Through the 48-hour “festival of authorised hacking”, GovHack participants use publicly available government data to create new and interesting ways of presenting it – through websites, apps, data visualisations and creative mashups. Participants compete for a share of $170,000 in prize money across various award categories.
This year, Westpac Group Technology Graduate and UTS IT Alumni (2011) Rania Ramadan-Jradi led a team of seven to be awarded a National Prize for their app, “When will your house be underwater?” The app, which is accessible across mobile, tablet and PC, calculates the years remaining before your own house will be underwater, based on the latest climate change models and sea level forecasts.
“We wanted to bring the topics of sustainability and climate change to a much more personal level – your own home, or your children or grandchildren’s home,” says Rania, who graduated from the University of Technology Sydney’s BIT Co-Op Scholarship in 2011. The app utilises the latest in geo-location technology to automatically pinpoint your current location, display a photo of your home and an animation of water submerging the building... with an accompanying timer for the number of years you have left to keep your feet dry.
As a passionate ambassador of Westpac’s Technology Graduate program, as well as industry initiatives such as Girl Geek Dinners and Girl Geek Coffees, Rania says she is thrilled to see “an environment in GovHack where gender, background and experience don’t matter. It’s about getting in there, learning a lot and having fun!”
Sponsored by Microsoft, Google, Amazon and various Government agencies, the competition demonstrates the power of innovation and technology when applied to data. Any and all IT enthusiasts are invited, including developers, designers, gamers and even complete amateurs.
"With a data hungry technically literate generation on its way through the current school system, understanding the fundamentals of how to analyse and communicate effectively with data are critical in ensuring a strong industry and indeed, a strong democracy," added Pia Waugh, director of co-ordination and Gov 2.0, Australian Government Information Management Office.
Rania's Key Messages:
- Communication is incredibly vital.
- A great team culture and attitude (and ‘Team Rules’ defined upfront) will get you through the tough times.. such as 52 hours of sleep deprivation.
- Agile + Scrum methodology were a perfect match for our 48hr timeboxed project, but some people have misconceptions around Agile (eg. “It’s just waterfall without documentation.. right?”)
- Undefined assumptions are bad. This led to one of our team members – an applied statistician – accidentally bringing down our Prod Site, and replacing it with a broken Dev build, because he (understandably) didn’t know the difference between a Prod or Dev Server – and we had never explained... This was 2mins and 30 seconds before the submission deadline. ARGH!
- Reaching out and accepting help in crisis is a good idea. We reached out to the mentors roaming the floors – from Google, NICTA and Govt representatives – and even roped the wandering media and camera-men to help us out with last-minute tasks. Delegate delegate delegate!
- Amazing things happen as a team.
Keen to get involved next year? Easy! Just contact Rania and she'll be sure to let you know when the next event is announced. Otherwise, keep your eyes peeled for a GovHack announcement on ABC / SBS.
Hope to see some UTS students and alumni there next year!
PS: Please let Rania know if you’d like to see the app – She'd love some beta testers...
