Presidential Hackathon 2020

The Presidential Hackathon in Taipei is an innovation challenge by the Open Contracting Partnership and the Taiwanese government to explore solutions that enable sustainable development.

• Find out more about the seven finalists
• Resources & webinars
• Inspiration
• Timeline
• About

Meet the 7 finalists!

Seven teams from Central America, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Taiwan, and Ukraine have been selected to develop their projects during this year’s Presidential Hackathon. These projects propose innovative solutions that use open data in public procurement to address specific problems to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. We’ve been impressed by the diversity of proposals from around the world, confirming that procurement has a key role in identifying solutions to critical development questions.   

Here are the projects and teams:

• CoST – the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative in Latin America proposes a solution to monitor health infrastructure development by linking open data across Central America. 
• The team Learning Man will build a social housing map, an informative tool for the federal and local governments of Taiwan as well as the public, using procurement data on social housing.
• Syntech Arrow from Malaysia will build an intelligent monitoring system to link roads to their contractors and assess the quality of the infrastructure, including citizen’s ratings. 
• The team Keep Our Country Clean will build an integrated platform to identify potential solutions and develop infrastructure capacity for dealing with solid waste and garbage in Nicaragua.
• From Ukraine, team Market Research Tool will build a new tool to support market research for the pricing of protective equipment and critical materials during the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• CivicDataLab’s Fiscal Force team from India will connect budgets with infrastructure procurement in a new Himachal Fiscal Data Explorer.
• Colombia’s Datasketch will build a cloud-based OCDS multi-language public contract visualization and analysis tool to allow non-technical users to create automated dashboards for procurement monitoring.

Hackathon events

• The Opening session for the international track of the presidential hackathon. Check out the call notes, slides and video recording
• We also had a Masterclass for the international track. Check out the call notes and video recording

How can open data help enable the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

We want your best ideas on how to use open data and technology to help ensure public procurement delivers on the SDGs. We challenge teams to generate, analyze and prototype.

Teams will address at least one or more of the following:

• Generate: Can you create new or better open data sources on public procurement?
• Analyze: Can you find new or improved uses of existing open data and tools that support social innovation in public procurement to enable the SDGs?
• Prototype: can you create new or better tools for open data in public procurement to enable the SDGs?

Projects should be unique, and may contribute something new or unfamiliar to the public. What matters is that you have an open data vision for solving a specific SDG problem, whether it is at the regional, national or sub-national level.

Anyone was able to apply. We have received applications from academia, business, civil society, government, media, or a combination of roles.

Resources & webinars

We want you to collaborate on the next generation of open data tools to help society move towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

• Find all details on the application process and selection criteria in our Challenge Handbook.
• Presidential Hackathon 2020 data FAQs & resources
• Inspiration: Learn from past projects

We ran a series of webinars to help you present your best ideas

Previous webinars:

1. Introducing the 2020 Taiwan Hackathon Innovation Challenge. Check out the recording, call notes and slides.
2. Technical Support webinar and introduction into the Open Contracting Data Standard and the OC4IDS. Check out the call notes, slide deck and recording.
3. Presidential Hackathon 2020 Show & Tell: Get Inspired and hear from previous year’s finalists. Check out the recording, call notes and slides from previous Hackathon champions CoST INFRAS and Cartelogy.
4. How to Create Winning Applications that Work! Check out the recording, call notes and slides.
5. Introducing the Presidential Hackathon 2020 II. Check out the recording, call notes and slides.
6. Presidential Hackathon 2020: Open Contracting Red-flags for Anti-Corruption. Check out the recording, call notes and slides from OCP red flags, Cartelogy, and Red flags Helpdesk implementation support.

Inspiration

Here are examples from previous projects and successful innovations.

1. Generate: See Mexico’s Todosloscontratos.mx, Budeshi, Europe’s Opentenders.eu for inspiration on generating new or better open data sources on public procurement (e.g. OCDS and/or OC4IDS) from government systems, including improving existing data offerings;
2. Analyze: See Chile’s Buyer Observatory, Colombia School Meals, and Follow the Water for inspiration on analyzing existing open data, for which you might re-use some of our tools, for example uncovering the procurement features that hinder competition and prevent participation of SMEs, or matching OCDS/OC4IDS data with flood data to target government spending in specific sectors or locations.
3. Prototype: See Malaysia Cartelogy, Malaysia Buildcaster, and Honduras INFRAS for inspiration on prototyping a new re-usable data tool to share with the open data community, for example mapping infrastructure projects with a mobile-friendly UI so that local CSOs can contribute to project monitoring.

Timeline

Application close: June 24
Acceptance announcement: 15 July
4-days Hackathon (Grand final): September 11-15
Winner Demo & Award Ceremony: September 15

About the Presidential Hackathon 2020

The Taiwan Presidential Hackathon is an exciting, global innovation challenge. It promotes open-source, open data, and open government best practices to address governance, economic and social needs. The focus of this year’s International Track is on solving critical development issues to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals

Public contracts matter when designing policies that enable sustainable development. Investment in infrastructure, goods and services such as schools, hospitals and roads, or medicines, energy or sanitation services are all critical to ensure better lives for citizens. This is critical in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a special focus on health and transparent emergency procurement.

Often, the poorest and most vulnerable people suffer the most from public spending failures, for example from the lack of adequate healthcare or access to markets.
These constraints are exacerbated by climate change and severe weather events that further increase inequalities. There is a serious lack of open data and accessible tools to help track progress, assess risks from external factors such as weather events, identify the best solutions, and make decisions based on the best information.