I’ve been talking a lot lately about the NYC startup community and the disconnects between universities, government (the EDC and SBS in particular), and entrepreneurs.  It looks like the gap is beginning to be filled.  Today I happily stumbled across the NYC BigApps Competition website.  Here’s what they’re doing:

The City of New York is improving the way it provides information and transparency to citizens. But delivering great information requires great tools. The NYC BigApps Competition will reward the developers of the most useful, inventive, appealing, effective, and commercially viable applications for delivering information from the City of New York’s NYC.gov Data Mine to interested users.

This is a great start - crowdsourcing NYC talent for the common good (reminiscent of the recent Smarter Cities Scan).  Bloomberg contributed to the site’s first blog post as well:

Today, the City launched the inaugural NYC BigApps Competition to encourage talented application developers to create innovative online and mobile applications to serve New York City residents, businesses, and visitors. By developing these apps, you can help us make City government more accessible to all New Yorkers.

We have worked diligently to make a considerable amount of City data available on the new NYC.gov Data Mine (coming the afternoon of October 6th). The data will remain accessible upon conclusion of the NYC BigApps Competition for all New Yorkers.

NYC BigApps provides a competitive outlet for developers and encourages the general public to get involved as well. We welcome public comment on the process – indicate your support for the competition, share app ideas, and inform contestants on what type of app you’d like to see. “Popular Choice” winners will be selected through open voting on the site, so make sure to vote for your favorite app starting in December.

Thank you for your interest in NYC BigApps. If you plan to compete, best of luck.

Michael R. Bloomberg
Mayor, City of New York

If I had the chops, I’d start at this right away.  I hope to see more of this in the future.