Project Description
Markdown is our project which is both an open api platform and a proof of concept application built on this platform.
SSApi Open Data Platform
SSApi is an open data platform built using existing open data sets. It allows any organisation or individual to query for senior and companion card holder discounts offered by Australian businesses.
This platform aims to be a national centralized and open platform for storing business discount services.
We provide a number of APIS that allow you to discover businesses near your location, different categories or services and what discounts are available.
Markdown
Markdown is a proof of concept application that provides a way for senior and companion card holders to find local Businesses offering discounted services. You simple select a category you are interested in and it will show all discounted services, promoting businesses within walking distance and showing the walking time to the business.
Data Story
SSApi Open Data Platform
We discovered that while Australian states and territories are currently capturing a large amount of discount datasets this data is not easily accessible and is sometimes missing key information.
This prevents senior and companion card holders from accessing this information and causes an inconsistency with the how it is provided.
We extracted different business discount datasets, cleaned them, processed them, and combined them in order to produce a single clean dataset.
While it isn't perfect it is now in a format that we can service from a central location and in a consistent format.
We built an api backend that is freely available. It allows any organisation to query what discount services are available, searching by location, and categories.
This promotes open data as this information is accessible to anyone and ensures that all discount services can be located in a central source for all Australian states and territories.
Our Application and use case of this data
We have build a proof of concept front end application called Markdown, this application takes the user's geolocation data using this to display all discount services nearby. It then promotes to the user the locations within walking distance, enticing them to walk.