To deepen Open Data exchanges in Asia and foster innovative applications based on Open Data from different countries, the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) under Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), Thailand’s Electronic Government Agency (EGA), Korea’s National Information Society Agency (NIA) of and Japan’s Vitalizing Local Economy Organization by Open Data & Big Data (VLED) are joining hands to launch the 2017 Asia Open Data Hackathon and the finals. Team presentations will be held on August 19 in the hope of turning a new page for collective efforts to open up more data in Asia.
The participating teams get to choose one out of the four themes this year – food safety (enhancing food safety and health/well-being for all), government transparency (combating corruption), minority groups and social welfare (narrowing social and economic gaps) and weather-driven solutions (mix/match of weather and other data to address various issues). To choose the teams that represent each country, local competitions will first be held in different cities. The one in Taiwan lasted for two days, from August 5 to August 6, and five teams (KOH, Weather Disease, The Lab of Inter-disciplinary, Life is Struggle, Botmax) out of the original 20 eventually stood out. By using international Open Data to their advantage, the services proposed by the five teams, including pesticide residue testing methods and standards, elderly care solutions, a global dengue map, one-stop services for senior citizens, and local electric power demand/supply analysis, have been highly recognized by the jury panel.
The winning teams will receive awards in the 2017 Asia Pacific Open Data Summit organized by the IDB on September 15. With their winning solutions on display, the team members will also have a chance to exchange ideas with the teams from other countries to strengthen cross-border cooperation on Open Data, and bring data applications to a new high.