PRESS RELEASE: Hackathon linked open data to intriguing applications
Prague, 16 September 2019 – A record number of institutions took part in the third annual Hackathon of public administration held by the Czech Republic Supreme Audit Office and the Czech Telecommunication Office. A total of 20 public institutions provided developers with their open data. Representatives of local administration, such as cities Prague, Brno, or Czech Radio (Český rozhlas), joined the competition for the first time.
Similar to previous years, the teams had 24 hours to develop an application that would link data sets into meaningful combinations. The expert jury then selected three best applications out of 17. The winning team linked eight data sets and created a chat-bot, that acquaint users with various statistical data from selected region in the form of a quiz. The application “Statistika hrou” has also its own Facebook page.
Another successful team from a secondary school in Klatovy (Střední škola zemědělská a potravinářská) created a map visualisation called “Nebyty”. The application offers an overview of 734 municipalities where no apartment, house or other building has been built in the course of last five years, and it also addresses the causes of this situation. The third place gained an application “Kam za vědou”, which compares the success rate of faculties of Czech universities based on the amount of money they obtain for research projects. It is possible to compare number of projects, accumulated sum of money as well as conversion per student.
“Greater openness of public administration is a positive phenomenon and each year this event shows, that interest in open data is increasing. And at last more and more institutions are realising, that providing public with their data can in future bring a number of advantages and there is no reason to be afraid of open data” said the Chairman of the Council of the Czech Telecommunication Office, Jaromír Novák, on the results of hackathon.
The winning applications are available at www.hackujstat.cz . Individual projects are also freely available and open to further development.
