Open data innovation model

Open data opens up plethora of opportunities for developers to make use of open data to build products or offer services to the community/business. If many open datasets are released that can be linkable with wide range of datasets, it would help the developer community to get some insights. The best way for government to get access to developer community is through hackathons. The best arena is GovHack J. During hackathons, government can release many open datasets along with a specific business problem that needs to be solved through open datasets.

Developers have 48 hours during a hackathon to build a prototype to solve the specific problem proposed by the business unit within the government. Since many developers are collaborating together to solve those business problem via mentors (available during hackathon), developers can better understand the problem and tailor their solution.

Government representatives can evaluate all the entries for a particular business problem challenges and choose only a few developers to move to next stage of innovation pipeline.

Only the winners of hackathon can move to next stage where they are given 2 months and some seed funding from the government to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). During this time, the hackathon winners would have access to Subject Matter Experts and additional datasets to solve the business problems. Since the hackathon winners will be embedded inside government, it gives them an exposure to various constraints & processes in addition to problem statement holistically. Government should allocate enough funding for a few hackathon winners to support them for 2 months and also enter into IP sharing agreement with those hackathon winner.

If hackathon winner register for a company (may be a startup) and enter into IP sharing agreement with government, it is beneficial for economic growth (it is a good KPI for our innovation model).

After the MVP build, the hackathon winners can showcase the product/solution to the executive team inside the government to prove that they have solved a business problem in an optimal way. If government can endorse the product (as it is already validated by internal business stakeholders) and provide hackathon winners access to

· Other markets (other jurisdictions)

· Promote hackathon winners product/solution via their social media channels; Promote to their peers in other companies/jurisdiction

· Even buying & using the product built by the hackathon winner

This would help the hackathon winners get new clients and boost their sales. This will drive the traction for our MVP/solution. An ongoing innovation support from the government would propel the hackathon winner motivation to innovate.