More than apps and maps: help government decide with data
Jurisdiction: Australia
How can we combine data to help government make their big and small decisions?
Government makes decisions every day—with long term consequences such as the location of a school, or on a small scale such as the rostering of helpdesk staff.
Government bodies at local, state and national levels make many decisions each day. Sometimes these are decisions with long term consequences such as where to build a new school. But many are on a smaller scale such as how many people to roster on a phone helpdesk or where police should set up random breath tests.
At the same time, governments are collecting data on everything from road use to public housing to recreational fishing areas.
When combined, this data has the potential to help government make better decisions to deliver better services for people. You could find a data-driven solution to:
Improve management of water in drought declared areas.
Better target services and interventions to prevent family violence
Redesign our cities to meet the needs of a future which includes autonomous vehicles, environmental changes due to climate change and more
Improve services for retirees, pet owners, users of public transport — or all three!
Your objective with this challenge is to combine data sets to make a decision for government which gives a positive outcome for people. This should be forward-looking - recommending to government where future investment should be made, or services provided.
What we are looking out for when we judge the entries
How persuasive is your entry? Have you proved your point?
How will people benefit? How many people will benefit?
How much is your solution likely to cost? Does this match the potential benefits?
We will be looking for innovation:
How have you presented your entry — is it simple and clear, have you given us more than data shown on a map?
Have we seen data used in this way elsewhere?
Have you transformed the data by improving it, cleaning it or linking it to other data sets?
If you have a user interface, is it intuitive?
Does your data fit into a policy narrative?
Is your solution transferable and scalable, could it be be used by other government agencies or areas?
Eligibility: Use at least two data sets (at least one from data.gov.au) to help government make a decision that will improve services for people. Any code produced for your entry must be published on github under an open license. If your entry is not software, you will need to show the working behind your use of data along with any calculations and analysis you did. You must indicate which specific government agency (at any level of government) can take action based on your entry.
Entry: Challenge entry is available to all teams in Australia.