GovHack is a significant annual

open government Open government is the governing doctrine which maintains that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight. In its broadest construction, it opposes reason of state a ...

and

open data Open data are data that are openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shareable by anyone for any purpose. Open data are generally licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-so ...

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...

, attracting over 15,000 participants since 2009. First run as a small

Canberra Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...

-based event, it quickly expanded to an international competition with simultaneous events taking place in major cities across

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

each year, with virtual events for remote and international participants. Since its inception, over 2,500 projects have been published by participants to demonstrate the practical value of open data.

Format

The competition requires small teams of competitors to produce a project using open data within 46 hours, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. The format of the project is unspecified, but

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

s, and visualisations are common, with games and art also being encouraged. Although competitors may use any available open data, certain prize categories mandate the use of certain datasets, such as "Best Geoscience Award" or "Best Use of Taxation Statistics Award". Typically, participating sponsors and government departments release new datasets for the competition each year. Each team must produce evidence of work, such as source code, and are judged on a three-minute video they must produce about their project. Teams are required to publish their projects using an

open license A free license or open license is a license that allows copyrighted work to be reused, modified, and redistributed. These uses are normally prohibited by copyright, patent or other Intellectual property (IP) laws. The term broadly covers '' fr ...

History

GovHack was first run at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

in 2009, funded by the Australian "Gov 2.0 Taskforce".In 2012, GovHack became an annual event and was run in two locations. During the early years of the competition, the Australian chapter of the

Open Knowledge Foundation Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) is a global, non-profit network that promotes and shares information at no charge, including both content and data. It was founded by Rufus Pollock on 20 May 2004 in Cambridge, England. It is incorporated in Engla ...

assisted with the operation of the event, with Pia Andrews as head of the national GovHack operations team. From 2013 to 2017 GovHack rapidly expanded to become an international competition run throughout Australia and New Zealand, with virtual events for remote and international participants. 2014 marked the first annual GovHack Red Carpet Awards to celebrate the winners, sponsors, and volunteers of GovHack, taking place at

Brisbane City Hall Brisbane City Hall, in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, is the seat of the Brisbane City Council. It is located adjacent to King George Square, where the rectangular City Hall has its main entrance. The City Hall also has frontages and entran ...

. During the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, GovHack was run entirely virtually. As a result, participation dropped significantly from 1500 participants in 2019, to less than half of that for the following years.

Events

External links

Data Point (The Age blog)

References

{{reflist Open data Hackathons Open government Hacker culture Computer-related events