
Odie the Chat Bot
Odie is an embedded website chat bot that helps our users to easily find datasets, have their questions answered, and more. Odie is available to assist you 24/7 - simply click the speech bubble icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Open Data Hub. Odie was developed by Data Driven.
Data Update Notification Service
Developed by Arid Systems, the Data Update Notification Service (DUNS) allows Open Data Hub users to subscribe to update notifications for their chosen datasets. Simply log in to the Open Data Hub, navigate to the dataset you are interested in, and click "FOLLOW".
GTFS Studio
The GTFS Studio provides a human readable overview of our GTFS bundles, which allows our non-technical users to access and understand GTFS data. The solution, developed by Lynxx, provides an intuitive interface through which you can explore GTFS data based on your chosen endpoints.
Further Information
The Challenge Statements for this innovation challenge were:
How could you make our datasets easier to discover, view and understand by the general data customer?
At present we have the capability to tag and write descriptions for our datasets, and the search function searches and indexes based on the description and tags but does not provide ability to search within the associated data resources. Our open data is sourced from different operational systems and often in different formats was not designed for “open data” uses and can be difficult to understand and use.
How could you make our API registration easier?
Our API registration has been a source of frustration for users. You can find the instructions we provide on our User Guide.How can you create a passthrough tool or API to systemically update one or more of the valuable datasets on the Open Data Hub?
For example - Can you automatically convert GTFS-r data into a CSV in real time as an API?How could you help us expose what data is or isn’t available (yet) on the Open Data Hub?
Where are the gaps? Where is there duplication of data due to a different system producing the data? For example, there is some bike rack data that was provided via City of Sydney, but we know there is a lot more out there in terms of actual data as well as uncollected data.How could you help us personalise data results to logged in users?
Using Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence, how can you provide more customised data results to Open Data users?
Challenge Dates
Applications opened on Tuesday 17th November 2020
The virtual Information Session was held on Wednesday 25th November 2020 at 1pm via Zoom
Applications closed on Monday 7th December 2020 at 11:59pm
Finalists for Pitch Day werenotified by Wednesday 9th December 2020
Pitch Day Event was held on Wednesday 16th December 2020 (subject to change)
Finalists were notified before Christmas 2020