Department of Finance: Open Data NI Innovation and Outreach Fund

Overview

This Innovation and Outreach Fund provides the opportunity for individuals and organisations to come up with new and innovative ways to use government data to help build society’s trust in public services and improving citizens’ lives.

Awards of between £300 and up to £5,000 are available to fund the development of apps or other interactive visualisations that make innovative use of data on the Open Data NI portal. Organisations and individuals hosting engagement activities including hackathons, workshops, seminars or events that will raise awareness of open data will also be eligible to apply to the fund.

The competitive fund, up to the value of £30,000, will be administered by the OpenDataNI team. The Open Government Implementation Group (OGIG) will examine applications that seek to promote the strategy aims under the following categories:

1. Support the innovative use of data available on opendatani.gov.uk(external link opens in a new window / tab), either using open data on its own or in combination with other sources of data. This can include developing apps, interactive data visualisations and/or other products or services with open data;
2. Open Data based advocacy, outreach and engagement activities that seek to promote the use of Open Data, for example, workshops, hackathons, seminars, meet-ups and groups, conferences etc.
3. Transparency, Openness, & Unlocking value in data - Examine the role of open data in public life and how it can be employed to provide transparency in government as well as bringing societal benefit. Demonstrate the role data can play in building society’s trust in public services and improving citizens’ lives.

Applicants are not restricted to applying in one category only and may apply under each category (a), (b) or (c). A separate application form should be completed for each category.