Preliminary Findings on Software Engineering Practices in Civic Hackathons

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“…From the organizer viewpoint, at least these four practices should be adopted while designing an Educational-Urban hackathon, since they may enhance the hackathon's success. Moreover, this article responds to the call for more research to assess the impacts and outcomes of hackathons by Gama (2017), and Johnson and Robinson (2014). By answering our second research question, "What kind of output did a combined educational-urban hackathon achieve in terms of its dual focus and goal setting?…”

“…The ceremony incorporates the presentation of the output with a pitch for example, as well as recognition of the results, sometimes including rewards ranging from non-monetary to monetary (Kienzler & Fontanesi, 2017;Pe-Than et al, 2019). Hackathons have been adopted in many domains and for multiple usages besides only coding (Leckart, 2012;Zukin & Papadantonakis, 2017): as an educational method (Porras et al, 2019), a way to crowdsource solutions (Gama, 2017), to find new potential employees (Komssi et al, 2015;Pe-Than & Herbsleb, 2019), to attain public engagement and collaboration between citizens (Gama, 2017), the creation of prototypes, and possible new business formation (Komssi et al, 2015). As events, they yield learning, create new social connections, and have the potential to foster innovation.…”

“…The utility and quality of the apps, and the hackathon process or scope have received criticism, yet this is mostly based on anecdotal evidence, and rigorous empirical evidence on the claims has not been found. However, it has been verified that the developers' experience affects the requirements and compromises the utility and relevance of applications (Gama, 2017). Many researchers neveretheless point out that the research on civic hackathons is scarce and limited, hence evidence of hackathon outputs is also scarce.…”

“…Many researchers neveretheless point out that the research on civic hackathons is scarce and limited, hence evidence of hackathon outputs is also scarce. Therefore, more research is needed to assess the impacts, outcomes, and value of their deployment, as well as the stakeholders that derive value from them (Gama, 2017;Johnson & Robinson, 2014). This suggests that one simple way to measure value is through descriptive statistics surrounding contest inputs and outputs (Johnson & Robinson, 2014).…”

Software Engineering in Civic Tech A Case Study about Code for Ireland

“…While extant literature seeks to understand the effect of technology on people [3,6] and to orchestrate civic engagement Figure 1. Palette of Public Participation in Civic Technology adapted from [4] [7,8], research in the context of software engineering practices in civic technologies remains under-explored [9,10].…”