We are hosting a hackathon - Here's why

On August 24-25, we are hosting what we think is Canada’s first foreign aid data focused hackathon (please be in touch if we are incorrect!). Thirty people will be split into six teams, each of whom will work together to tackle six separate problems/projects using Canada’s foreign aid data as the primary source of data. These projects will come from the international development sector through two ways: four of the projects are coming directly from organizations and individuals we have approached; the final two are coming from an open ask to the sector (if you are interested, submit here: http://citizen-attache.github.io/ ).

This event is important and valuable for a number of reasons:

1. There needs to be more time and energy invested in analyzing and using the data that has been published.

Aid data that is shared has the potential to increase the effectiveness of development assistance. As background: transparent aid flows have the potential to reduce corruption by tracking funds up and down the donor-recipient chain, ensuring the funds are getting to those that are supposed to receive them; open data can increase effectiveness by allowing for coordination across donors and for planning within recipient governments; it can help Canadians and recipient country citizens better understand aid efforts; etc.

We hope this hackathon will be a strong investment in translating Canadian aid data into useful information and insight, and that it will lead to further time and energy invested in this.

2. We need better ways for citizens, organizations and governments to collaborate: The international development sector is too caught up in ‘educating Canadians about global issues’ as the main interaction point (in addition to fundraising) between non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and Canadians. This work is important, but I believe it is too narrow and doesn’t give Canadians the credit they deserve. I believe that there is a ton of value that can be captured by changing the way by which Canadians engage with NGOs and government in the international development sector.

The hackathon is one very interesting and potentially effective medium where we tap into a very specific skill set of a group of Canadians that aren’t regularly, or at all, tied into the development sector. This contributes to a shift from NGOs and government ‘engaging’ Canadians, to a situation where the NGOs-government-citizens collaborate, bringing their respective skill sets and assets to bear on important problems.

3. Experimentation: this is very tied to the above two reasons, but is important enough to be a distinct point. 

We need more experimentation that leads to both success and failure, in the development sector and in the democratic renewal-citizen engagement space. A hackathon gives us the opportunity to experiment with the data, experiment with team/group composition working on projects, and gives us an opportunity to try a new way of interaction between government, NGOs, and Canadians.

This is the rationale that has motivated us to organize this event. Immediately below, I’ve also shared the goals (in brief) of the event.

As further background on the event, we have multiple goals:

a.To enable innovation and experimentation using Canadian aid data.

b.To test a new way of engaging Canadians in the development sector.

c.To generate feedback and ideas to improve the quality and increase the quantity of the data published by the federal government – a feedback loop of sorts.

d.To create tools/apps/analysis that extract value from the data.

e.To contribute to the formation of a community of people who are interested in the potential of open data in the international development sector. We hope that this will generate excitement that will lead to much more interesting work happening in this area in Canada.

If you are interested in attending, please be in touch. I can be reached at ianfroude@ewb.ca The event information is available here: http://citizen-attache.github.io/

Please consider submitting project ideas for the hackathon here: http://bit.ly/1bmwonD