The World Bank is to announce an "Apps for Development Competition", challenging the developer community to create tools, applications, and mash-ups of development data.
The competition forms part of the World Bank's open data initiative, which allows individuals, groups, and organisations to create applications, programs, visualisations, and other tools to help monitor and measure progress of various development initiatives and projects.
The data catalogue available to developers provides download access to over 2000 indicators from World Bank data sources.
World Bank group president Robert Zoellick says: "Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty. They are now easily accessible on the Web for all users, and can be used to create new apps for development."
The developer challenge is being introduced as a spur to innovation in an effort "to make it easier for users of development data to make better decisions and better policies to overcome poverty," says Zoellick.
World Bank's Open Data Initiative from World Bank on Vimeo.