The NSW government is calling on the state's best developers to help design apps to boost government service delivery, using open data.
Finance and services minister, Dominic Perrottet, said citizens deserve state of the art services and we’d like to co-design them with the best and brightest minds in the private sector.
“There is a real wealth of agency data that developers will be able to draw upon and it will be exciting to see what they deliver.
“This isn’t our data, it’s your data – and you can help us make the best use of it for the benefit of citizens across this state.”
There is a total of $45,000 in prize money up for grabs in apps4nsw competition, for the most progressive and innovative ideas.
Perrottet has launched the competition at the Open Data Summit at Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum.
“As part of the new round of the apps4nsw competition we are looking for talented techies and developers to produce and deliver apps for education and communities, State Records, and Family and Community Services,” he said.
“The latest round presents interesting challenges for developers as they’ll be will be competing to produce apps to showcase education data, highlight NSWs efforts during World War One and provide essential information and platform support for young carers.”
He said the apps4NSW initiative had proven to be hugely successful and led to the development of apps that have been downloaded thousands of times.
“We’ve already seen apps that help us travel and help us learn about our cultural history – now I’m looking forward to what developers will come up with next,” he said.
“Recent research by the Progressive Policy Institute found that NSW is the heartland of the app economy in Australia with nearly twice the number of jobs here as in Victoria – so I’m confident we’ll get some innovative results.”
The previous round of the competition has resulted in apps which are currently being developed for Department of Education and Communities and Office of Environment and Heritage.
Perrottet said the app competition was part of the NSW Government’s commitment to broaden the use of its data and encourage technology innovation.
“ICT is one of the highest priorities of this government, enabling departments and agencies to be more flexible, transparent and efficient in the conduct of their business.”
“We are committed to making NSW a digitally progressive government, focused on the needs of its citizens.”
Winning entries for each of the three apps will receive $15,000 in prize-money to assist with development.
