Public Administration SolveAthon

What if you could create the innovation that is most exciting to you, not just work the project your boss wants? What if you could collaborate with a team of enthusiastic colleagues, not some people who care and some who couldn’t care less? What if you could show off your skills in front of the whole public administration community? You will, at Public Administration SolveAthon.

SolveAthon is public administration’s version of a hackathon. Participants gather together, choose up teams and projects, and compete to produce the most awesome solution. Hackathons started with software developers, but Public Administration SolveAthon won’t be limited to software–your awesome solution might be a more efficient way to organize a business process, or a more insightful analysis of existing data, or a more effective control against waste, fraud and abuse.

This video gives some idea what a hackathon or SolveAthon is like:

London Hack Day Video from Tom Coates on Vimeo.

The American Society for Public Administration, National Capital Area Chapter, is organizing the first Public Administration SolveAthon, to be held in Washington DC in 2013.

Call for Crowdsourcing
We want examples of what a team might produce during Public Administration SolveAthon. We will use these examples to explain SolveAthon to potential participants, partners and sponsors. Here are some examples we already found:

• EpiCell – a mash up of geographic data for dengue fever cases and cell phone towers, to show where a mobile phone-enabled microscope would help public health programs. This was an actual project at San Francisco Science Hack Day.
  http://epicell.github.com
• Earned Value Management puppet show – Project Manager Bunny learns that even fixed-price contracts have cost risk, and how to manage it with EVM. This is an example one of the SolveAthon team is developing.
  http://youtu.be/5nWxv6QKS7I
• MoonBase Alpha – a video game from NASA to help teach science.
  www.nasa.gov/offices/education/programs/national/ltp/games/moonbasealpha/index.html

We want more and better examples. Send us one, and if we judge yours the best, you will be Honorary Grand Marshal of SolveAthon, which includes free admission. Your example should show what a small team of public administrators might accomplish during one intensive weekend. Send your example to [email protected] by October 5, 2012.

For more information about Public Administration SolveAthon, see http://publicadministrationsolveathon.wordpress.com/