GovHack 19 - 21 August 2022 - Get involved!
What: GovHack SA Competition Event
Who (Regional Team): GovHack SA - Local Contact
Where: Torrens University Australia, 88 Wakefield St Adelaide 5000
When: Friday 19 August 2022 - Sunday 21 August 2022
How: Register as a Competitor >>here; a Volunteer >>here or a Sponsor >>here for 2022
Visit: GovHack website https://govhack.org/
Looking for more information and inspiration?
Want to find that winning edge or know what GovHack's all about?
What GovHack SA Connections Event
Who: (Regional Team): GovHack SA - Local Contact
Where: Torrens University Australia, 88 Wakefield St Adelaide 5000
When: Wednesday 10 August 2022 6pm - 7.30pm
How: Register to attend this event https://hackerspace.govhack.org/events
Directly https://hackerspace.govhack.org/events/sa_connections_adelaide_south_australia
What is GovHack?
GovHack is an annual International Open Data Hackathon competition held across Australia and New Zealand.
The community event is organised and run by volunteers, with the aim to inspire innovative open data re-use, with teams exploring openly released datasets and developing resourceful and imaginative concepts, ranging in format from apps, projects, games or art.
"A festival of ideas that by making use of the government data available to the public, creates projects that better our lives and communities"
When does the competition run? What do competitors undertake?
The GovHack weekend starts at 7pm AEST (6.30pm SA) Friday 19th August 2022 and closes 5pm Sunday 21st of August 2022.
In 46 hours, teams create a project page, proof of concept and a video that tells the story of how government open data can be reused. Challenges and Prize categories are announced at 7pm Friday.
What did the competition look like last year? What do volunteers manage?
The SAcommunity Team had the opportunity to speak to this year's GovHack SA & NT Regional Lead Hoss Mohsenian. This significant volunteer role involves coordinating the Regional Operations Team (ROT) of volunteers to manage all GovHack activities in SA. Working together they organise local resources such as sponsorship, venues, state and local council data, represent GovHack to their local communities, and raise awareness about open data and reasons for holding the GovHack event.
A summary of last year's GovHack SA 2021 regional competition and results from Helia Bornaki, a volunteer in the GovHack Regional Operation Team (ROT) [and former SAcommunity Volunteer] is here>> to provide an indication of the competition from a South Australian viewpoint.
Helia Bornaki, a volunteer in the GovHack Regional Operation Team (ROT) and SAcommunity Volunteer - outlines more about the competition above!
"Joining the GovHack SA operation team as a volunteer provides an opportunity for me to not only develop my skills but also build on my existing experience and knowledge. Also, it provides a golden opportunity to build my community by meeting new people.
I believe GovHack is an event that offers the chance to give something back to the community and make a difference to the people. So, It is an honour to be a volunteer member for this valuable event."
How can I become involved?
Register as a competitor – GovHack is a free event to attend for competitors and observers. Interested in challenging yourself? Join together with your team alongside many others across the nation to apply your creativity, problem solving and critical thinking skills towards designing a project by using the open data available in everyday life.
Provide Sponsorship – Sponsors are provided with an opportunity to raise competition challenges for teams to work on, such as particular problems their organisation has been considering, and can highlight their own datasets for new ideas. Sponsorship allows the creation of new connections with critical thinkers https://hackerspace.govhack.org/profiles as their funds support competitors and prizes, Sponsors also have the benefit of being associated with supporting the largest open data hackathon in the southern hemisphere.
Become a Volunteer - There are so many and varied opportunities you can involve yourself in at GovHack, such as becoming part of the Regional Operations Team (ROT), responsible for managing local sponsorship; marketing; community liaison; data management and technical support. They will also deliver the Connections pre-event, the GovHack weekend hackathon event and the Regional Awards night (digital).
Become a Mentor – Are you an authority on datasets, a subject matter or ideas expert?
Competitors will need guidance on datasets and experts to discuss their ideas, so consider supporting the participating teams as a GovHack Mentor or Coach, particularly if you have a dataset or challenge you have set as mentors are generally from sponsoring organisations. Wondering about mentors from previous years? Find a list of mentors and skilsets >>here https://govhack.org/mentors/
Why is Open Data and GovHack important?
Open data provides transparency and can be used as a mechanism for identifying and solving social, economic and environmental challenges. GovHack provides an opportunity for the community, government, corporate and not-for-profit industries to collaborate, gain knowledge and develop new skills and perhaps new uses for existing data that provide community benefit.
Connecting Up Inc. is committed to open data, sharing the SAcommunity dataset with GovHack for innovative re-use and public benefit, by contributing directory information to the other public information datasets at Data.SA.
The SAcommunity team also promote awareness of the competition, their goals in re-using open data for community good and in facilitating open data literacy. Whilst SAcommunity staff and volunteers continue to be involved as data coaches and mentors during the connections (pre-competition), competition, and regional award events, supporting competitors and teams by providing guidance on datasets, and celebrating in participants successes.
I need inspiration!
Browse through Hackerspace for inspiration! Explore the handbook and last year's challenges, tech and some of the prize-winning GovHack projects and datasets used.
Otherwise attend the Connections event before the competition to speak to data mentors, meet other participants and find out some tips before you start!
I still have questions?
Visit the GovHack website https://govhack.org/ for more information.
Needing direct contacts? For SA based queries email GovHack SA or visit the GovHack contact page for specific topic queries.
Missed this years' GovHack? Here's a few statistics!
525 Participants
147 Projects
145 Datasets listed
72 Datasets used
59 Sponsors
141 Mentors
100 Volunteers
