On Saturday 29 June 2013, Open State will present the Hack de Overheid Hackathon `Apps for Europe’ ` a day of coding, hacking and creative software development taking place at the Amsterdam City Hall. Utilising open data sets by public sector partners covering public services, culture, education, public finance, health, tourism and housing, participants are invited to hack, code, programme and experiment with open data to build groundbreaking new applications and develop digital services for the future.
Seated in the Amsterdam Municipal Council chamber, participants will be presented with side events, such as workshops on open education data, open spending, health data, housing data, city data, political transparency and culture. Hack de Overheid hackathons is an exciting opportunity, bringing together policymakers, data owners, coders, hackers and software developers to experiment with open data to create applications for the public benefit.
New is The Apps for Europe Business Lounge, organised by Waag Society, Kennisland and Open State. The aim of the Business Lounge is to support open data apps to move from a concept or prototype phase into a business start-up. It will prepare participants for the Apps for Europe competition. The best applicants will be selected to exclusively meet experts in the morning and investors and incubators in the afternoon.
Special guest at the hackathon is Júlia Keseru, international program coordinator of the US-based Sunlight Foundation, an organisation that uses the internet to catalyse greater government openness and transparency.
During the workshops the Open Education Data network will launch its own API with quality information on schools and together with Amsterdam’s Centre Disctrict as first local government, we will launch Openspending in the Netherlands. The aim is to make financial data accessible and create transparency of these data for the public. The disclosure of financial information by governments as open data provides a more transparent and efficient government.
The Hack de Overheid Hackathon `Apps for Europe’ is set to be an intense, productive and exciting collaboration between bright minds in coding and data processing. There are several cash prizes of 500 euro to be won for the best product at the end of the day.
The hackathon takes place on Saturday 29 June 9.30am to 7pm. Amsterdam City Hall, Amstel 1, 1011 PN, Amsterdam. The event is free to enter and open to all. Registration is open at http://vote.hackdeoverheid.nl/ – @hackdeoverheid ` facebook.com/hackoverheid