Call for participation: Legislative Hackathon at Harvard, January 30-February 1, 2015: #Hack4Congress

A call for participation has been issued for #Hack4Congress: A “Not-Just-for-Technologists” Event to Fix Congress with the OpenGov Foundation — a legislative hackathon — which is scheduled to be held January 30-February 1, 2015, at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

The event’s Website is available at: http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/Challenges-to-Democracy/Events/Hack4Congress

Click here for the registration page.

Sponsors of the event include Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, the OpenGov Foundation, the Sunlight Foundation, Congressional Management Foundation, Microsoft New England, Represent.Us, CODE2040, POPVOX, Capitol Bells, and Generation Citizen.

The hackpad for the event is at: https://hackpad.com/HackCongress-kiKLDML5Rr9

Projects to be worked on at the event are listed at: https://hackpad.com/Hack4Congress-kiKLDML5Rr9#:h=Challenges-and-Projects

Data sets, APIs, and examples of apps to be used at the event are listed at: https://hackpad.com/Hack4Congress-Potentially-useful-resources-SBHDs5XMV7Q

One Twitter hashtag for the event appears to be #Hack4Congress

Here is a description, from the event’s Website:

[…] Congress needs “fixes”—but where will these new tools and solutions come from? By bringing together political scientists, technologists, designers, lawyers, organizational psychologists, and lawmakers, #Hack4Congress will help foster new digital tools, policy innovations, and other technology innovations to address the growing dysfunction in Congress.

Help fix Congress! Join political scientists and policy experts, technologists, architects, and designers at #Hack4Congress at Harvard Kennedy School of Government to help identify ideas and innovations to overcome the dysfunction gripping much of Congress. “Hacking” is not just for technologists. “Hacks” include innovations in policy, architecture, organizational process, art and design, and educational materials, as well as new software and technologies.

Solutions presented at the end of the hackathon will be evaluated by a panel of judges. After a second hackathon hosted by The OpenGov Foundation on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. in spring 2015, the winning teams will have an opportunity to present their projects to lawmakers and other high-level officials inside Congress. Move our democracy forward.[…]

For more details, please see the event’s Website.

HT @FoundOpenGov and @hrgilman

Filed under: Applications, Calls for participation, Conference Announcements, Hackathons, Hacking, Projects, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: #Hack4Congress, Archon Fung, Harvard Kennedy School, Hollie Russon Gilman, Legal hackathons, Legislative hackathons, OpenGov Foundation



via Legal Informatics Blog https://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/legislative-hackathon-at-harvard-january-30-february-1-2015-hack4congress/