Great success at recent national GovHack event!
Congratulations to ACS SA member Oveena Widyaratne and wider team on being awarded as runners up at the recent national GovHack event! Hear from Oveena on what her highlights from the event was and why its worth participating in events such as these.
GovHack is an international competition supporting the co-creation of community focused solutions using open government data over a single weekend. It is for people of all abilities and thousands come together to form teams, create projects and participate in what has become one of the world’s largest open data competition. This year the Australian and New Zealand competition took place on the 6-8 September and saw a range of ACS members around the country come together to take on the challenge to see who can come up with the winning concept!
In 46 hours teams create a proof of concept and a video that tells the story of how the data can be reused. Many of the concepts are innovative community apps or often entries that mash up data and display it in an informative visualisation or a creative artistic display. Teams work through the weekend and by Sunday 5pm they have to have submitted their team page, 3 minute video of their concept and any code/source materials.
Congratulations to Oveena Widyaratne, Sheikha T, Harsh Patel, Amish Patel, Tapan Patel and Shefali Thakral from South Australia for winning runners up on one of the largest hackathons around the country! It is an amazing achievement and great success story out of South Australia!
‘The hackathon was packed with unforgettable moments, from the intense final minutes of brainstorming and problem-solving to the shared relief of closing countless tabs on our computers once the challenge was complete. What stands out most, though, is the incredible connections we made along the way and the honour of representing South Australia as runners-up in one of the Victorian challenges. GovHack has been an inspiring experience, bringing together remarkable individuals and forging bonds that will last well beyond the event. None of this would have been possible without the unwavering support and commitment of our sponsors, to whom we are deeply grateful.’ Oveena Widyaratne, Bachelor of Computer Science and Data Science student at University of Adelaide.
Thank you to Jean Mui, Member Services and Events Manager at the South Australia Branch for promoting and engaging with branches to support and increase awareness of the hackathon event. Keep an eye out for the GovHack competition for 2025!