Congratulations to Tasmania’s best IT minds who competed in the fourth annual GovHack event and were recognised at an awards event tonight. GovHack is the annual `Hackathon’ that brings together some of the nation’s best digital developers to create new ideas for government, industry and community using government information, or datasets.
Nine teams won awards across eight categories, with two – Beat The Press (Hobart) and Mission Attrition (Launceston) – to go on to represent Tasmania at the national finals in Adelaide on October 22.
The Most Commercial Potential award was won by Bin There, a team made up of university and secondary students.
Bin There developed a smartphone app which helps to locate the nearest rubbish bin and showed promise in helping councils to manage other fixed assets.
This new award, sponsored by the Tasmanian Government, gives the Bin There team 12-months access to the Enterprize innovation hubs, which is part of the state’s $500,000 initiative to develop and implement early-stage IT business opportunities.
The Enterprize Hobart hub was officially opened earlier today. The Enterprize hubs give entrepreneuers and startups the tools and support to jumpstart new business and create jobs.
The Tasmanian Government is the platinum sponsor of the GovHack events which were held in July.
This year’s event saw 70 participants form teams, to work over 46 continuous hours in Hobart and Launceston, with thousands of data sets, including 100 from the Tasmanian Government.
Award winners:
Spirit of GovHack Award (Hobart) Rex Smeal
Spirit of GovHack Award (Launceston) Brendan Hodkinson
Most Disruptive Innovation – ACS Beat The Press
Design Excellence – TasICT Beat The Press
Best Use of Tasmanian Local Council Data Bin There
Encouragement Award – TasmaNet Mission Attrition
Best Data Visualisation – Sense-T STEM Australia
Most Outstanding Tasmanian Benefit – Tasmanian Government Pay Parking Online
Most Commercial Potential – Tasmanian Government Bin There
