GovHack

The first ever GovHack was a huge success. Thanks to those who came and participated, all the sponsors, mentors and volunteers. Upcoming related events include OpenAustralia HackFest in Sydney, November 7 & 8, and the Lonely Planet plus GovHack Melbourne HackDay, on the same dates.

Thanks

Particular thanks to

• CSIRO ICT Lab and the ANU for their facilities and other support
• Laurent Lefort, Ross Ackland, George Petru, Bob Edwards, Xuan Zhou, Tom Worthington, Mandy Yialeloglou, Warren Muller, and Dimitrios Georgakopoulos from CSIRO and the ANU
• Gordon Grace and his band of volunteers at AGIMO
• Nicholas Gruen, Mia Garlick, Andrew Mair, and all at the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce
• John Sheridan and Peter Alexander at AGIMO.
• Senator Kate Lundy, "Patron Senator of Geeks"
• Tom Coates, Matthew Cashmore, Rob Manson and Earle Castledine, mentors and cheerleaders.
• Cheryl "Chezza" Gledhill, Wil Mason, Guy Leech and Gloria Tong, for keeping things running smoothly
• Yiying Lu, for the fantastic GovHack Logo

GovHack Hacks

Around 150 designers, developers, UX and IA experts and more worked on over 20 projects, of considerable complexity and sophistication. A fuller list of projects and can found at the wiki, but great projects included

Lobbyclue

The overall winners according to our panel of judges, LobbyClue is an in-depth visualisation of lobbying groups relations to government agencies, including tenders awarded, links between the various agencies, and phyical office locations.

Know where you live

A stylish presentation of ABS data (along with Flickr Geocoded data), pulling in relevant information for a particular postcode: rental rates, average income, crime rates, and more.

What the Federal Government Does

An enormous tag cloud of the different functions of government, combined with visulisations of government functions shared between departments.

Soul Solutions

Worked on improving the data feeds supplied by various departments, including the powerhouse, as well as working on resizable map tile images, for us in mapping applications.

Rate A Loo

Demonstrates a community engagement idea, seeded with government provided data. Allows users to locate and then rate the condition of public toilets.

Many Many more

The wiki has many more projects, all worth investigating!

GovHack in the traditional media

GovHack has garnered quite a good deal of attention in traditional media, particularly newspapers and radio, as well as of course online. Recent coverage includes

• ABC News Online October 30th
• Hack Day: like a tech version of a hippy commune: National Times (Fairfax Digital) November 2nd
• Geeks go wild in Camberra: Sydney Morning Herald October 27
• Government: come hack our data: ComputerWorld October 26th

There were also a number of ABC radio interviews in Canberra, Tasmania and elsewhere

GovHack on the Web

• On Twitter search for the #govhack hashtag to follow the GovHack conversation
• Stephen Lead, from NSW LPMA, who was heavily involved converting data sets to be more useful, has a slideshare writeup of GovHack
• Senator Kate Lundy encouraged folks to come along, and also interviewed a numbe rof participants during the event. Interview hopefully to come soon
• In true hack style we got Flip video footage of opening presentations and they are available online (see above)
• Hundreds of photos fromthe event are available at Flickr

Video from GovHack

Thanks to VioCorp for their Viostream player and service to host the video we captured at GovHack. Excellent Australian technology.

What’s the goal?

Governments collect and publish enormous amounts of data, but have limited resources to get it into the hands of their citizens in engaging ways. The rise of web based mashups by third party developers, building their own applications on top of such data sets, promises to make the data collected and published by government exponentially more valuable.

The short term outcomes for GovHack include:

• The development of dozens of new applications and mashups on top of Australian government data and web services
• Increasing the promotion of Australian government data sets by their "owners"
• Building new relationships between Australian developers and the government

Longer term outcomes include:

• Making more developers aware of government data sets and their availability
• Encouraging government "owners" of data to license it widely
• Encourage government data providers to make their data sets available in ways that enable and encourage mashups and third party applications

How will it work?

GovHack is an intensive one and a half day event. From the afternoon of the Friday, through the night, and throughout the Saturday, teams of developers and designers will work on projects based on Australian government web based data sets and services. At the end of the event, teams will have 90 seconds to showcase what they've achieved in the day. On hand throughout the event will be:

• Data "owners" and experts from State and Federal departments
• Individual experts to help teams
• Excellent facilitators to help teams focus, and move forward throughout the event
• Copious amounts of power, wifi and caffeine

Showing the results

GovHack wraps up with lightning presentations from each team, showing what they’ve achieved. Invited members of the press and Government representatives can get a sense of what’s been achieved, and what it’s possible to do with government data and services. A panel of judges will award prizes for different categories - from the serious to the fun, to reward participants for their efforts.

MashupAustralia

The just launched MashupAustralia is perfect timing for GovHack. Participants in GovHack have the additional incentive of the prizes associated with the MashupAustralia competition, which closes two weeks after the event,

Images:

The images are downsized due to limited space here. The original dimensions may differ.
Click on the image to open it on a new tab.