The Government of India launched a two day hackathon today, in a move to enable better connect with the youth and to promote apps that use publicly available data on the
portal. More than 1900 people from different backgrounds are participating in the hackathon which is being held all over the country across 10 locations and has been organized jointly by the Planning Commision and the National Innovation Council. Moreover many people are also likely to participate in the event online, apart from participating at the event locations. The participants are being given a total of 32 hours during which they will have to develop and present their submission. The submissions can be in the form of apps, visualizations and short films. All of these will be released under GNU GPL or Creative Commons (CC BY SA) licenses for the general public after the completion of the event.
There are various sectors which the participants are asked to choose, which include Macroeconomic framework, Agriculture and Rural development, Health, Water and Environment, Education and Skill Development, Urban Development and Energy. A facebook group has been created for participants to discuss and ask questions related to each of these. The officials from Planning Commision also put up presentations on Slideshare introducing each sector briefly and also held a Google Hangout that has been posted to YouTube. As of now, presentations ranging from topics like energy, water, environment and education have made it to the list of those which have been uploaded from the Planning Commission’s official page on
Slideshare. The Google Hangout sessions on
Energy and
Education and Skill development have also been made live. In addition to the hackathon, a parallel event called “Uncover the event” is also being organized where participants are asked to cover the event by live tweeting, blogging or by submitting a photo/video story.
The Inauguration held today was addressed by the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Mr. Sam Pitroda, the Advisor to the Prime Minister. As part of the opening speech, Montek Singh Ahluwalia discussed the 12th Five Year Plan in detail and said that as part of this effort, he wanted to bring this to the people in simple words, rather than make people perceive it as a 1000 page booklet which discusses every aspects of the nation. Sam Pitroda admitted how the government is not good at communication and even lags behind on how the different departments communicate with each other, leaving aside the general public. This is however, indeed a new initiative on the part of the government, which has traditionally been perceived as lagging behind in technology. The various social media resources and infrastructure that the government is utilizing is hopefully a new direction in which the people will be able to interact with their leaders. The webcast for the inauguration event can also be accessed here. The event submissions are expected to close tomorrow at 12.00 pm, after which they will be judged between 2 to 5 pm. The online submissions will however be judged separately at a later date. The top prizes to be won include a cash prize of Rs. 15000 for the visualization category and Rs. 25000 for the short films and apps category. The same amount is to be won by those participating online. For more information and latest updates related to the event, you may visit the Planning Commision’s Facebook Page or check the#12thplan hashtag on Twitter. You can also check the live interview which was organized by BBC India where Sam Pitroda and Montek Singh Ahluwalia answered all the questions of people on
twitter.
