On Thursday 7^th October the World Bank launched the ‘Apps for Development’ competition. The competition aims to bring together the best ideas from tech developers and development practitioners to create innovative apps using World Bank data.

2010 has seen many agencies release aid information to the public, including the World Bank’s Open Data initiative which included information on World and African Development Indicators and the Millennium Development Goals. An important element of aid transparency is that aid information is made available and accessible to the public. This means that data should be open and free, and in a usable format so that applications can be created to make the datasets more useful and meaningful to a general public.

The World Bank has opened its data, and now it is encouraging developers and aid practitioners to work to make the data accessible. The competition asks that creations ‘Raise awareness of at least  one of the Millennium Development Goals, or contribute to progress toward meeting one of the MDGs by 2015.’ Submissions can be any kind of software application: For the web, SMS, personal computer, console, or any other platform available to the public.

Read about or get involved in Apps for Development.