Sydney RailCorp tells iPhone developer not to help commuters!

Stan Beer
Friday, 06 March 2009 15:13

Opinion and Analysis

No, in Sydney, currently the biggest economic basket case in Australia's recessed economy, only an inefficient government owned transport organisation that loses money has the right to use its timetable data to develop the sort of applications that developer Nick Maher did.

Except RailCorp hasn't developed such an application - it's not a software development company is it?

Heaven forbid that an independent developer should screen scrape time table data off RailCorp's website and repackage it for a $2.49 iPhone application. Apparently the timetable information is out-of-date and could potentially confuse customers says RailCorp. So whose fault is that?

Now of course RailCorp can choose to license a preferred supplier to develop its own system. It will cost taxpayers' money in these hard times but perhaps it should do so anyway.

Then again, without spending a cent it could actually encourage local developers to like Mr Maher to build innovative transport information systems, share data and even come to a revenue sharing arrangement.

But of course we're talking about a state government organisation here. All of the above makes too much sense.

It seems that the bureacrats in RailCorp don't like the idea of entrepreneurs creating wealth and jobs by developing smart technology. They would rather wait until they get round to doing it themselves while getting taxpayers to pay for it.