Saturday, June 02, 2012

Future of Government at GovHack Canberra

Greetings from Canberra, where the future of government started last night at GovHack 2012. The event was officially opened by technocrat Pia Waugh, at 6pm last night. Teams of hackers (in the original sense of the word, being innovative inventors) are working with sets of data provided by Federal and State Australian governments. Teams have until Sunday afternoon to come up with new and innovative ways to "mash" the data together to provide useful services for community and business. Prizes from government and industry will be awarded late Sunday. There are teams located in both Canberra and Sydney. On Tuesday, the results will be shown to senior government officials at GovCamp 2012 in Canberra.

The Canberra GovHack is being held at the University of Canberra Inspire Centre, which is designed as a prototype of the school of the future. A team of volunteers, with the help of the centre staff, have reconfigured the venue to be the government office of the future. The centre has WiFi throughout, to provide seamless wireless data access to large government cloud data stores. There are wall mounted screens for formal and informal presentations. The walls of the main building are whiteopbaords, from floor to ceiling, for brainstorming. All the furniture is on wheels, for instant reconfiguration. The Canberra site is linked by video conference to Sydney.

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