VisualPlace is a 6-month proof of concept testing different ways to visualize government data in Victoria, Australia. According to the website:
VisualPlace brings together information from a wide variety of sources from service locations to demographic data to allow you to create custom maps.
The map is actually pretty cool and fairly complex for a simple citizen-oriented mapping application, and they have a really diverse and interesting set of data ranging from employment rates to transportation trends. As well, they solicit active participation from the public to make the site better and give citizens more and better data visualizations. Anyone can go onto their blog, upload data sets and suggest more visualizations or functionality. VisualPlace administrators review the suggestions for improvement of the site, openly welcoming citizen participation.
As we in the US move toward more open government data through Web 2.0 data visualization tools, I hope we might make our Gov 2.0 look more like this.
Check out the map and play around with it here: http://www.vic.gov.au/visualplace/map.html
James Gunter is the editor of The Crime Map and the director of social media for CrimeReports.com.
Get on the National Crime Map at CrimeReports.com
