Northern Ireland’s Department of Finance has opened a new round of its Innovation and Outreach Fund to encourage the use of open data – with a new theme on responding to Covid-19.
It is making £40,000 available to support projects in line with the challenge’s three themes. These cover: supporting the innovative use of data available on opendatani.gov.uk, such as developing apps, interactive data visualisations and/or other products or services; open data based advocacy; and using data to communicate the societal impacts of Covid-19.
Awards of between £300 and £5,000 will be made to individuals or organisations delivering on key components of Northern Ireland’s Open Data Strategy.
Key elements of the strategy include promoting the innovative use of open data, increasing the rate of its publication and emphasising the need for training in how it is used.
Finance Minister Conor Murphy (pictured) said: “More open government data has the potential to increase accountability and transparency, improve public and private services, and help citizens bring about social change.
“This fund encourages the use of data from the OpenDataNI portal as well as open data promotional activities.
“Last year we had some very innovative projects and I look forward to seeing the proposals this year. A new theme of using data to overcome the impact of Covid-19 has been added to the fund.”
Further information about the Innovation and Outreach Fund can be found at https://www.finance-ni.gov.uk/niopendatafund. The deadline to apply is 04 March 2021.
Image from ni.gov.uk, Open Government Licence v3.0
