Programmers have hacked the state for the second time. Winning application deals with indebtedness and spending of municipalities
Press release to hackathon – 17. 9. 2018
In the night of 14/15 September, programmers were again gathered to make use of open public administration data at the headquarters of the Supreme Audit Office. Over 60 participants in the Hackathon of public administration received data from 10 public institutions. After 24 hours of programming, teams introduced 11 applications and other products. They showed in them what public administration data could be used for and how it could also serve the public.
"I am glad that more institutions joined us this year. It is evident that they are not indifferent to greater transparency in public administration. Citizens have the opportunity to see how their state works. We also know from our audits that the possibility to compare and link public data to new contexts helps to put pressure on institutions to be more effective," emphasized the SAO President Miloslav Kala the importance of opening data.
The SAO has been able to take advantage of programmers' new views on public data even for their own analyses. Since the Hackathon 2017, the SAO has established cooperation on data visualization with two teams.
"From the number of Hackathon participants, it is obvious that open public administration data is of great interest to them. Again, programmers have shown that this is about creating interesting and beneficial projects for citizens. Institutions should stop being afraid and start to look for a way to work better, "added Jaromír Novák, chairman of the Czech Telecommunication Office (CTO).
This year, the event was again organized by the SAO together with CTO. The Czech Statistical Office, the Czech Social Security Administration, the Czech Office for Land Surveying and Cadastre, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of the Interior joined in with their data as well. Newly, programmers also had data from the Ministry of Justice and the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The last mentioned institution contributed with its data from the Czech Social Science Data Archive and the Public Opinion Research Centre. The Institute of Art - Theatre Institute became involved as well. The University of Economics in Prague and the Open Society Fund Prague took part in the preparations.
All three winning applications have been devoted to municipalities from different perspectives. For the expert jury, the most successful application was the “Indebtedness rate of municipality vs. selected expenses”, which took the first place. It is a graphical representation of the total debt ratio of municipalities and the display of selected expenses such as gifts, travel and PR expenses. This application includes maps and graphs with the option of filtering at the regional, municipal, and year level. Data in the application covers two polling periods.
The second place was taken by the application “$obec (= Municipality Comparer) alias the assistant of the inquisitive communal voter”. This application allows for comparison of municipalities according to different demographic or financial data. Individual views in the application enable comparison of selected indicators between villages and to get detailed information about their status.
The third place was taken by the application “Poznej svůj okres” (“Get to know your region”). The application is a visualization of municipal data. This is a structured overview of information on the regions as well as on individual municipalities. Tables with different information such as population, unemployment rate, inspections and fines, etc. are displayed just by clicking on each municipality or region on the map.
An overview of the winners as well as all products that were created during the Hackathon are available at www.hackujstat.cz. Individual projects are also available for free and can be developed further.
Communication Department
Supreme Audit Office