What now for government sponsored app competitions?
Friday,06 January 2012
Posted By: data.vic.gov.au Admin
It may be surprising to learn that very few award-winning apps from what is generally regarded as the originator - the “Apps for Democracy” competition - still exist.
Given this interesting tid-bit, the obvious question to ask is - why, seemingly, do they fail (both app comps and the apps themselves)?
How do we measure whether app comps are a success? Do we base it on the sheer number of entries, or perhaps the sustainability of any victorious apps? There are some who believe any government sponsored challenge should be tied to solving known service problems.
Give us your thoughts.
Some background reading to stoke discussion.
Articles
Everyone jumped on the app contest bandwagon. Now what?
The merits of government app contests
App outreach and sustainabiltiy: lessons learned by Portland, Oregon
Competitions - a different take on the idea
Comments for « What now for government sponsored app competitions? »
I created onmydoorstep.com.au for the AppMyState comp a couple of years ago. I've been maintaining it since, but my complaint has been a lack of follow through from the government departments who provided the data sets. I'd be happy to incorporate new data sets and process updates to the current ones but almost none have been touched since the comp. Without fresh data, the usefulness of these apps and the data is limited. In my opinion the best thing that the government could do to aid innovation and make data available is to provide live JSON/REST APIs for app developers to call on, similar to the one that Heritage Victoria provided for AppMyState.
27/03/2012 11:00:00
I'm not sure if this story clarifies or confuses the situation: http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20120110_9675.php I do think that many of the apps coming out of the contests tend to be cool rather than useful. But then, maybe the community has a more informed opinion of what is useful?
09/02/2012 15:38:07
As a competitor on the very first Apps for Democracy contest, I have my own thoughts on this question. http://civic.io/2012/01/10/do-hackathons-and-civic-hacking-matter/ http://govfresh.com/2011/08/open-government-hackathons-matter/
15/01/2012 13:06:46
I reckon what we need to do is pick existing open data projects, and contribute data to them. For example - OpenStreetMap or PlanningAlerts are good examples of how we could publish government data usefully. Having a competition around that sort of thing is more likely to create lasting value.
10/01/2012 14:48:23
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