The gift of coding is often not confined to those who have top grades or the ones coming out of Ivy League institutions. This has been manifest in the fact that we have often seen excellent software solutions from people belonging to humble origins. Evidently, to tap into this potential, White House has now announced the National Day of Civic Hacking.
So what exactly do the government officials intend to achieve through this event? For a start, a whole plethora of government agencies are making their public data available to the developers as well as entrepreneurs. This is being done to allow the participants to work out tech solutions for such problems as are faced by cities, states and the country at large.
Given the thorough penetration of technology into the government’s functioning, it is no wonder that such problems would crop up. The 2-day event is apparently an attempt to go open-source in order to seek solutions. The government agencies that will be serving up their data include NASA, Census Bureau and Department of Labor. Other organizations such as Random Hacks of Kindness, Code for America and Innovation Endeavors are also joining the effort.
White House has announced the event to take place on June 1st and 2nd, all around the nation. Until now, 27 cities have events scheduled on the aforementioned dates. By June, we expect that many more cities would hit the bandwagon and we may be able to witness a nation-wide tech frenzy meant to carve out solutions for the country at large.
The event is certainly a great idea and if it proves to be a success this year, we can further hope that White House may ordain similar events in the coming days. If you wish to whisper some tech challenge that you want the participants to tackle during the event, follow the links below.
Source: Hack For Change/White House
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