#GovHackSA was a free day-long coding marathon for novice and experienced computer developers and coders to create new and novel solutions to problems posed by the City of Cape Town. The event took months of planning, with support from the City to make available data and create usable data sets that the teams could integrate and use in their applications. It served not only as the catalyst for creative solutions to challenges, but to develop specialist skills, in line with our commitment to creating an opportunity city.
There were three challenges set and each participant could chose which challenge they wanted to work on in teams that were formed organically.
Some chose to jump right into coding, while others brainstormed ideas first. One of the challenges for the day was to create a Cape Town Residents App to assist the City in showcasing Council facilities and their location, availability and cost with the aim of making local resources and spaces more easily accessible to the public.
The judging panel consisted of Brett St Clair (Google), Tim Andrews (DotModus), Vuyisa Qabaka (The Barn) and the City's Mayoral Committee Member for Tourism, Events and Marketing, Councillor Garreth Bloor.
The winning group 'Pulse', worked on the 'Active Citizen' challenge which sought to encourage residents to look to and rely on each other for solutions to community issues. The group looked at options to develop an interface that will allow people to share information and create a talking community.
'The #GovHackSA Hackathon provided an ideal environment for developers to compete and network, understand government's challenges, learn from one another, experiment with building on existing code and APIs, and see how fast they can develop applications.
'We are looking at hosting more #GovHackSA events which will give like-minded programmers, developers, designers and coders an opportunity to meet each other and learn about the challenges of government and helping solve them,' added Councillor Bloor.
