GovTech reports that last weekend developers gathered in San Francisco for a hackathon hosted by IT firm Granicus in partnership with CityCampSF. The hackathon was a day-long event held to promote open data in government. Developers worked on December 10 and 11 with the goal of creating apps to make government data more accessible and useful. One of the sponsors, California Senator Leland Yee, stated:
“Producing a 2,000-page electronic document that cannot be searched or sorted is inadequate and almost useless,” said Yee said in a statement. “For too long, many government agencies — either by choice or inertia — have been living in the Stone Age when it comes to producing public documents.”
Lee is introducing a bill that would require public documents and data to be made available to the public electronically and searchable, so that information can be found easily. At the hackathon, one group of developers created an app that would send out legislative alerts via text message.
Hackathons are a great way to get together a group of people motivated and excited about making government more transparent.
Have you participated in a hackathon?
I will be attending the HackaThon in Honolulu in January. The CityCamp HNL earlier this month was very cool.