Civic Hackathons: Innovation, Procurement, or Civic Engagement?

Abstract

At all levels, governments around the world are moving toward the provision of open data, that is, the direct provision to citizens, the private sector, and other third parties, of raw government datasets, controlled by a relatively permissible license. In tandem with this distribution of open data is the promotion of civic hackathons, or “app contests” by government. The civic hackathon is designed to offer prize money to developers as a way to spur innovative use of open data, more specifically the creation of commercial software applications that deliver services to citizens. Within this context, we propose that the civic hackathon has the potential to act in multiple ways, possibly as a backdoor to the traditional government procurement process, and as a form of civic engagement. We move beyond much of the hype of civic hackathons, critically framing an approach to understanding civic hackathons through these two lenses. Key questions for future research emphasize the emerging, and important, nature of this research path.

Digital Activism: a Hierarchy of Political Commitment

“…Civic hackers belong to loosely organized groups that perform IS actions such as building and updating government digital systems or working towards data activism [21]. Civic hackers may work alone, join a distributed group, or participate in local hackathons that are focused on specific tasks to help the government or community [22]. Civic actions might include redesigning a government website, developing a new system to solve a particular problem or helping to connect open government data.…”

“…Social media has turned into a battleground where long-time comrades "unfriend" each other over political disagreements [46], where enormous rallies and demonstrations are organized [27], [3], and where civic hackathons, a venue for altruistic citizens to code for their country, abound [12], [22]. Digital activism has allowed political bodies to span boundaries and gain new adherents in record time.…”

Community and Code: Nine Lessons from Nine NESCent Hackathons

“…The number of participants may range from a few dozen (e.g., 8,27) to hundreds. Some events offer prizes 14,30 . There is considerable variety in how development targets are determined (e.g., 5) and how teams are formed 19,31 .…”

“…Of the small amount of published work available, most consists of reports on specific hackathon events, some of which are short 4 , while others go into depth about the technical products of the event rather than the process 2,[8][9][10][11] . Others are news and opinion pieces [12][13][14][15] . Only a few published sources are based on systematic methodology such as surveys, interviews, or organizing structured data [16][17][18][19][20] .…”

Towards Continuous Collaboration on Civic Tech Projects: Use Cases of a Goal Sharing System Based on Linked Open Data

“…A hackathon, a coined term consisting of "hack" and "marathon," refers to a participatory event for prototyping services or applications in a short period such as over the weekend or for several hours. Civic hachathon [5] is a type of hackathon that is for prototyping civic tech applications. Figure 1 shows the typical flow of civic hackathons.…”