The #GovHack 2018 National Awards by the numbers

I shared this via a Twitter thread, but wanted to include it here for longevity.

To learn more about GovHack and the National Red Carpet event, which I attended as a representative of my team & the ACT Spirit of GovHack winner (and finalist for the National Spirit of GovHack), visit www.govhack.org

    

I've analysed the #opendata & here's the #GovHack 2018 Awards by the numbers:

There were 33 National Awards (including Spirit & Government Participation).
A total 88 Awards were issued: 33 First places, 18 Runner-ups and 37 Hon. Mentions.

Excluding Spirit of #GovHack & Gov Participation 59 teams won at least one Award.

Two teams won 3 Awards each:

• Tiny Happy People Hacking: 1 First place, 1 Runner-up, 1 Hon. Mention
• in time: 2 Runner-ups & 1 Hon. Mention

(Incidentally Tiny Happy People Hacking was my team)

Another 16 teams won two #GovHack Awards.

• 5 teams won 2 First places! (as.numeric, Blockheads, Tartans-AU, insolvit & TeamTeam)
• Another 5 won 1 First place, with 3 also winning a Runner-up (Big Orange Brain, Oakton, TechPreppers) and 2 also an Hon. Mention (DataCake & TeamX).

41 #GovHack teams won 1 award: 13 won a First, 5 a Runners-up & 23 a Hon. Mention.

• Firsts:
  ARVIS, Bachmanns and Fulwoods, Get Active USC, Hack aPEEL, I’m Learnding, Living Spirit, Lucky Shot, Motley Crue, Team Marika, Team Rocket, Technotelecomnicon, The Ogrelords, This Place

By state/territory, inc. State/Local Government Participation & Spirit of #GovHack, National #GovHack Awards followed population size (except ACT which punched above its weight):

• NSW won 21 
• Vic won 19
• Qld won 17
• ACT won 14
• SA won 9
• WA won 4
• NT won 2
• Tas won 0 (sorry folks)

The #GovHack results looks a little different in detail, with Victoria winning more First places than anyone else & Queensland tying with NSW! (the NA are the National Government Participation Awards which I excluded as they give ACT an unfair bonus)

In fact, using a 3-2-1 scoring system for First Place, Runner-up and Hon. Mention, Victoria outscores NSW, and ACT even closer to the top three in the raw #GovHack award numbers.

Finally, looking at #GovHack National Awards by venue, the central city venues did better than regional locations in all cases, except in Queensland - where the Sunshine Coast won more awards than anywhere else in Qld, including Brisbane... Amazing work guys!!!

And here's the table of National #GovHack Awards by venue...

And that's the wrap on the by the numbers Awards for #GovHack 2018.
My data is still a bit messy, but I'll clean it up and put it in a Google sheet at some point in the next week so others can access it.

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Roundup from GovHack 2017

Starting in a single Canberra venue in 2009, GovHack is now the largest open data hacking competition for government worldwide, with over 3,000 participants, coaches, mentors and organisers across 36 venues around Australia and New Zealand.

Over a 46-hour period participants including coders, creatives, data crunchers and facilitators, redesign and reimagine citizen services and use open data to visualise fresh insights into government decision-making, taking part in a competition with over 80 prizes and a prize pool of over $250,000.

The event is organised and run by volunteers, but GovHack has support from the Australian and New Zealand Governments, all Australian state and territory governments and many local governments across ANZ, as well as a range of corporate sponsors. This was the first year that the Northern Territory became involved with the event.

Many senior public servants drop into the event over the weekend, and have a keen interest in using ideas from GovHack within their agencies.

This year Accenture was the Platinum Sponsor for GovHack, the first time a corporation has taken such a significant interest in the event - a trend I hope continues as these types of event gain steam as a creative way for companies and governments to innovate quickly.

Accenture sponsored two awards, the ‘Into the New’ award for Australia challenged participants to demonstrate innovation and new thinking in all forms. This could be new ways to experience and interact with public data or new approaches to citizen experiences that help citizen and governments journey into the new together. It attracted 138 entrants from around Australia, from a total of 373 projects submitted.

Accenture’s ‘Re:Invention’ award for New Zealand challenged participants to design a citizen experience that builds on something government already does to deliver a more effective and engaging way of interacting. It attracted 12 entrants from Wellington, Auckland and Hamilton, from a total of 66 New Zealand projects submitted.

GovHack by the numbers

While GovHack itself is over for 2017, state award events will be held in August, and an international Red Carpet event for National and International Award winners in October. You can view the closing video from GovHack 2017 here.

All the projects created this year are online in the GovHack Hackerspace, available for inspiration and learning – remaining online to provide hundreds of fresh perspectives on how government can deliver more value to citizens.

you can read more about GovHack 2017 in this LinkedIn post by a mentor, or on Twitter.

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Get revved for GovHack across Australia & New Zealand (28-30 July)

As the world’s largest hackathon, GovHack  is on at over 25 locations across Australia and New Zealand again this year from Friday 6pm this week until Sunday afternoon (28-30 July).
With over 3,000 participants and 437 completed projects in 2016, GovHack is an opportunity to develop prototypes of new services, visualisations and mashups with government open data and other datasets with the chance to be nationally recognised and win prizes at national, state and local levels.

Supported by all levels of Australian government, GovHack is not just for programmers. Some of the projects in previous years have included board games and jewelry (for instance 3D printed bracelets of climate data), alongside websites, mobile apps, wearable apps and APIs.

National awards are announced at a Red Carpet Event, which filled the PowerHouse Museum in Sydney in 2015 (the last one I attended).


While some people form teams before the event, you can also come along as a solo participant, or form a team on the day – providing an opportunity to rub shoulders with all kinds of talented people.

There’s still room to register for some venues if you want to participate.

I’m helping run the ACT local event this year, so will be onsite at Canberra Grammar all weekend. If you’re participating here, come and say hi!

For more information visit the GovHack website or read last year’s report.

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Congratulations to GovHack for another fantastic year

The weekend just past featured the 6th GovHack event, involving over 2,000 participants in 280 teams across 41 locations in Australia and New Zealand working on 439 registered projects.

Effectively the world's biggest government hackathon, GovHack includes some amazing ideas on how to solve public challenges, using open data from agencies in innovative ways.

Whether you've previously heard of the GovHack event or not, visiting the Hackerspace (2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects), where all the registered projects are listed, is an inspiring way to start the morning and get some innovative ideas on how to address some of the pressing challenges facing your agency or organisation.

I wasn't actively involved in GovHack this year, due to family commitments, so don't have any insights from the ground on how the event went.

However from the social correspondence and general mood online, the event maintained the heights it attained in past years, while maturing further with better systems and challenge structures.

With GovHack managed by a second generation team (with the founder and key past organisers moving on or otherwise engaged), this year marked a major transition for the event.

The success of this year proves that GovHack isn't just a passion-play, but is a solid, sustainable, professional event that can become an important ongoing part of the open data movement, and tool for governments to foster citizen engagement, for a long time into the future.

Congrats to all of the organisers this year, who have made this possible.

Here's some stats from the event, based on the current information in the Hackerspace.

Total projects registered: 439
Total projects submitted: 351 (80%)

(Projects must be submitted to be eligible for judging)

The tables below show the number and percentage of submissions (Sub.) by territory, as well as submissions by 2015 population estimates.

As I measure it, the smaller the population per submission, the greater the level of engagement with GovHack within that territory - leaving ACT the most engaged, followed by South Australia, Tasmania, Queensland, New Zealand and then Western Australia, with Victoria and NSW at the end.

Projects by Country

Country	Reg.	Sub.	% Sub.	Population	Sub./Pop.
Australia	373	291	78.0%	23,781,200	81,722
New Zealand	66	60	90.9%	4,596,700	76,612

Projects by Australian State/Territory

State/Territory	Reg.	Sub.	% Sub.	Population	Sub./Pop.
Australian Capital Territory	51	44	86.3%	390,800	8,882
New South Wales	70	45	64.3%	7,618,200	169,293
Queensland	84	70	83.3%	4,779,400	68,277
South Australia	60	49	81.7%	1,698,600	34,665
Tasmania	13	11	84.6%	516,600	46,964
Victoria	69	48	69.6%	5,938,100	123,710
West Australia	26	24	92.3%	2,591,600	107,983

Projects by Region and Local event - Australia

	Region	Local Site	Reg.	Sub.	% Sub.
	ACT	Canberra	45	39	86.7%
	ACT	Canberra Heritage Hack	6	5	83.3%
	NSW	Camperdown Games for Learning	4	4	100.0%
	NSW	Parramatta	6	5	83.3%
	NSW	Sydney Official	55	32	58.2%
	NSW	Tyro Fintech Hub	5	4	80.0%
	QLD	Brisbane Maker Node	11	7	63.6%
	QLD	Brisbane Official	42	35	83.3%
	QLD	Brisbane Youth Node	1	1	100.0%
	QLD	Far North Queensland	1	1	100.0%
	QLD	Gold Coast	6	4	66.7%
	QLD	Ipswich	4	4	100.0%
	QLD	Logan	6	6	100.0%
	QLD	Rockhampton	3	3	100.0%
	QLD	Sunshine Coast	6	5	83.3%
	QLD	Toowoomba	4	4	100.0%
	SA	Adelaide	36	31	86.1%
	SA	Adelaide Maker	2	1	50.0%
	SA	Mount Gambier	9	9	100.0%
	SA	Onkaparinga	5	2	40.0%
	SA	Playford	7	5	71.4%
	SA	Port Adelaide Enfield	1	1	100.0%
	Tas	Hobart	7	5	71.4%
	Tas	Launceston	6	6	100.0%
	Vic	Ballarat	9	8	88.9%
	Vic	Geelong	5	4	80.0%
	Vic	Hack for Wyndham	5	5	100.0%
	Vic	Melbourne	36	20	55.6%
	Vic	Melbourne Mapspace	14	11	78.6%
	WA	Geraldton	3	2	66.7%
	WA	Perth	23	22	95.7%

Projects by Region and Local event - New Zealand

	Region	Local Site	Reg.	Sub.	% Sub.
	NZ	Auckland	16	15	93.8%
	NZ	Christchurch	15	12	80%
	NZ	Dunedin	1	1	100%
	NZ	Hamilton	10	9	90%
	NZ	Napier, Hawkes Bay	2	2	100%
	NZ	Northland	1	1	100%
	NZ	Queenstown	3	3	100%
	NZ	Wellington	14	13	92.9%
	NZ	Whanganui	4	4	100%

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The Roy/Blue Chilli policy hack is a great concept poorly executed

Next weekend Wyatt Roy, the Assistant Minister for Innovation and Blue Chilli, a Sydney-based start-up incubator , host a Policy Hack designed to 'disrupt the public service' by using start-up approaches to rapidly design and iterate new policy for the Australian nation.

I understand the excitement of Roy and part of the new government at the concept of holding a policy hack, of overturning the status quo in Canberra and making a real difference in governance.

It's a noble concept, and one that would attract those with a start-up mindset - including myself - the notion that a nation is more like a start-up than not, and that rapid and iterative policy development can lead to better outcomes for our society
Indeed I am a big support of the policy hack approach, where every assumption is tested and every system is reviewed for efficiency, workability and their outcomes and consequences. It actually isn't that far removed from existing policy development processes, albeit performed far quicker and with a more diverse range of talents involved in the mix.

However in this instance I am concerned about the specific approach being taken by Roy and Blue Chilli.

My views are reflected by a recent article by Stilgherrian, Wyatt Roy's Policy hack is already becoming a joke, and by the views of people I have spoken to more widely about this specific policy hack attempt.

Don't get me wrong, policy hacks work. International experience has demonstrated that concentrated bursts of attention involving diverse expertise on specific policy issues and initiatives delivers iterative improvements.

As a technique reflective of a start-up's validation and approach to market, there's plenty for policy makers to learn from.

However when approaches are unfocused, when they aim to 'disrupt the public service' creating an us versus them scenario, when they are not rooted in existing experience, knowledge and tested practice, they become unable to achieve the goals they set out to meet.

In this case the policy hack is framed as 'everything is on the table', as well it might be, but the hack fails to focus on a specific policy area for review and reform. The responses in the OurSay platform are therefore extremely diverse, with the only theme representing the specific audience attracted to respond - the startup community across Australia.

As a policy hack specifically on innovation policy the approach had enormous merit, but by widening the hack to any and every policy it provides a very shallow and narrow platform for any kind of real reform.

The risks in this poorly executed 'everything hack' is that the notion of policy hacks will end up rejected by those in power in Canberra. Just as the 2020 Summit hosted by Kevin Rudd disappeared with barely a trace and led to few valuable outcomes due to a lack of focus, poor inclusiveness and poor execution, Roy's Policy Hack repeats most of the same errors, albeit with a different (and often ignored) community, and in a smaller and less showy format.

If the breadth of policy topics canvassed at the Policy Hack is too broad, and the capacity to bring in existing expertise, testing and knowledge too narrow, this Policy Hack will deliver little in the way of outcomes - with perhaps one or two minor tweaks to existing policies that will be touted as a major success, only to disappear into Canberra beaurocracy and never be executed.

The real risk is not in this experiment but in the tone it sets for future initiatives in this space. It seems nothing has been learnt from the 2020 Forum, from the Public Sphere events, from the multitude of specific policy hacks undertaken overseas (ranging from the Police Wiki in New Zealand to the reframing of the Icelandic constitution), from the many experiments that have already failed or succeeded.

My concern is that a poor outcome will not stimulate more experimentation (even raking over old coals), but actually see the concept devalued and dropped, when all the evidence actually suggests that properly targeted and well-executed policy hacks, like well managed and structured start-ups, actually are far more likely to succeed than a random idea bringing together a bunch of strangers.

I am not able to be at the Policy Hack due to other commitments, and I don't feel stimulated by the format to submit serious policy reform ideas (of which I have many, having worked both within and outside of government - witnessing how they operate both from an insider and citizen perspective).

I hope that the guys at Blue Chilli can pull together something valuable, with outcomes that encourage further policy hacks and a more inclusive approach that reflects the broader community- however I don't expect it.

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GovHack 2015 International and National winners

Below is a list of all of the GovHack 2015 International and National winners...

The GovHack 2015 International categories had competitors across Australia and New Zealand: 

The International Best Disaster Mitigation Hack,

• iHelp by team Tremorz in New Zealand
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/tremorz

The International Digital Humanities Hack

• patentstori.es by team Patent Trolls in Canberra
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/patentstories 

International Bounty for Best WWI Hacks

• ANZhACks by team Hackasaurus Wrecks in Canberra;
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/anzhacks
  and
• Citizen Culture and Heritage: Lest we Forget by team Technogesic in Ballarat https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/citizen-culture-heritage-lest-we-forget

The GovHack 2015 Australian National Major Categories were open to all Australian participants:

The Best Digital Transformation Hack

• Health Buddy by team Chamonix in Adelaide
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/health-buddy

The Best Open Government Data Hack

• Question Time: A game of policy by Team Executive Swivel in Tasmania
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/question-time-game-policy 

The Best Science Hack

• Lungs by team Saint Simon in Adelaide
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/lungs 

The Best Policy Insights Hack 

• Synergising Synergies for Sitizens by team Synergising Synergies for Sitizens in Perth https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/synergising-synergies-sitizens 

The Best Data Journalism Hack

• Mapping Pedestrian Activities & Safety in Melbourne by team Monash City Science in Melbourne
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/mapping-pedestrian-activities-safety-melbourne

The Best Entrepreneurial Hack

• Neuron - Connecting Like Minds by team Neuron in Sydney
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/neuron-connecting-minds

The GovHack 2015 Australian National Team Awards were open to all Australian participants: 

The Best Youth Team (18 years and under) The winning hack is:

• AusEd by team Nexus_Is_Back in Mount Gambier South Australia
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/aused 

Best Higher Education Team

• patentstori.es by team Patent Trolls in Canberra
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/patentstories 

Best Public Servant Team

• Safeway-2-go by team Hippo Creative in Adelaide
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/safe-way-2-go

Best Professional Team

• Our Local Stories by team Our Local Stories in Melbourne
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/our-local-stories

The Australian National Bounty prizes were open to all Australian participants:

The most useful Product or Service for the Public Bounty

• Industry Check: Is it time to move on by team Elephant in Canberra https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/industry-check-it-time-move 

ABC regional bounty

• Secret Suburb by team BigDataBigDream in Sydney https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/secret-suburb 

The Statistics data bounty

• AboutOz by team Caffeinate me in Perth
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/aboutoz

The Charity data bounty

• Charitable Mapping by team Sleepless in Sydney in Sydney https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/charitable-mapping

The Taxation data bounty

• The Glass Ceiling Index by team Blackwattle in Sydney
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/glass-ceiling-index

The Scientific data bounty

• Twitter Field Guide by team FieldGuidesInc in Canberra
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/twitter-field-guide 

The National Map bounty

• Use Your Words by team 66& Teague in Canberra
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/use-your-words

The Structure of government bounty 

• Struct by team GD in Toowoomba
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/struct

The Air conditioner and energy bounty

• Air Compare by team Patch in Canberra
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/air-compare

The Geoscience Australia data bounty

• Minecraft your city by team Mind the App in Canberra
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/minecraft-your-city

The Intellectual Property data bounty

• Neuron - Connecting Like Minds by team Neuron in Sydney
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/neuron-connecting-minds

The Health and welfare bounty

• Death and Taxes by team Hackasaurus Wrecks in Canberra https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/death-and-taxes

The Open Source bounty

• SynergyCity by team SynergyCity in Perth
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/synergycity 

The Indigenous issues bounty

• #oncounty by team #oncountry in Perth
  https://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/oncountry

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Have you visited data.gov.au lately? We're beginning to witness the 'Open Data Multiplier'

PS News has a great report on the growth of data.gov.au - linking to a report on the Department of Finance's blog which indicates the site added 100 datasets in June.

The site has also upgraded to provide more data visualisation capability for users, as well as a responsive template for improved mobile access.

Most interesting was the high use of the service over GovHack, with 4,755 user sessions by 2,618 users. The most popular datasets included intellectual property government open data 2015, ABC Local online photo stories 2009-2014 and sample household electricity time of use data.

I've written about some of the interesting Govhack prototypes over at The Mandarin in the article, GovHack 2015: a wildly successful idea that keeps spawning more, where I also wrote about how participation is a useful way for agencies to test and support 'edge' innovation without committing scarce personnel and funds.

From what I've been hearing over the weeks since Govhack we're reached something of a tipping point with open data in Australia, with governments beginning to seriously recognise the value of sharing data in this manner.

Those benefits are not just external to agencies, such as transparency, economic growth or community engagement, but also internal.

Internal open data benefits to government include improving agency decision-making (through greater awareness and access to collected data), improved data quality and fostering innovation and creativity.

As a result of reaching the tipping point, I expect to see continuing significant growth in the quantity and quality of open data available across Australia, as well as more targeted and useful data as agencies become more sophisticated in their data release (as I've outlined previously in my Open Data Generations Roadmap)

This will stimulate what I've termed the Open Data Multiplier.

As with the network effect, where the value of a network increases exponentially with the number of participants (think about telephones or the internet), the Open Data Multiplier means that each additional dataset released for reuse creates a growing number of possibilities to combine it with existing data, or use it on its own, to prompt even more interesting and diverse innovations.

However the Open Data Multiplier only operates when the community and agencies are engaged with open data. Without this community both inside and outside of the public sector, data sits 'on the shelf', generating no value at all.

This is where volunteer-run events like GovHack are valuable for fostering a positive civic hacking culture.

Agencies also have a role in fostering both an internal and external culture of data-based innovation through supporting GovHack and similar events, and running their own separate challenges on agency-specific topics (as Transport for NSW and Public Transport Victoria have done).

The internal benefits don't stop at data either. The same challenge model, once adopted by government, can be used more broadly for policy and service design and in finding diverse solutions for government problems - as has been successful in Challenge.gov and is used by VicHealth and thre ACT government.

Indeed I ran a similar service design challenge for the Victorian Government at GovHack, the first exploration of such an approach at that event. The learnings will help guide Victoria's government in identifying when to use similar approaches and in designing and running future challenges.

All of this follows on from opening up government data, creating a more permissive and experimental sandpit for innovation and sharing.

And it starts with a visit to data.gov.au - have you visited lately?

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Who won GovHack's National prizes - analysis

I've done some work analysing who actually won the National awards at GovHack based on the official results at govhack.org/2014-winners/, and this is what I've discovered...

There were 87 National GovHack awards given out to Projects and Teams, with one GovHack subcategory (Best Science Reporting) unawarded. Of these, 66 awards were awarded to Teams for their Projects, and 21 to Teams as team achievement awards that were not for a specific project.

Every GovHack location except for Mount Gambier won at least one national award.

Fifty six different teams won awards (across the entire eighty seven awards), with the leading prize winner being Sarbii from Perth with five awards, followed by Jonathan and Wai, Michael de Hoog and R3K1 on four awards and another six teams winning three awards. Eighty per cent of winning teams won either two or one award.



Forty five projects won an award (across the sixty six prizes for projects). Show the Gap was the top awarded project, with four awards, followed by eight projects with three awards: CancerMash, Data-by-region comparator, Energy Calculator and Comparison tool, Sarbii - Search and Rescue, Stat.Map, The Hack Report, What is Gov (Baby don't hurt me) and When the Heck am I?

Again about eighty per cent of winning projects won one or two awards.



Looking at locations, Canberra was the biggest winner by number of prizes (24), followed by Sydney (17), Adelaide (13) and Perth (11).


By the number of prizes relative to the number of entries, noting that some entries won more than one prize so this overstates the actual share of entries that won prizes, the winning location was Tasmania (89%), followed by Canberra (77%), Sydney (68%) and Perth (61%).

The most prizes were awarded in the Team category (22), followed by Best Social Inclusion (Hack (14), Best Business Hack (13) and Best Digital Humanities Hack (12).



You can see all of these statistics and more, as well as links to all the winners, in my Google spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18H4gWSuVLb5Mjt84YdymeXSlSaAxjY78lX5T90i6RmQ/edit?usp=sharing

There were also several prizes given to government agencies which I've not analysed:

• Best Government Participation, won by the South Australian Government, with 2nd place shared by the Federal Department of Communication and The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare; and
• Highest Voted Government Data, won by the National Library for Trove and 2nd place going to the Victorian Building Authority.

I've not analysed local awards, which are visible or linked from the bottom of the GovHack winners page.

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ACT Crime Stats data - ready for people to analyse and mashup

At GovHack a few weeks ago my team, The Hack Warriors, wanted to integrate ACT crime data into our project 'Where Should I?'

While the ACT makes the data available visually in the awesome Crime Statistics site, it wasn't available as open data from data.act.gov.au.

So during the weekend I went through the code for the Crime Statistics site and (with a little help) identified where the data was coming from. I was able to download the actual Crime Stats data and process it into a spreadsheet with all the figures by suburb.

For reuse purposes I put the data up as a public Google Fusion table, which anyone can now access via a search of Fusion tables, or via the direct web address: https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1Cztgi-LF4CtXtS-EbU1M6JXnZAzPt1wLAH5YdXnN#rows:id=1

What this means is that now anyone who wants to mine the crime statistics for the ACT can do so easily using this table - performing statistical analysis or mashing it up with other data and mapping it easily.

Even better I found that while the ACT Crime Statistics site allowed people to see data back to 2010, the actual data went all the way back to 2007 - providing more historical data than is visually available from the site.

So if you want to play with the actual numbers behind the ACT's Crime Statistics site - you could start with the table below.

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Watch the video of the GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards

The GovHack Red Carpet Awards was awesome (as you can see from the liveblog from Sunday).

If you weren't able to attend or watch the event's livestream, the video of the awards is now live at the GovHack site, and I've embedded it below for your convenience.

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GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards liveblog

Tonight I am attending the GovHack 2014 Red Carpet Awards night in Brisbane, and will be liveblogging the proceedings.

Keep an eye on my live blog (below) and the Twitter hashtag #GovHack for all the winners and happenings.

Live Blog GovHack Red Carpet Awards 2014

 

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GovHack 2014 winners to be announced on 10 August

GovHack 2014 was the largest open data in Australian history.

With over 1,300 participants across 10 locations, it set a new benchmark for engagement with, and reuse of, government data.

On Sunday evening the winners will be announced at a Red Carpet Awards Night in Brisbane. I'll be attending and liveblogging & tweeting the event, so keep an eye on eGovAU and on the hashtags #govhack, #govhackau and #govhack14.

If you want to check out the entries before the event, visit the complete list of GovHack projects at http://hackerspace.govhack.org/

Don't have time to look through 200-odd projects?

Here's some that the GovHack team has particularly noted (note this doesn't mean they will necessarily be finalists, there's a lot of good projects):

• Show the Gap - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/show-gap
• The Hack Report - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/tbd-0
• Energy Calculator and Comparison Tool - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/energy-calculator-and-comparison-tool
• Live Labor Force - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/live-labour-force
• Languages of Sydney - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/languages-sydney
• Data-by-region Comparator - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/data-region-comparator
• Mash Academy - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/mash-academy
• Hot News Time Machine - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/hot-news-time-machine
• Project Doom - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/project-doom
• Unlock Australia - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/unlockaustralia
• FixMyCity - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/fixmycity
• Empowered: - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/empowered 
• Stat.Map - http://hackerspace.govhack.org/content/statmap

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GovHack is underway - but what is it?

I'm participating in GovHack this year, spending my weekend working with a team to build a cool tool from open government data.

If you're a bit unclear on what a Hack is, the five minute segment below from ABS News 24, featuring GovHack national coordinator Pia Waugh should give you a better idea.



If you want to learn more about GovHack, here's the opening video - also featuring Pia Waugh, as well as the Minister for Communication Malcolm Turnbull.

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GovHack registration opens - with ten locations across Australia for 2014

GovHack 2014 has just opened for registration with 10 locations across Australia, being:

• Brisbane GovHack
• Canberra GovHack
• GovHack FNQ (Cairns)
• Gold Coast GovHack
• GovHack Tasmania
• Melbourne GovHack
• Perth GovHack
• Sydney GovHack
• Unleashed Adelaide
• Unleashed Mount Gambier 

While competition details are not yet available, the official 2014 datasets will be put online over the next two months.

There will be a data event a month before GovHack where data custodians can present about the official datasets and allowing Govhack registrants to ask questions about the quality, formatting and other information about the data.

There will also be a red carpet event a month after GovHack to celebrate the winners.

To register visit govhack.org/register-2014

For more information visit: govhack.org/2014/04/11/3-months-till-govhack-2014/

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GovHack 2013 - my top ten picks

Last weekend (31 May - 2 June) was a big weekend for Government 2.0 in Australia, with the first truly national GovHack held across eight locations, including seven of Australia's eight major states and territories.

With over $170,000 in prizes, and around 100 national and local prizes on offer, GovHack 2013 attracted 900 participants, who formed into 134 teams to create 124 apps using open government data - of which 108 were submitted by deadline.

Sponsors included a range of small, medium and large companies and included a number of government agencies, who used the event for inspiration on how open data could be used to generate new insights and improve public awareness and understanding.

I was unable to attend due to personal commitments, however kept an eye on the event remotely via the #govhack tag on Twitter, the event website and the online dashboard (image above).

The event, as anticipated, resulted in some awesome visualisations, tools and ideas - ranging from the visual mapping of immigration to Australia, which put asylum seeker arrivals in proportion; to the creation of jewelry based on open data.

Some awards have already been given out, with others to be decided by Thursday.

A process of public voting for entries is now underway - and you can vote for your favourite entries at http://hackerspace.govhack.org/

However here are my top ten favourite entries this year.

Immigration in proportion

This is an awesome way to visualise immigration to Australia, the type of visualisation that governments should be using to put data in perspective.

Explanation:
A visualisation of all immigration to Australia within 2011-12, created for Govhack 2013. Each dot represents one person.

Red dot: immigration through skilled entry, family reunion or special eligibility schemes.
Blue dot: refugees who arrive by boat (IMA = irregular maritime arrival).
Green dot: refugees who arrive by plane (non-IMA).

Refugees arriving through offshore resettlement (eg, from refugee camps overseas) are not currently shown.

Data is from Department of Immigration and Citizenship and Refugee Council of Australia.

Credits: Steve Bennett, Andrew Wise, Darren Yu.



Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/asylum-seekers-proportion-and-getting-sense-scale

Trove: Open it up

While I don't care much for the word games, I love the concept of Trove having its own Captcha - which government agencies could use to enlist Australians in crowdsourcing the digitalisation of our national newspaper archive.

View it at: http://ec2-54-253-113-204.ap-southeast-2.compute.amazonaws.com/
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/open-it

APS Jobs Gazetter

The APS Jobs Gazetter takes Australian Public Service (APS) jobs information, drawing from the (PDF) APS Jobs Gazette and presents it graphically by type of job over time, based on search terms entered.

This makes it possible to track the ebb and flow of different job types in the APS, very useful for detecting changing patterns in employment over time that simply cannot be achieved via other APS resources.

View it at: http://gazetteer.pv.tl
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/aps-jobs-gazetteer-exploring-public-service-jobs

Australia in review

It can be difficult to get a clear picture of the Australia's past - with data spread across many sources and many accounts giving a partial sense of each year.

Australia in review is a useful addition to this area, providing a useful and usable snapshop of Australia in each of the last 40 years - with the ability to expand to provide all kinds of custom information.

View it at: http://www.bradandglen.com/govhack/
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/australia-review-air

Deathmatch.me

There's many preconceptions about the major causes of death in Australia, and deathmatch.me takes a lighthearted approach to correcting these, by presenting causes of death in one-on-one matches to the... er... death.

View it at: http://deathmatch.me/
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/deathmatchme

Explorations in flight

Ever been interested in seeing where people come from to visit Australia, or how this has changed over the years?

Explorations in flight provides a 20-year picture of flight arrivals and departures for Australia, showing the rise in travel and changes in origin.

View it at: http://flinklabs.com/labs/flights/
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/explorations-flight-httpflinklabscomlabsflights

Giving kids better health outcomes

This hack isn't simply interesting, but important for supporting parents and health professionals to improve the health outcomes for their kids by understanding local issues.

The data is currently only for South Australia, but hopefully will be increased to cover the entire country.

View it at: http://www.unleashed2013.org/dashboard
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/giving-them-better-chance-life-analytics-meets-early-childhood-development

Survival kit for international students going to NSW

This site provides information for international students on where the best places are for them to stay, relative to the university they are going to attend.

I like it because it fills a need for a group who otherwise might struggle to make the best decision for themselves due to lack of familiarity with Australia.

View it at: http://govhack2013.kelvinism.com/
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/stay-here-not-there-survival-kit-international-students-coming-nsw

The open index

How can the public critically assess which government agencies are being the most open? For that matter, how can agencies and politicians assess this?

The open index provides a useful way of measuring openness, using a variety of measures and approaches. Agree or disagree with the weightings (and it does need some work - for example more overdue QoNs is not a good thing), it is a valuable approach for providing some kind of comparison between agencies.

View it at: http://theopenindex.org/
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/open-index

Where do my taxes go?

I like this Govhack entry as it demystifies where tax money goes - something that is very hard to get in a snapshot from the budget or any other government information.

This is the type of tool I expect to see from modern tax agencies. The fun facts are a blast too.

View it at: http://christonkin.id.au/govhack/final/index.html
Vote for it at: http://hackerspace.govhack.org/?q=groups/where-do-my-taxes-go

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Register now for GovHack 2013

GovHack is on again this year and it's gone national, with eight locations across Australia.

With over $160,000 in prizes, the organisers anticipate over 400 participants in 150 teams - and due to venue sizes, entry is limited.

If you're interested in mashing up open government data for prize money, or simply interested in watching the event unfold, to find out more and to register go to: www.govhack.org/2013/05/03/govhack-2013-a-national-approach-for-inspiring-government/

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Viewing the GovHacks

Below is a list of GovHacks entries including links to their live or temporary prototype sites.

I've linked Hack names to their record in the GovHack site.

Note that live sites may not remain live for long, so some links may be broken.

• 100 Years by Code Cadets
• A day in the Life by The Outsiders - http://202.2.94.231:8080/ADITL/
• ABS Census 2011 Object-Relational Database Loader by SoloDeveloper - https://github.com/andrewharvey/ (code)
• AmbleMate by Acord Labs - http://amblemate.lambdacomplex.org/
• An Improved PhotoSearch for the National Archives of Australia by Digital Humanitarians - http://202.2.94.227/
• Aussie Chronology by $team = 'Fr-Agile'; - http://ac.enricosimonetti.com/
• Australia: The MMORPG by Something Gamerish
• Australis by Aram
• Bako.co by Polleniser - http://bako.co/
• Better PhotoSearch by Double Rainbows - http://photosearch.us.to/?q=rainbow&i=11407632
• Climate vis jewellery by Cranky Bot - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:24173 (code to generate jewellery)
• DeadFacebook by Nifty (under construction)
• Demographic Advisor by Terrible Team
• Environmental Sustainability in the ACT Web App (ESACT web) by Enviro Coders
• FOI Online by Freedom - http://saphe.com.au/
• GenderCrunch by Unicorn Logic - http://code.google.com/p/unicorn-gender-crunch/ (code)
• GeoArchive by The Code Monkeys
• Gov2Wiki by PlotaLot - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Batch_created_charts_by_User:99of9
• Happiness Index by HappinessMatters - https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&q=select+col7%3E%3E1+from+1BVWLGlXnE561QyiAeQgDqSEKxlC8kyr2aA69zfY&h=false&lat=-29.13629667120401&lng=137.0152115625&z=4&t=1&l=col7%3E%3E1
• History in ACTION by History in ACTION - http://historyinaction.info/
• Is your Polly smarter than a 5th grader? by MovingForward - http://202.2.94.230/
• Locationalised by Locationallly - http://www.locationally.com/
• 3D Data on a mesh by Matrix Mania - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDtZcuukneI
• odata.au by Searchlight
• OKCapital by The Capatalists - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11HWby18Ik_dmjYL88-dkcfeVktj-_OfFv7PFMkXNZp0/edit#slide=id.p
• Old MacDonald's Farm by The Govness - http://thegovness.com/old-mac-donald/
• Photo Rummage by Terminator - http://www.electricpen.com.au/PhotoRummage/app.html (mobile prototype)
• Pictorian by Awesomo - http://pictorian.rushify.com/
• PictureSwipe by Porta Nerd- https://github.com/geobray (code)
• Repel the Invaders! by The Biodiverse
• Represent! by SPARQL Data Party - https://bitbucket.org/whatsthatweb/represent-conversation
• Route me by Timeless traveller - https://github.com/predominant/RouteMe (code)
• Safe Route by Hackeroos
• Solar Powered Train by Solar Powered Train
• State v State: FIGHT by The Govness - http://www.thegovness.com/fight/
• The Burbs by CodeNinja
• The Hot Seat by The Death Rays - http://thehotseat.info/
• The OpenBudget by 2 Guys 1 App - http://theopenbudget.org/
• Time Capsule by Laser Explosions - http://202.2.94.235/?share=9
• Walk My Way by Lonesome Dove
• watchr: open your all-seeing-eye by the All-Seeing-Eyes - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pXUOGecMgpxW6aPWXyr_oN2iqiWj-pRplFL41FWyLeY/present#slide=id.p (presentation)
• WeatherCrowd by The White Board Markers - http://www.weathercrowd.com.au:8080/app/
• WeatheredOak by NullReference - http://govhack.typ0.co/default.htm
• WotsGoingOn by WotsGoingOn - http://www.wotsgoingon.com.au/wgon/

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GovHack presentations and judging liveblog

Hi, I'll be liveblogging the presentations and judging from GovHack in Canberra below as it happens.

All the tears and all the cheers as 42 entrants go head for head for around $40,000 in prizes and the street cred of being a GovHack winner.

You can view all the entrants on the GovHack website.

Vote and comment on them now at govhack.dialogue-app.com (your views will be taken into account by the judges).



Photos from the GovHack presentations

GovHack crowd in Canberra

GovHack crowd in Canberra

The big screen at GovHack

Watching the Sydney GovHack crowd

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