[ photo courtesy ]

The power of crowdsourcing is nothing new.

Lots of eminent people have written about it (Crowdsourcing, The Wisdom of Crowds, We Think, Wikinomics, Here Comes Everybody amongst others).

The world of science has long taken advantage of the power of the many, via the likes of Seti@home, Galaxy Zoo or Stardust@home.

Organisations such as Innocentive, Fellowforce, and Innovation Exchange serve as crowdsourcing exchanges.

The tech sphere got into the game with initiatives like Cambrian House & Crowdspirit.

Fans can share their love for music with Bandstocks, or football with MyFootballclub.

Brands got a piece of the action, with the likes of Dell Ideastorm, P&G Connect and Develop, Intel Cool Software & the Netflix Prize.

No problem can’t be solved (or at least, get closer to the solution) by turning to the hive mind - even gold and silver mining.

So it seems bloody obvious that democracy, government and civic participation should be ripe for harnessing the power of the people.

MoveOn has undoubtedly changed the face of political participation in the US.

The always-wonderful mySociety have been responsible for the likes of TheyWorkForYou, FixMyStreet, and the fabulous Pledgebank.

And now the Power of Information Task Force has launched Show Us a Better Way on behalf of the government, to encourage the development of new products that could improve the way public information is communicated.

The government has made available gigabytes of previously invisible public data, and a £20,000 prize fund to develop the ideas to the next level

Which has elicited some fantastic ideas - such as WhatWentWhere, an interactive map showing what public money was spent on what services where, or Access to Health, providing public transport links to services on NHS Choices.

But the Guardian thinks it’s about bloody time. Their Free our Data campaign has been lobbying for our public data to be made available since 2006. Give us back our crown jewels first highlighted the fact that government-funded and approved agencies such as the Ordnance Survey and UK Hydrographic Office and Highways Agency are government-owned agencies who collect data on our behalf. They’re part-funded by taxpayers, yet have historically charged for this data, with onerous copyright restrictions that restrict the number and variety of organisations that can offer services based on that most useful data.

In comparison, the US has made the data it collects available and free to all:

It is no accident that it is also the country that has seen the rise of multiple mapping services (such as Google Maps, Microsoft’s MapPoint and Yahoo Maps) and other services - “mashups” - that mesh government-generated data with information created by the companies. The US takes the attitude that data collected using taxpayers’ money should be provided to taxpayers free. And a detailed study shows that the UK’s closed attitude to its data means we lose out on commercial opportunities, and even hold back scientific research in fields such as climate change.

As well as stifling innovation, it led to farcical situations as a local authority having to pay Royal Mail £3,000 for every website that includes the facility for people to look up their postcodes, despite it being that very same local authority that collected much of this data in the first place.

So the Guardian have welcomed the launch of Show Us a Better Way as a fantastic first step of providing the public with the data that is rightfully theirs, to allow the wisdom of crowds to truly innovate and provide us with tools and products to utilise our data to its fullest.

Only there’s a snag - the data’s only available for the purpose of the competition.

However, as the authors point out, “history shows that once a piece of information enters the public domain, it is hard to persuade people that it should be taken out again.”

The march towards free data continues.