Govhack 2017 going to govhack (edited for slideshare)
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•129 views
GovHack is a great event and I think it offers heaps for a wide range of people. Not only that I believe GovHack is helping us create a better society by making better use of open data. This is something we need to protect. I did a long post about this topic here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/going-govhack-2017-yes-you-can-andrew-saul/
Recommended
More Related Content
More from Andrew Saul
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Govhack 2017 going to govhack (edited for slideshare)
- 1. HOW you can go to GovHack 2017 and WHY you will have a good time
- 2. GovHack is…. Machine Learning Hack – national award 1st place https://youtu.be/6X2GiAirkqc
- 3. GovHack is….. Community Resilience Hack – national awards 1st place https://youtu.be/BvfCggBRh2Y
- 4. GovHack is….. Storytelling Hack - national award Honourable Mention https://youtu.be/H3nU684UfV0
- 5. GovHack is… Weather Forecast – 1st place national awards https://youtu.be/wgWtTioC24Q
- 6. Why GovHack is important Government has only recently embraced open data This is a new thing in Australia and everywhere else. We’ve come a long way to get here. Open government data has a long way to go to become standard practice; it still needs lots of support.
- 7. Why GovHack is fun Building stuff with people is the best way to get to know them Risk free deployment: Change from a day job You’ll feel tired but refreshed: It’s like a really exciting holiday
- 8. You can come to GovHack Short timeframe = good enough NOT polished Non-technical people are needed too! Abandon all fear: Are you GovHack ready? • Get on the data portals now: Have a look what’s there • Have a look at last year’s prizes: Can you see a solution that you think you could make with a team?
- 9. Volunteer at GovHack Can’t do the whole weekend but still excited? Volunteer!
Editor's Notes
- TeamTax, NSW, “TaxLess: Optimising your tax return” - http://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/content/taxless Short and sweet video but don’t let that fool you; this is an excellent use of the fairly dense dataset that is tax returns. This is an example of a turning open data into a tool for people to see immediate value out of. Rather than building a visualisation of tax data for users to explore, they’ve instead decided to let people get to something actionable with a minimal amount of their own analysis. 2016 national award winners: http://2016.govhack.org/competition/national-winners/ All the projects from 2016: https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects
- Safety czars, VIC, “SafetyMeasur.es” - https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/content/safetymeasures This is a great example of blending open datasets and enabling users to find information that is relevant to them (or their search criteria). Many GovHack projects follow this theme as, ultimately, this is one of the main aims of GovHack: How do you engage the individual with data that is often aggregated at a national level and so bears little relevance to their day to day life? Answer (in this case): You aggregate it at a personal level for them. It’s easier than you think to get started with this. Look at an area of interest, in this case safety, and then think about how you would solve for that problem by researching open data. Once you’ve solved for that problem manually, retrace your steps and think about how you could make this easier for lots of people to do without having to go through all the steps that you did. 2016 national award winners: http://2016.govhack.org/competition/national-winners/ All the projects from 2016: https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects
- Governmon, NZ, PokéDrive - https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/content/pok%C3%A9drive This is low on tech. Very low in fact. Instead they’ve come at it from a context angle. Don’t be fooled; they have thought deeply about the data they’ve used. Instead of getting a lot of data flowing into an app they’ve taken a very small sample and placed it in a context that’s magnified it’s impact. Here they’ve used data to tell a story. In this case they’ve also added a customisation element, but you don’t have to. There’s been plenty of GovHack projects that have taken historical data like war records and told stories using them that had no customisation features. This is data journalism and it’s just as good a use case for GovHack as producing a functional service. 2016 national award winners: http://2016.govhack.org/competition/national-winners/ All the projects from 2016: https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/projects
- Weather Ball, QLD, “Weather Balls” - https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/content/weather-balls We’ve started to see more physical projects getting made at GovHack. This project gives people access to weather alerts information in a way that is very natural: “it’s like looking out the window”. There’s maker nodes that ran for the first time last GovHack. They were spaces set up with tools and facilities to make constructing physical projects easy for participants. There’ll undoubtedly be more this time around. So if you’re a tinkerer or just like making things with your hands there’s more than enough for you to sink your teeth into.
- Open gov data is a relatively new initiative in Australian government as a whole. In fact the open data movement is only fairly recent worldwide. This represents big shift in thinking. Not that long ago the Howard govt won a 4 year battle over a FOI Act request for Treasury figures from The Australian newspaper (http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1738366.htm). This was information that, by law, was available to the public but was still able to be stopped from being released by the govt of the day. Even today we see the Turnbull govt trying to stop FOI requests; again on Treasury data on housing prices (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-08/labor-demands-malcolm-turnbull-explain-negative-gearing-comments/8427188). The politics shouldn’t matter when it comes to access to data which is owned by the public. A culture of open data starts and ends at the grass roots level of government departments. Whilst the GPS location of public drinking fountains in Brisbane (https://www.data.brisbane.qld.gov.au/data/dataset/public-drinking-fountain-taps) or the location of roads in QLD (https://data.qld.gov.au/dataset/road-location-and-traffic-data) might not seem that important to our democracy, it’s on this foundation of everyday datasets that an truly open system is built because it’s the culture of openness that makes open data the default and not the exception. All this only happens if departments see this data being used and get feedback from the public demanding more of it. Without that pull from us, the public, it’ll be easy for government departments to prioritise other things and let open data go by the wayside. A lot of this has been championed by a global organisation called Open Knowledge of which Australia and Brisbane have chapters. They are the principal organiser behind GovHack and similar events. Open Knowledge Australia: https://au.okfn.org/.
- Building stuff with other people If you’ve ever been to events for networking you’ll know they are more miss than hit. Even when there’s a natural grouping of people around a common topic it’s still hard to really start to engage with people you don’t know. Throw yourself into having to build something, on a deadline, with a group of strangers and you all quickly start speaking genuinely with each other. And it’s going to be a positive experience. Everyone at GovHack is giving up their own time to do something to help others. Assume everyone you meet there will have the same want to help and collaborate that you do; because they do. It’s a really wonderful experience once you get into it. Risk free deployment Anyone’s day job, unless you are at the most cavalier of start-ups, is going to have a level of risk mitigation that slows deployment. It’s a sensible thing to do when breakages mean real consequences. There is no risk to anything you make at GovHack. None. There’s no such thing as failure. That alone should excite you. It excites me. There’s precious few areas in our lives where we can completely throw caution to the wind and try anything with no downside to fear and only upside to gain. GovHack is such a space and such an opportunity. Like a great holiday I feel tired after GovHack: It’s a long weekend. But I also get a buzz from it that lasts for many weeks afterwards. The after effects are substantial. Not only do I get that feeling from having done the project and getting to share it with my social circle, but I get stuff to look forward to. Firstly I get to browse the other entrants to see what others have done. Then I get the state awards night to look forward to. And finally I look forward to the national awards (and I’ve never been) because I already have a good idea about the projects and I am really interested to see who gets up. It’s like you get all these little Xmases to look forward to for months afterwards. Charles Kingsley (broad church priest of the Church of England, university professor, social reformer, historian and novelist) said it best: “We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”
- Good enough NOT polished Because there is a short time frame you’ll not be able to write a fully functioning anything. In fact a good chunk of your limited time will be spent deciding on what your project will be and doing the video for it. That leaves precious little time to build something so whatever you do is going to be really basic. Cut corners as your first option rather than your fall back one. Non-technical people are needed too! You don’t need to code. You don’t need analyst skills. Definitely if you have these already then you are going to have heaps you can contribute. But even if you set yourself a goal to learn just the basics in these areas you can take in a couple of months of part time learning to GovHack and do something. And if you have none of these skills there’s heaps to do as well: coming up with a use case that fits a problem (or multiple problems), going out to mentors to better understand the datasets/problems, planning and making the video to best explain your solution, organising the work for the team; all these things require no technical skills however all of them are vital to a successful project. See if you’re GovHack ready Get on the data portals and just look at the data there (http://portal.govhack.org/datasets.html). This is the most time consuming part of GovHack: Browsing datasets. The more you simply browse the datasets, the better the asset you are to a team at GovHack. Most datasets have explanation sheets and ways to view samples of the data online. Start to see what datasets are well defined and what aren’t. They are both opportunities. Well defined datasets are easy to work with but that means lots of teams will use them. Poorly defined datasets will reap rewards for even basic usage because not many teams will use them but they are going to require effort just to work with them. Have good look at how the winners from last year (http://2016.govhack.org/competition/national-winners/) made their entries. Browse their documentation on Hackspace (https://2016.hackerspace.govhack.org/); it’s all there for everyone to see. Have a good look at how the sausages are made. You’ll quickly see, most projects aren’t that complicated. Many are very simple indeed. Look at the entries that didn’t win; they still delivered something and often it was great. If you see anything here that makes you think: “I could do that with a team in a weekend” then you are ready! All that is required now is to book some leave with your family (or significant others) and start getting excited.
- GovHack lives and breathes because of volunteers. Those who participate and those who help run the event are both the lifeblood of GovHack. If you are really interested in coming but can’t come for the whole weekend or just still aren’t ready to participate then please consider volunteering your help to the event organisers. You can sign up here: https://govhack.formstack.com/forms/launch_hidden?field52878198=Volunteer