GovHack collaborates with Infosys, Slack for 2021 Hackathon

GovHack, a large open data hackathon held simultaneously across Australia and New Zealand, has announced its latest hybrid two-day hackathon event along with Infosys and Slack. GovHack gives competitors 46 hours to create concepts, mashups and models with open government data. During the event, participants will examine the challenges facing government and communities in new and innovative ways.

This year the competition has been fully virtually enabled, with the competition schedule, datasets, problem challenges and team profile pages publicly hosted on hackerspace.govhack.org. The event will also include livestreamed opening and closing ceremonies, Slack as the primary source of team communication and mentor support, and virtual rooms for additional face-to-face collaboration between participants and mentors. To make the event more innovative, interactive and collaborative, GovHack has worked with private-sector partners to improve engagement through virtual learning, AI and analytics tools.

Building on the success of the digital event of 2020, with over 120,000 messages delivered, GovHack will enhance the collaborative experience for participants by leveraging Slack’s ‘Huddles’ feature to bring audio-driven discussion and collaboration to this year’s event. As a lead corporate sponsor, Infosys has enabled a dedicated version of its learning platform, Wingspan, so participants can learn while they work. More than 30 sponsors and partners from government and private sector have partnered with GovHack to enable an exciting collaboration opportunity that brings innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges faced in Australia and New Zealand.

This year, the challenges are focused on energy and infrastructure, our digital future, agriculture and environment, and health and wellbeing. Livia Lam, Competition Lead for GovHack, said Infosys’s next-generation digital learning platform and Slack’s digital collaboration tools will provide world-leading technology for participants, enabling them to learn new digital skills while combining multiple and diverse perspectives to help tackle key strategic challenges. “We can’t wait to see the innovative ideas that come to the fore over the weekend,” said Lam.

Andrew Groth, Region Head (Australia and New Zealand) for Infosys, added that learning is a continuous journey; to help facilitate participants’ digital skills development beyond the hackathon weekend, the company will extend the use of Infosys Wingspan, its next-gen digital learning platform. “We are excited to continue our support of GovHack for the fourth year. GovHack is an important community initiative and forms part of our commitment to nurturing digital skills in Australia and New Zealand,” said Groth.

Matt Loop, Head of Asia Pacific for Slack, said the participants and mentors will collaborate in Slack throughout the event to help them connect with each other without jumping from one platform to another. Loop said this is especially important because finding innovative solutions to pressing issues is best enabled by an innovative platform. “Slack is proud to be the platform for GovHack, showcasing the power of digital collaboration and the strengths of collective problem-solving across borders, countries and time zones,” said Loop.

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