Australian hackers have used their powers for good in the 2013 GovHack competition held across the country, remixing government data to create innovative applications over June 1-2.
Web and application developers, open data and visualization experts, user experience and accessibility specialists teamed up for a weekend of creative app development using publicly-available government information.
The winners of the national contest were announced Thursday night in Canberra.
"With over 700 hackers undertaking over 10,000 hours of development, this is by far Australia's largest partner program for government research and development," said event coordinator Pia Waugh.
"Government agencies had mentors on the ground to build community understanding of the information they hold, and the community was able to showcase clever ideas and talk directly with responsive government agencies from the federal level all the way through to local councils," she added.
Winning projects included an application by a Brisbane group to help users learn about Australia's migration history, utilizing information from the National Archives of Australia's passenger arrivals data combined with historical statistics.
In the Science category, 'When will my house be underwater?' used data from Geoscience Australia and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make personalized predictions about sea level rise and individual Australian homes.
A Canberra team put together a picnic planner for the nation's capital, with a map of all public playgrounds, BBQs, furniture and toilets plus interesting historical information.
The contest attracted over 1,000 participants, including 900 hackers and 130 competition entries, competing for glory and 170, 000 AU dollars (163,387 US dollars) in prize money.
It was supported by several federal, state and local government departments and major commercial sponsors.
"This event has now proven itself to be something beyond just a competition. It is now a serious engagement opportunity for government and citizens alike," said Waugh.
"We used multiple models of funding for prizes, and different types of prizes including mentorship, internships, entrepreneur prizes, together with our usual prizes for having fun and being creative," she added.
During the two-day lockdown, participants received guidance from professional mentors from organizations such as Google, Geoscience Australia, Dictionary of Sydney, Adelaide City Council, Public Transport Services, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, several universities and government departments.
"Through mentoring and getting directly involved over the 48 hours of the competition we met dedicated and talented people and formed many highly valued relationships," commented sponsor Steven De Costa, Executive Director of Link Digital.
Governments collect and publish enormous amounts of data, but have limited resources to get it into the hands of their citizens in engaging ways.
GovHack aims to draw together people from government, industry, academia and the general public to mashup, reuse, and remix government data. The event has been running annually since 2009.