The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is to be the lead national Agency to sponsor GovHack 2018 which supports the innovative use of open data to help unlock its potential value.
The annual GovHack event is an open data hackathon in which teams of developers, coders, designers, analysts and others use open data to develop solutions and services aimed at benefiting the broader community.
Chief Executive of DTA, Randall Brugeaud described open data as publicly available data that anyone could access, use or share.
“Recent research suggests making data publicly available for reuse could generate up to $25 billion each year,” Mr Brugeaud said.
“Last year’s GovHack saw over 3,000 people across 36 locations in Australia and New Zealand form teams and work on 430 projects.”
He said that as the lead national Agency sponsor, DTA would help thousands of local innovators realise the value of open data and the potential benefits it could offer.
“In previous years, GovHack participants have visualised data, created 3D models and developed new apps that utilise open data to create services for the public,” Mr Brugeaud said.
He said that as part of the Government’s open data initiative, all national Agencies were encouraged to make their data available for re-use on the data.gov.au website with nearly 30,000 datasets published since 2013.
Mr Brugeaud said DTA planned to make it even easier to reuse open data, with the launch of a new ‘data.gov.au’ platform that featured greater functionality and search capabilities.
