The first weekend of December was tense for more than 50 programmers (and Kolba Lab team),  who participated in the “Open Data Hackathon” in Aghveran. This two-day event aimed at using government data to generate innovative solutions to a range of Armenia’s social challenges. Hackathon was organized as part of “Inno4dev:Innovation for Development” project, which is financed by the European Union.

Before start  of the actual hacking process, a series of workshops and discussions took place on open databases utilization, arsenal of existing analytical tools, and the possible difficulties and opportunities one can face while working with open data. The representative of the Government of the Republic of Armenia presented Armenia’s commitments as part of “Open Government Partnership” Initiative.

Only after going through the working round, participants teamed up around certain topics that are of most interest. Teams worked on the development of a specific solution to a specific data-set. There were three main datasets provided to the hackers: anonymous records from citizens registration in hospitals, risk maps provided by the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Armenia and court cases database available on datalex.am  platform.

Participants have teamed up based on their  interests, background and preferences choosing one of those three sources, to develop the prototype of their solution. Two main types of solutions were expected as a result of this Hackathon: improved user experience with existing databases, transforming them into more accessible anduser-friendly formats, having accessible design of existing datasets and development of new innovative analytical tools based on existing once.

 

At the end of the 2nd day each team had 5-7 minutes to present their data product. A panel of evaluators chose best data solutions and winning projects to be incubated by Kolba Lab:

The hosanq.info project utilizes the open source database of Electric Networks of Armenia and enables a user to track his/her personal energy consumption history. The platform allows comparison on what possible alternative  for the same amount of energy consumed and money spent.

Large taxpayers’ data visualization platform, which uses data from harkatu.am .

GeoVizData team suggests combining two sources of open data: healthcare risks and emergency maps. For visualization Geospatial Technologies are used.

You can check out photos from Hackathon on our Facebook page.