GovHack 2019 Launched

Greetings from the Canberra launch of GovHack 2019. This is the tenth year of the GovHack completion where teams have a few days to build an application using open government data. This is hosted by the Australian National University for 2019. It happens  have just come from the launch of the Square One co-working space at ANU, next door.

Video for GovHack Entry

Greetings from  GovHack 2017. I

I have had some queries in the Canberra Coach Pit about what should be in the Video entry.

As it says in the GovHack Handbook:

"This a video pitch of your entry that tells a story of how you have reused data. The video should demonstrate your hack concept, the benefits or value the concept could achieve and where possible introduce your team. The most common method is to use a screencast, with a voice-over narration". (Emphasis added)

 To that I would add:

1.  Get it in before the deadline (4pm AEST): It doesn't matter how good your video is, if it is not in on time it will not be considered. Making a video is a very time consuming process. Produce a rough cut well before the deadline and then polish, as it is going to take longer than you thought. Upload well before the deadline, as the handbook says: "must submit actual Video URL not link to another website". The preferred location to link to is YouTube.
2. Explain what the problem is: The story you tell should say what the problem you are tying to solve is, as that may not be obvious to the viewer.
3. Make the vision clear:  Don't have tiny text, or too much detail, as that will be hard to see. My tip is to view the video on a smart phone held at arm's length and see if it is watchable.
4. Make the sound clear: Find a quiet spot to record audio. A headset microphone works well, as it gets the microphone close to your mouth.
5. Don't worry about live video:  This is about the application, so live video of people is not essential. You can use screen capture software for a "live" demo and also still screen-shots, along with still images of the people and the problem.
6. Say who you are at the beginning and end: Introduce your project at the start and remind the viewer again at the end.

Tom's Ten Tips for GovHack

Greetings from the Snow Centre for Education at Canberra Grammar School, where GovHack 2017 is in full swing. I am on duty n the "Coach Pit", at the top of the building, which is a little like being on the bridge of a ship. I am looking down on the old red brick buildings of the school, and a winter landscape of bare trees in the fog. Business is not brisk at present with only a few teams dropping in for advice.

Coaching a GovHack team is a skill none of the coaches is entirely comfortable with and so we had a discussion of the "Coaching Kata". 

But we are here for GovHack, so some tips for teams:

1. Build a Team: You need people with a range of skills for your team: it is not just about technical computer skills (it is mostly not about technical computer skills).
2. What is the Problem? You need to be able to clearly and briefly explain what problem you are solving. Practice by explaining it in a few words to people in the coffee queue (the coffee at GovHack is very good).
3. What is the solution? With the problem identified, the solution is still not easy to explain. One way is by comparison to an existing product or service: "It is *** for ***.
4. Who is this for?  Consider who will ultimately use the application and who might be interested in providing the service.
5. Has it been done? A quick web search will help see if what you propose has been done before. If it has, that is not the end of the world, as you can do it differently, or better, or both. 
6. Get Help:  There are Mentors with deep knowledge of the data provided and Coaches with knowledge of tools and techniques. Drop into the Pits or post a query via the forum, or both.
7. Do we have a plan?  It helps to know what you are planning to do when, even if it almost never turns out that way. The GovHack has deliverables at fixed times and you need to work towards these.
8. Do we have a clear presentation? GovHack is as much about explaining your solution s getting it to work. Keep it clear and simple.
9. Get it in on time:  It doesn't matter how good your solution is, if it is not submitted on time, it does not count.
10. Learn and enjoy: GovHack is not a job: you can't tell your team to do something, you can only encourage them. Remember to take breaks and have a walk around outside. This will also make you more productive and ideas will pop into your head when wandering around.

GovHack 2017 Opened at Snow Centre for Education

Greetings from the Snow Centre for Education at Canberra Grammar School, where GovHack 2017 just opened. Tonight is mainly for familiarization and team formation. The hacking proper starts tomorrow. I am a Strategy Coach for the event, which involves wandering around asking people how they are going and prompting them to think about it.

The venue is a new purpose built education facility, more advanced than most at Australian universities. The MC for the event is Matthew Purcell, Head of Digital Innovation at Canberra Grammar School. Matthew is a highly skilled IT professional, as well as a teacher. 

For the next two days the teams will think up something innovative to do with government data, try to implement it and, most importantly, explain what it is and why it is useful.

GovHack 2017

GovHack 2017 is on this weekend. I will be going along as a Strategy Coach for Canberra GovHack. The idea is to help teams of volunteers to build useful applications using data provided by government agencies. This is also happening at venues across Australia and New Zealand.

GovHack Canberra Results

Greetings from the last day of GovHack 2015 at the Australian National University in Canberra. Entries closed a few minutes ago and some of the tams are showing off the applications they built to use open access government data. Patentstori.es showed their system to "Explore the history of Australian innovation" using data from the patent office. Disastermaster.me "... maps the location of all disasters related to Australians since the early 1800's". AuStat generates quiz questions about Australia.

Mathew Purcell, noted computer educator, and his class of Computing and Code Cadets from Canberra Grammar School, recreated the whole of Canberra in the Minecraft game using geospatial data. They also produced Explore CBR to map the locations of public facilities in Canberra.

Crashstory.com is a "platform to research and annotate road accidents, developing them into narratives for the purposes of reflection and providing increased awareness of road safety".

There is a list of all the project from GovHack 2015 available.

GovHack 2015 Starts in Canberra

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra where GovHack 2015 has just started. There are about 200 participants in Canberra and another 2,000 at other locations around Australia who will be building applications using free open access government data over the next 48 hours.

ANU is hosting Climathon next weekend, to come up with responses to climate change for Australian cities.

GovHack on 11 to 13 July 2014

Registrations are now open for GovHack 2014, in Canberra, and at venues across Australia. Teams compete for prizes, building computer applications using data provided by government agencies. Even if you don't have a team, an idea for an application, or any knowledge of compute programming, it is worth coming along to watch and perhaps participate.

Open Knowledge in Canberra

Greetings from the Australian Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation (which grew out of GovCamp). The keynote speaker is Dr. Rufus Pollock (Founder of Open Knowledge).

Open Knowledge Foundation Australia came from the volunteer committees which have runs the GovHack and GovCamp events across Australia over the past few years.

Dr. Pollock is being streamed live by AARnet. On a related topic, the Digital Canberra Challenge was launched recently.

GovHack 2013 Awards Live from Canberra

Greetings from the GovHack 2013 Awards live from Canberra. The awards are being streamed on-line. These are for computer applications developed using open access data provided by government agencies. One winner of note in the "When Will My House Be Underwater?". Two teams from Canberra Grammar School won for their "Treasure Trove" and "Birthday Party of the Century" (their teacher is Matthew Purcell).

GovHack 2013 Started

Greetings from GovHack Canberra 2013 at the Inspire Centre, University of Canberra, which just started (five minutes late due to some technical difficulties). It runs until 2 June, with people in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. Teams of volunteers, ranging from school students to university professors, building computer applications using free open source government data. There is involvement from the three tiers of government (perhaps the UN next year?).

The four themes for GovHack 2013 are:

• Open Government
• Digital Humanities
• Science
• Data Journalism

There are National Prizes  as well as ones for the different locations. This year there are developer and entrepreneur prizes, where the winner are provided with resources to improve their application (other prizes are simple cash awards). There is also an award for the government agency which has made the best contribution to the event. Most of the prizes are from government agencies for use of their data. Best of Data Journalism prize is also new this year. Best digital storytelling is by Microsoft. Prizes will be handed out Thursday night at the companion GovCamp event.

On a similar theme, the Australian National University is hosting "Start-Up Camp Canberra 2013" from 6pm Friday 14 June to 5pm Sunday 16 June 2013.

GovCamp 2013

Greetings from the GovCamp and GovHack organizers meeting. We are in one of the community meeting rooms at the Gungahlin Library, just behind the Canberra NBN Hub.

NBN Digital Hub Gungahlin

Greetings from the NBN Digital Hub Gungahlin, at the ACT Public Library in Gungahlin (just across the corridor from the CIT Learning Centre Gungahlin). There are series of community rooms equipped with high speed wired and wireless broadband. There are also some large flat screen displays on wheels, with Apple computers attached and wireless keyboard for presentations. There are white-board walls. The furniture includes individual chairs equipped with desks. Also there is some colorful plastic children's furniture. The overall look is of a high-tech primary school classroom. I am taking part in a meeting for GovCamp 2013.

GovCamp and GovHack 2013 Open for Ideas

For the last few months I have been helping organize GovCamp and GovHack 2013 and we are now up to the stage of inviting expressions of interest from those interested in taking part. This is an annual event  part conference, part un-conference and part hacking competition, on how to make government better with technology. At GovCamp/GovHack 2012 150 developers in Canberra and Sydney worked on 40 projects. This year prizes for the best hacks will be announced at GovCamp 2013, 6 June. As well as Canberra, there will be satellite events in Adelaide, Sydney, Tasmania, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, see the website for details or to register your own site.

Case study for open data and public engagement

Pia Waugh will speak on "GovHack: a case study for open data and public engagement" at the NICTA in Canberra, 14 June 2012. Pia did a brilliant job organizing the GovHack, event in Canberra and Sydney recently. The winning applications, created during the event make use of open government data in interesting, useful and sophisticated ways:

GovHack: a case study for open data and public engagement

Pia Waugh

NICTA SML SEMINAR

DATE: 2012-06-14
TIME: 11:15:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: NICTA - 7 London Circuit
CONTACT: avraham.ruderman@nicta.com.au

ABSTRACT:
Pia Waugh was an organiser for GovHack, a recent 48 hour developer event where over 40 projects were created from scratch around the themes of science, digital humanities and open government. Pia will talk about the event, how it worked, the outcomes and what it demonstrates about the value of public data being publicly available, the opportunities for science communications, and the innovation that results from collaboration across government, science, technology and civil society.

GovHack 2012 Winners

Winning applications of the use of government data, announced at GovHack last night were:

• Digital Humanities Category:
• History in ACTION: Create your own personalised bus tour of Canberra history.

• Photo Search: Australian history through historic images.

• A Day in the Life: Combining archive and statistical data.

• Science Category:

• WeatheredOak: API for the ACORNSat historical weather.

• Safe Route: monitor bush fires in a region.

• Time Capsule: visualise trends in 44 metrics over the last 30 years, sourced from 15 government data sets.

• Open Government Category:
• WeatheredOak: API for the ACORNSat historical weather.

• SECOND PRIZE:
• Photo Search Australian history through historic images.
• A Day in the Life Combining archive and statistical data.

• Best Benefit to the ACT Community Award :
• History in ACTION: Create your own personalised bus tour of Canberra history

• Best Open Government Award: OpenBudget: government expenditure visualisation tool.

Minor Prize Categories – NSW

• Best Use of Location Data:
• Route Me: for getting to where you’re going on the ACT bus system. Integrates Twitter.
• Best Data Analysis:
• Is Your Polly Smarter Than a 5th Grader by team: Analysis of the speeches of MPs to asses their language skills.
• Best Contribution to Open Data:
• OpenBudget: government expenditure visualisation tool.
• Special prize for Sydney:
• Photo Search Australian history through historic images.
• Best Data Visualisation :
• Time Capsule visualise trends in 44 metrics over the last 30 years, sourced from 15 government data sets.
• Best Spirit of GovHack Award:
• The Happiness Index:s Gross National Happiness, which measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic terms than GDP.

Minor Prize Categories – ACT

Best Use of Location Data (Geospatial) – supported by the Office for Spatial Policy

• OkCapital: Dating site for finding your ideal city to live in
• Best Data Analysis:
• 3D Data on a Mesh : summarise 55,845 data observations from the Bureau of Meteorology in a single picture.
• Best Contribution to Open Data:
• WeatheredOak API for the ACORNSat historical weather.
• Best Augmented Reality Hack – supported by Adobe
• History in ACTION Create your own personalised bus tour of Canberra history.
• Best Data Visualisation – awarded by Adobe
• Climate vs Jewellery wearable visualisation of the ACORN-SAT data provided
• Best Spirit of GovHack Award:
• 100 Years iPad application which provides a data visualisation of the past 100 years of rainfall and temperature

Redesigning World Government Online

Following on from GovHack in Canberra/Sydney and Govcamp in Canberra, the global GovJam, commences 5:45pm 5 June 2012 (Canberra time). The event will be launched Senator the Hon Kate Lundy, Minister for Sport, Minister for
Multicultural Affairs, Minister Assisting for Industry and Innovation (See video of Senator Lundy at the first GovHack in 2009).

You can take part in the GovJam from anywhere in the world online via the Global Headquarters (Canberra). There are also local events in: Brisbane, Canberra, Katherine, Paris, Köln (Cologne), Thessaloniki, Tehran, Milan, Bilbao, Madrid and London.

Here is the program for Canberra:

Wednesday:
8:30 am – 5:30 pm – Jamming
11:30 am – Transit of Venus
5:00 pm – link in with French Government and project transfers overseas
6:00pm – Dinner at Zieholtz UC (optional, at own cost)
7:30pm – Special Screening of I AM on Hyperwall at INSPIRE

Thursday:
8:30 – 5:30pm – Jamming, presentations, awards
Alcohol Tuesday evening is on a BYO basis.
So, what do you need to do to make this Jam phenomenal?
1. Check out the rules of the Jam - http://www.govjam.org/content/jam-rules
2. Check out your Jamming Wednesday:
8:30 am – 5:30 pm – Jamming
11:30 am – Transit of Venus
5:00 pm – link in with French Government and project transfers overseas
6:00pm – Dinner at Zieholtz UC (optional, at own cost)
7:30pm – Special Screening of I AM on Hyperwall at INSPIRE

Thursday:
8:30 – 5:30pm – Jamming, presentations, awards
Alcohol Tuesday evening is on a BYO basis.
So, what do you need to do to make this Jam phenomenal?

Reinventing the Australian Government in Sydney

Greetings from GovHack at Macquarie University in Sydney There are about 50 people here for the final session of the weekend event. Currently we are watching presentations from the Canberra node, where there are about another 100 people. They are showing applications using interesting combinations of government data in news ways: turning weather data into 2D jewelery, combining bus stop data with geographic databases to plot the easiest walking route to the bus stop. One of the most sophisticated proposals was Peter Chen's "WatChr" political analysis tool. Another application of notes was "Walk My Way", to encourage people to walk part of their journey before catching the bus.

A summary of the GovHack projects will be presented to GovCamp at University of Canberra on Tuesday:

ps: One of the more unusual uses of government data was an analysis of a proposal for a solar powered very fast train from Sydney to Canberra. This seemed fanciful, but developments in lithium iron batteries, developed for cars have made the batterers large enough to be considered for trains. Obviously the solar panels would not be located on the train but alongside.

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.

Best of GovCamp Videos

Best of GovCamp, is a collection of short videos from previous GovCamp, GovHack and related events for showing at GovCamp Canberra 2012.

I did not do any editing, as I found there was already an excellent three part video hosted by Senator Lundy, about GovHack. So interspersed this with screen-casts from Mashup Australia and videos from other such events around the world (all of which I found on YouTube):

• Teapots Animation
• Behind the scenes at GovHack - Part 1
• Fridgemate
• Behind the scenes at GovHack - Part 2
• NeoGopher Mashup Australia Screencast
• Behind the scenes at GovHack - Part 3
• GovCamp Singapore 2.0

This about an hour in total, which should be more than enough. It can be played with the sound off and the "Closed Captions" turned on (but not the auto-capture captions as they are amusing, rather than useful).

Suggestions for additions would be welcome, as would an edited version.