Guardian Technology's 'Free Our Data' campaign - which argues that data from organisations such as the Ordnance Survey, UK Hydrographic Agency and so on should be made available for free, rather than charged for - has been nominated for a New Statesman New Media Award under the "Advocacy" category. (If you've seen the Free Our Data website, you'll realise quickly that it's not for design. Any willing coders out there?)
The Advocacy award "will go to the individual or organisation that has most effectively influenced opinions and behaviour through the use of new media technology." OK, we'll work on getting the wiki and the forums up now...
We're pleased to be nominated; we'll be even more pleased if we win; but what we'd really like is, of course, to get our hands on all that data collected by government organisations yet then treated as treasure that will get more valuable if it's hoarded - when we know that what happens with data is that sharing it makes it more useful and increases its value.
There's also a full list of New Statesman NMA award nominees.
(I considered creating a category of 'blowing our own trumpet' for this one but figured it wouldn't make sense in the tagging folksonomy..)
