Terms and Conditions

These terms and conditions are based on those from Show us a Better Way. They may change over time, as this is pretty new territory for the Government.

The terms and conditions have been kept simple. By entering you agree that:

1. Your contribution is your own, or you have the right to submit it.
2. The winner(s) will be chosen at the sole discretion of the judges.
3. The monetary element of the prize will be awarded by Becta. This will probably involve some paperwork.
4. Your contribution is not defamatory and does not infringe any UK laws.
5. You are over the age of 16, or have a parent or guardian’s permission to enter.
6. Any information you provide can only be used to administer this competition or discuss mashing of government data.
7. The competition will be governed by the laws of England and Wales.

Your own idea cannot be copyrighted, but any prototypes or documents you create will remain your own property. By entering you allow Becta and the Government to link to these or use them for promotional purposes. If you win the competition we will have a discussion with you about the intellectual property of anything we fund.

Moderation

All ideas are moderated before they come onto the site.

There will be no attempt to exclude critical views and decisions to accept or reject will not be made on a party political basis.

However, to protect this service from abuse, ideas and comments must satisfy some basic conditions.

To submit an idea, you must use the online form to provide:

• the title or subject of the idea;

• a clear and concise statement describing the idea. The idea will be returned to you to edit if it is unclear;

• the author’s contact address (in case we need to contact you about the idea. This will not be placed on the website);

The information in a idea must be submitted in good faith. In order for the idea service to comply with the law and with the Civil Service Code, you must not include:

• Party political material. This is a Government site. Party political content cannot be published, under the normal rules governing the Civil Service.

• potentially libellous, false, or defamatory statements;

• information which may be protected by an injunction or court order (for example, the identities of children in custody disputes);

• material which is potentially confidential, commercially sensitive, or which may cause personal distress or loss;

• any commercial endorsement, promotion of any product, service or publication;

• the names of family members of elected representatives or officials of public bodies;

• the names of individuals, or information where they may be identified, in relation to criminal accusations; and

• language which is offensive, intemperate, or provocative. This not only includes obvious swear words and insults, but any language to which people reading it could reasonably take offence (we believe it is possiblefor anything, no matter how radical, to be phrased politely).

We reserve the right to reject:

• ideas that are similar to and/or overlap with an existing idea;

• wording that is impossible to understand;

• statements that amount to advertisements; and

• ideas which are intended to be humorous, or which have no point about government policy (however witty these are, it is not appropriate to use a publicly-funded website for purely frivolous purposes);

We will strive to ensure that ideas that do not meet our criteria are not accepted, but where an idea is accepted which contains misleading information we reserve the right to take it down, pending a redraft by the original author.

Privacy

If you create an idea you will be required to provide us with basic personal information so that we can contact you about your idea. We will only use the information you provide us for this purpose.

If you allow us, we will use your contact information to provide you will occasional updates about the competition (such as announcing the winners). We would also like to contact you about similar events in the future