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GovHack winners revealed
GovHack winners revealed
12 November 2018
Tags:
GovHack (/taxonomy/term/245)
After a week of judging 118 entries, we chose 3 winners.
Over a weekend in September, more than 1,250 people gathered at 26 locations across the
country to take part in
GovHack (http://www.govhack.org/) — Australia’s largest open data
hackathon.
This isn’t the first time we’ve been involved in GovHack. Over the years, our staff have
participated as competitors and organisers. This year, we came on board as the lead agency
sponsor.
We wanted to support and showcase the value of open data, particularly for government. We
are the custodians of
data.gov.au (http://search.data.gov.au/). Not only it is the main source of
open data for GovHack teams, it is Australia’s largest repository of open government data.
data.gov.au contains over 70,000 datasets on everything from registers of baby names and
native title claims through to science and research data such as phytoplankton monitoring of
the River Murray.
We believe that quality open data has the power to build connections between government,
private and research sectors and support evidence-based decision making.
As part of our sponsorship, we were given the opportunity to present one challenge and one
bounty award to the participants.
Challenge: help government decide with data
Local, state and federal governments make decisions every day so our challenge was focused
around decision-making. We wanted to see projects that used data to help government make
evidence-based, informed decisions to deliver better services.
Crashboard
The winner of this challenge was Crashboard (https://ashleighrose.shinyapps.io/crashboard/).
The Crashboard team designed an interactive dashboard to help local and state governments
decide how to invest into road safety upgrades. Using transport, crash, weather and population
datasets, the dashboard ranks local areas in Victoria based on a ‘road safety’ score. The team
proposed that these scores could be used by local councils to identify areas in need of road
infrastructure upgrades and decide on potential solutions to reduce the crash-incidence rate
and save the lives of Victorians.
Read more about Crashboard and watch the team’s video
(https://2018.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects/crashboard_177)
Safer Evacuations
The runner up for this challenge was Safer Evacuations (https://saferevacuations.byron.io/). The
Safer Evacuations team developed a simulation tool to allow emergency management planners
to model evacuation situations in urban environments. Using population, map and location
data, the tool can test for building or environmental changes and plan for different emergency
scenarios. The team imagined that these plans could be communicated in real-time for
organisations like schools and embassies.
Read more about Safer Evacuations and view the team’s video
(https://2018.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects/safer_evacuations_2)
Bounty award: mix and mashup
We were looking for the best use of two or more data sets that might seem completely
unrelated to each other, but can be brought together to inform great solutions.
Bubbles
The winner of our bounty award was
Bubbles (http://bubbleburst.online/). The Bubbles team
created a website of ‘empathy bubbles’ designed to build understanding between different
demographics of people. They connected census, aged care, mental health and insolvency data
to find unexpected similarities between different groups like young and old Australians.
Read more about Bubbles and watch the team’s video
(https://2018.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects/bubbles_221)
Congratulations to everyone who took part in GovHack this year. The innovative and creative
uses of open data were inspiring.
If you are an open data enthusiast like us, visit data.gov.au (http://search.data.gov.au/) to join
our online community.
For media enquiries email us at xxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx (mailto:xxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx)
For other enquiries email us at
xxxx@xxx.xxx.xx (mailto:xxxx@xxx.xxx.xx)
© Commonwealth of Australia. With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and
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