Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Government Aid on Google Maps


The Development Tracker provides detailed information on international development projects funded by the UK Government. The site includes a section entitled the 'Top 5 places we work'. This section includes Google Maps of five countries alongside details about the UK aid given to each country.

Interestingly each of the Google Maps includes a nice little reminder that maps are always political. The Development Tracker has felt the need to add a disclaimer to all of the Google Maps that reads, "Country borders do not necessarily reflect the UK Government's official position".

The Development Tracker also contains a prototype version of an API (application programming interface) enabling developers to retrieve the data in JSON format. There are also plans to open source the code for the Development Tracker, so that anyone can freely re-use or even contribute to the code.

No comments: