- State wins Best Government Participation award
- National winners evaluated for innovation potential across government
Within two months of the State Government releasing its open data policy, the State has taken out a suite of major national data prizes.
Finance Minister Bill Marmion and Acting Lands Minister Mia Davies congratulated the winners for their exciting innovations with potential public and private sector applications.
"Events like GovHack are important to Western Australia's technology future and to the Government because they show what can be achieved when government makes data available and brings people together to analyse and reuse it," Mr Marmion said.
"Data innovation has enormous potential to further diversify our State by providing new insights, products and services. I have no doubt some of the GovHack projects will result in new technology developments, and could even be commercialised."
At tonight's Sydney red carpet event for GovHack 2015, the State won the Best Government Participation award, recognising outstanding contributions by Government entities to GovHack 2015.
Ms Davies said the Government was committed to open data and GovHack with the launch of the open data policy and its support of the innovative Shared Location Information Platform.
"The fact that WA received nine national awards and honourable mentions, including two at the international level, is testament to the calibre of the State's entrepreneurs and our progress with open data," Ms Davies said.
"Open data is also inspiring the next generation as was seen recently when Landgate held WA's first junior hackathon 'HackED' in August."
WA's winning teams included Synergising Synergies for Sitizens who won Best Policy Insights Hack; #on country who won the Indigenous Issues Bounty; Caffeinate Me for the Statistics Data Bounty; and SynergyCity for Open Source Bounty.
Hack to the Future received an honourable mention for the Indigenous Issues Bounty and the International Bounty for Best WW1 Hacks. #on country won second prize for the International Digital Humanities Hack and Open Energy came second for the Best Entrepreneurial Hack.
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